Qualla: St Abbs Lifeboat Station

St Abbs Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian S, CC BY-SA 2.0. Jane Hay wrote the letter that built the station. On the night of 17 October 1907, she stood on the cliffs above St Abbs and watched the steamer Alfred Erlandsen go to pieces on Ebb Carr Rocks with 17 men aboard. The lifeboats came from Eyemouth and from Skateraw down the coast, but the conditions were impossible and the rescues failed. Every man on the Erlandsen drowned. Jane Hay went home and wrote to the Edinburgh Evening News: as one of those who witnessed the tragedy which occurred at St Abbs on Thursday night, I write to say that personally I shall never rest content till we have a lifeboat and rocket apparatus of our own in St Abbs. She got her station. A century later, when the RNLI tried to close it, the village got it back.

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Image: Ian S | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Abbs Lifeboat Station: Jane Hay's Campaign

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JThomas, CC BY-SA 2.0. She convened a public meeting in the village and led a petition to the RNLI. The campaign was extraordinarily short. The Chief Inspector of Lifeboats visited St Abbs within weeks. On 9 January 1908, less than three months after the wreck, the RNLI committee of management resolved...

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Image: JThomas | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Abbs Lifeboat Station: From All-Weather to Inshore

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Hope, CC BY-SA 2.0. Four all-weather lifeboats served St Abbs across 63 years. Helen Smitton, William Arthur Millward, James and Mary Walker, and finally the 37-foot Oakley-class Jane Hay. In 1974, the RNLI placed a fast all-weather lifeboat at Eyemouth, four miles down the coast, and decided that S...

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Image: Mark Hope | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Abbs Lifeboat Station: The Closure

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Petticowick, CC BY-SA 4.0. In early 2015 the RNLI executive announced the withdrawal of the St Abbs lifeboat. The decision was made in a coastal review at Poole headquarters without local consultation. The village did not accept it. The Save St Abbs Lifeboat campaign printed 2,000 t-shirts. The petition ga...

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Image: Petticowick | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Abbs Lifeboat Station: Thomas Tunnock

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James McEwan, CC BY-SA 2.0. The new boat arrived on 28 July 2016 and was named Thomas Tunnock at a ceremony on 17 September, in honour of Boyd Tunnock's grandfather, the man who founded the family bakery in 1890 - though the famous Tea Cakes were developed by Boyd himself in 1956. She is an MST900W, a nine-...

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Image: James McEwan | CC BY-SA 2.0