Qualla: Alnmouth Lifeboat Station

Alnmouth Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Curtis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Captain John Ross Ward of the Royal Navy was deliberately rolled into the surf at Alnmouth, and that was the entire point. The Duke of Northumberland had offered one hundred pounds for a lifeboat that would right itself, and James Beeching of Great Yarmouth had won the prize. Now, in the autumn of 1852, the prototype Lucy was being tested in earnest. Ward and a crew of local men rowed her into the breakers next to the golf links. They capsized. The boat flipped back upright. Ward was fished from the sea and given a silver medal. Many subsequent lifeboats would follow Beeching's design, and a small stone boathouse near the mouth of the River Aln became the place where the British self-righting era effectively began.

Image: Andrew Curtis | CC BY-SA 2.0

Alnmouth Lifeboat Station: The Duke's Competition

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. Algernon Percy, the 4th Duke of Northumberland, was not a man given to half measures. Appointed president of the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck in 1851, he set out a competition with a clear brief: design a lifeboat that could roll, right i...

Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0

Alnmouth Lifeboat Station: Ann of Blyth

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Cobb, CC0. On 12 June 1860 the brig Ann of Blyth, returning from Memel in Prussia, lay anchored in Alnmouth Bay when a south-east gale tore at her cables. Both parted. The vessel drove ashore. The Alnmouth crew launched their small four-oared lifeboat into surf that would have terrified a s...

Image: Simon Cobb | CC0

Alnmouth Lifeboat Station: The Captain Who Would Not Leave

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The brig Fortuna of Riga ran aground on the Berling Carr on 8 January 1889, on passage from Memel to the Tyne. Three of her crew launched the ship's boat and made it to shore. Rocket apparatus from the beach pulled off five more. Her captain refused to abandon his vessel. For fou...

Image: Graham Robson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Alnmouth Lifeboat Station: What Remains

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Cobb, CC0. Eighty-two years of service, fifteen lives saved, fifteen more crew brought ashore alive. The arithmetic of the Alnmouth station looks modest on paper, but every one of those numbers represents a journey out into a sea that did not welcome small boats. The station closed in 1935....

Image: Simon Cobb | CC0