Qualla: Cresswell Lifeboat Station

Cresswell Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1874, a man called James Brown and his three sons drowned in sight of the Cresswell shore when their fishing coble overturned. The village had no lifeboat. No rocket-line equipment. Not even a barometer to warn of the weather turning. James's daughter Margaret was a young woman then. Within two years she was helping drag a new lifeboat through gale-force rain to launch it, and within fifty years she had become so identified with the work of the station that the press called her the Second Grace Darling. The Cresswell lifeboat saved a great many lives. It also became, almost incidentally, a story about one family that refused to let the sea win again.

Image: Graham Robson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cresswell Lifeboat Station: The Browns of Cresswell

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Brown of Cresswell - known locally as Big Tom - was awarded the RNLI Silver Medal in 1861 for rescuing six men from the vessel Julius, aground and breaking up on Broad Sand Rocks. He was thirteen years away from the disaster that would kill his brother James and three of h...

Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cresswell Lifeboat Station: Margaret Brown

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0. On a winter night in 1876, the steamship Gustaf was in trouble off the coast. Old Potter had to be dragged a mile north up the beach for a workable launch. Margaret Brown, then a young woman who had already lost her father and brothers to the sea, helped haul the boat. With every...

Image: Graham Robson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cresswell Lifeboat Station: Six Decades, Four Coxswains, One Family

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Big Tom retired in 1890, he received a second RNLI Silver Medal - 29 years after his first. His successor Henry Brown served three years. After Henry came Adam Brown, son of Thomas, who had crewed the boat since its launch in 1875 and would stay coxswain until 1908. William ...

Image: Graham Robson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cresswell Lifeboat Station: What the Sea Took, and Gave Back

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lifeboat Ellen and Eliza arrived at Cresswell on 24 August 1889, funded by an anonymous donor whose £2,000 gift bought three boats. Martha replaced her in 1909, a Dungeness-class boat designed by Felix Rubie and paid for from the legacy of Mrs M. A. Vaughan of Highbury. After...

Image: Graham Robson | CC BY-SA 2.0