Kintyre's Lifeboats

8/14/2019 Kintyre's Lifeboats

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Kintyres Lifeboats

One of the best and most convenient life-presevers was the safety-cape invented by a member of The Skating Club of Edinburgmaterial furnished by The Albion Clothing Co. of that city. Suited to lie easily round the neck and shoulders and hang as low as the eit was made of Macintosh cloth. A tape from the inner part of the capes back was tied round the wearer keeping the cape downevent of the individual being immersed in the water. The cape could be partially inflated with air, blown into it by a small moutconcealed in the capes folds, enabling it to swell to about an inch in thickness.

By rough approximations, the surface of The Earth is covered by 322,280,000 cubic miles of sea water, Scotland has2,400 miles of mainland coast and a further 3,900 miles of island coasts.

Britains first lifeboat station was established at Bamburgh, in Northumber- land, in 1721. All the early lifeboatstations were privately maintained and among the early lifeboat stations were at Redcar, where the oldest surviving lifeboat in The World, the 1800-built Zetland , saved some 500 lives.

Sir William Hillary, a soldier and traveller, settled in Douglas and founded The Isle of Man District Association,became its first president and became a regular member of the life-boat crew, often as the boats coxswain, the stationbeing established in 1802. In 1823, Hillary published a pamphlet urging the need for an organised lifeboat serviceinstead of the piecemeal service which was provided by individual private organisations and such was the interest thisaroused that on March 4, 1824, The Archbishop of Canterbury chaired a meeting which, to Hillarys satisfaction, ledto the founding of The National Institution for The Preservation of Life from Shipwreckwith King George IV as its patron,thirty years later a Royal Charter would change its name to The Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The Isle of Mancan therefore claim to be the birthplace of todays R.N.L.I..

The R.N.L.I. medals - gold, silver and bronze, designed by A.G. Wyon - bear the head of Sir William Hillary, theirreverse showing a survivor being pulled aboard a boat and the words Let not the deep swallow me up.

Sir William, who died on January 5, 1847 and is buried in St Georges Churchyard at Douglas in The Isle of Man, washimself awarded three gold medals for his own rescues and his awards are equalled only by those of Cromer lifeboatscoxswain Henry Blogg, who also earned four silver medals making him the highest decorated of all lifeboatmen.

Despite the large number of shipping losses around The North Channel, the number of lifeboat stations has beenrelatively small. There have only been nine since 1861 when Campbeltown, the oldest station, was initiated. Two of the nine stations, Southend and Machrihanish, were closed about 1930.

Several life-boats were designed in the 1700s, notably one by Lionel Lukin, a London coach-builder whoexperimented with his un-immergible coble on the Doctors Pond at Dunmow in Essex where he had been born.

Lukins principles included incorporating enclosed watertight hollows at the cobles bow and stern, an idea used for2,000 years on Chinese junks ! Lukins coble would serve too for some time at Grace Darlings village of Bamburgh

where, on September 7, 1838, the famous lighthouse keepers daughter had saved the crew from the wreck of theForfarshire .

The loss of the Adventure with most of her crew, just 300 yards off South Shields Herd Sands in September 1789,led the South Shields people to subscribe to a reward for anyone who could design a boat which could be launchedsuccessfully from the shore.

The award went to a designer called Henry Greathead and, in 1790, a life-boat constructed by him successfully

rescued the crew of a ship stranded in near identical circumstances to those when the Adventure had been lost in theprevious year.

Greatheads boat, named the Original , a sailing-rowing boat, was about 30-feet long, 10-feet in beam and 3-feet 3-inches deep at her mid-ships. She was double-ended, both ends identically formed, so that she could go through the

water with either end foremost. The boats shape lengthwise was a curve so formed that a line drawn from the top of one stem to that of the other, at the opposite end, was 2 feet above the midships gunwales. There were fivethwarts, seats, for the rowing crew, doubled banked, so that it had to be manned by ten oars-men.

The whole boat was cased and lined with cork, four inches thick on the out - side and covering the whole shear, side,of the boat. The cork on the inside of the boat was even thicker and it took seven -hundredweight of cork to cover the hulloutside and in. The cork was secured with copper slips or plates.


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The advantages of the design were that the boats curvature gave it great facility in turning, a single stroke of thesteering oars - there was one at each end - moving the boat as though on a centre-pin; the covering of cork on theoutside, being immediately under the gunwale, gave great liveliness and a ready disposition for the boat to recover herbalance after being suddenly canted aside by a heavy wave and that the boats capability of being propelled with eitherend forwards increased her manageability.

Greathead recommended that the boat should be painted white, a colour that most readily catches the eye. He alsoadvised that the steersman kept the head of the boat to the sea and give her an accelerated velocity to meet the waves.

A life-boat station, to be organised by a committee, was advised to have two crews, some 20 to 24 volunteer crewmen

on stand-by.

Several other trials of Greatheads boat proved his designs utility and, in 1802 The Society of Arts presented him witha gold medal and fifty guineas, a reward of 1,200 was given to him by a special Parliamentary decree. Trinity Housetoo followed suit and the Committee of Lloyds devoted 2,000 to the purpose of building life-boats along theprinciples of the proved design and some thirty boats were thus funded.

In the same year that the lifeboat station at Douglas was established, 1802, a 30-foot long Greathead boat wasstationed at Aberdeen. She was credited with seven launches, saved four lives and was herself wrecked while in serviceon March 2, 1820. Even in 1936, Aberdeens No 2 life-boat was a pulling-sailing boat as were those at anotherthirty stations round theBritish and Irish coasts.

Greatheads lifeboat design, so successful elsewhere, was disliked by the Suffolk men, who maintained that a locallifeboat, based on their own broad- beamed, lug-rigged craft was more suitable for East Anglian beaches.

It is interesting to note therefore that Lukin himself designed the Norfolk and Suffolk boat and declared It isparticularly advisable that all lifeboats should be in the form most approved by the pilots and seamen on the coasts where they arebe used as no one form will fit all shores.

St. Sampson, in The Channel Islands, was established in 1803 as it was closest to the Guernsey approaches and theinfamous Casquet rocks and it is in The Channel Islands in the 1950s that we find another confirmation of LionelLukins persuasions about lifeboat hull design.

Henry Greatheads hull design for his boat, the Original , at South Shields, had been inspired by a design submittedtoo at that time, when the Adventure was lost, by William Wouldhave, the parish clerk of South Shields.

Wouldhaves design was based on a curved wooden dipper, found at a well and the shape of the dipper embodied theprinciple of self-righting.

So to The Channel Islands and an article in, I think, a mid-1950s copy of the magazine Yachting World or Motor Boat anYachting which featured the enterprise of a local fisherman who, fascinated by the way the birds serenely floated about on the wavthe wildest of storms, designed a boat for himself based on the underwater body form of the seagulls. He took a lot of time to drawlines of his hull and then took some years to persuade a boat-builder to put life into his creation.

The article noted that on a number of occasions they had used the gull-boat in preference to the lifeboat, proof indeed that Lionel Lukins views held water !

Although nothing seems to be recorded about her locally, a life-boat called the Princess Alice seems to have beenstationed at Campbeltown from 1860 till 1868. In any case, the Lord Murray , costing 158 and the gift of Lady Murray of Edinburgh, arrived in 1861 and a boathouse was built at The New Quay.

Southends life-boat station opened in 1869, eight years after Campbeltown. Its three serving life-boats were allnamed John R. Ker after the son of the first boats benefactor, Robert Ker of Hamilton whose son had beendrowned at the north Kintyre village of Clachan in the 1860s. The son Johns name is inscribed above the door of theold life-boat house.

On New Years Day 1875, a severe south-east gale blew up wrecking the barque on Sanda Island. The gale too causedconsiderable damage to fishing boats in Campbeltown, wrecked at schooner at Feochaig, just south of Campbeltownand overcame a Norwegian barque sheltering in Machrie Bay on the west of Arran.


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The Perica grounded on Sanda about 9.30 p.m. on New Years night and almost immediately dismasted, one mastfatally injuring the ships mate and wrecking one of her long-boats. Her sailmaker too had been killed when he hadfallen from a spar. Fortunately, the ships predicament had been seen by the islands lighthouse keepers who alertedother islanders and one, Alexander Ritchie, the islands tenant farmer, swam out into the sea to rescue three men asthey tried to swim ashore, he was later awarded an R.N.L.I. silver medal.

The Sanda islanders and a horse dragged a skiff a mile-and-a-half across Sanda and, as the storm eased down atdaylight, launched the skiff and succeeded in rescuing the ships captain, his wife and two children, the 2nd mate, thesteward and the carpenter, three other men were lost from the ship and the bodies of two other men, killed earlier on

board the ship, were too brought ashore and later buried in the island cemetery.

Nobody on the mainland knew anything about the incident until later and, in any case, the Southend life-boatscoxswain had left the village before daybreak on New Years Day to go into Campbeltown, not expecting the weatherto turn out as it had.

The Southend life-boat had, until then, been crewed by local men but the loss of the Perica focused minds for theSouthend men were mainly farmers and the life-boat needed seamen ! A radical decision was taken and a standing order issued to convey fishermen from Campbeltown as quickly as possible and whenever necessary to crew theSouthend life-boat.

The Southend life-boats were launched off the shore, rarely easy, in front of the old life-boat house and a new slipway and a new boathouse - the four corner pillars remain - were built when the third John R. Ker arrived in 1905, the

total cost of boat, boathouse and slipway amounting to 4,000. Then, in 1876, the Princess Louise, named after John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquis of Lornes wife,Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.

In 1888, the self-righting Mary Adelaide Harrison, the gift of Mr H. Harrison of Liverpool, costing 396 , arrivedin Campbeltown and then; in 1898, the James Stevens No 2 , costing 538 and funded partially from part of a legacy from James Stevens of Birmingham. A new boathouse, costing 885, was then built for her on the Kilkerran Road.

One of the most splendid rescues of the James Stevens No 2 occurred on the morning of Friday, February 27, 1903 when the 154-foot Norwegian barque Argo , inward bound from Willmington to London with a cargo of resin, herten-man crew under the command of Captain N. J. Ellefsen, ran aground in tempestuous seas at Macharioch, justsouth of the Arranmans Barrels.

Three of her crew managed to get ashore in one of the boats and, a man sent off to raise the alarm, the boat tried toreturn to the stricken ship. It was sweot away and found two weeks later at Davaar Island, the bodies of its two-mancrew never recovered.

The alarm raised the Southend lifeboat, the John R. Ker , unable to launch because of the heavy seas, the signal gun was fired for the Campbeltown boat, the James Stevens No 2 at 9 a.m.. She was launched at 9.45 a.m. and, with hightide, took a short-cut out over the shingle between Davaar and the shore and was taken in tow by the tug Flying

Dutchman , thus reducing her time to the casualty. The tugs assistance was undoubtedly instrumental in saving thenine remaining members of the barques crew as the ship was now showing signs of breaking up and as the life-boatgot alongside the masts began falling into the sea.

In appreciation of their courage and skill, King Oscar of Norway, the grand old monarch of a great seafaring people,awarded the life-boat coxswain, George McEachran and his Campbeltown crew, a specially struck commemorative medal for their work.

In the last week of December 1908, a great gale blew up and continued for several days bringing heavy snowfalls tomuch of Scotland. On Monday, December 28, the Campbeltown life-boat, the James Stevens No 2 , was called outat 10 a.m. to attend the Bessie Arnold , a 104-ton schooner which, inward bound to Clydebank with iron ore, hadgone aground at Sliddery on the south-west of Arran. The Campbeltown life-boat, under heavily reefed sails, arrivedon the scene about 1 p.m..

As the life-boat dropped her anchor and kedged-up to the wreck, three men could be seen huddlng on the wrecksbows. The wreck was lying beam on to the shore and continually washed by heavy seas, one of these lifted the life-boat some ninety-feet forward sending her crashing on to the wreck.


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The same wave washed away the three men in the schooners bows, swept the life-boats bowman, Neil MacKenzie,overboard and injured another crewman and injured the life-boats coxswain, George McEachran. Moments later,another wave lifted the life-boat off the wreck.

The rocket-crew from Kildonan were on the scene and the life-boat, holed, her rudder ripped off and too having hauled crewman Neil MacKenzie back on board after some twenty minutes in the freezing water, headed back forCampbeltown where they beached the water-logged boat in front of The Royal Hotel.

Later that same night, the gale still raging, the crew were called out yet again, to the Irish ketch Jane which had

driven ashore just 100 yards away from the beached life-boat ! Such was the severity of the storm that it provedimpossible to help the crew of the Jane , though her skipper died, his two sons were rescued by other means fromthe shore.

For their exploits that day, the life-boat crew were awarded double pay but , their work was not yet to be finished forthe very next afternoon, that of December 29, 1908, another disaster began to unfold on the west side of Kintyre.

The two-year-old, 120-foot Fleetwood steam trawler Albany (F 42) , caught in the still raging gale, had turned northto try to find some shelter and, in the blizzard conditions, had run aground some 150 yards offshore at Tangytavil.

Two of her crew clung desperately to her engine casing, the other eight, taking refuge in her wheelhouse, were littlebetter off when the seas smashed the windows. Three other Fleetwood trawlers stood offshore through that night but,in the morning light, realising that they couldnt help, sailed off leaving the men to their fate.

All through that day the ten-man crew continued to cling on and eventually, in the late afternoon, they saw some signsof activity on the snow covered shore but darkness fell again. Ashore, the alarm had been raised but the Campbeltownroad was blocked by snow and of course the Campbeltown life- boat, the James Stevens No 2 , was still holed andout of action in front of The Royal Hotel. Boat-less and hampered by the deep snowdrifts, the life-boat crew set off across the peninsula to see what could be done.

Meanwhile, back at the wrecked trawler, her skipper, Captain Courtney, no doubt encouraged by the small numberof people now assembled on the beach, tried to swim a line ashore but was beaten back by the seas and hauled back onto the Albany . Night fell again and the following day, Hogmanay, the crew tried time and time again to get a line onto the shore as the Campbeltown life-boat crew hadnt been able to bring any equipment with them through thesnowdrifts.

Then, on New Years Day 1909, two-and-a-half days after the Albany had grounded, success and, one by one, all

ten of her crew were hauled slowly through the surf to safety. All survived their ordeal and were sent home a few dayslater.

In 1911, through the generosity of a Mrs Cresswell of Egham, the Richard Cresswell arrived in Campbeltown and would be stationed there until 1931 alongside Campbeltowns first motor lifeboat, the William McPherson , whicharrived in 1912, just as the Machrihanish life-boat station was completed and given the 35-foot, self-righting, pulling-sailing boat, the Henry Finlay . The Watson designed motor lifeboat William McPherson , the gift of a MrsMacPherson of Helensburgh, cost 3,423.

Too in 1911, a second lifeboat was sent to Campbeltown to act as a boarding-boat for the soon to arrive and too toact as a lifeboat within the Campbeltown Loch area but she was never actually called out on rescue duties.

Sometimes stories, like life-boats, turn full circle. Southends three life-boats, all named John R. Ker , werebequested as a consequence of a boy being drowned at Clachan. Edgar Moller, the boy in the next incident, ended upretiring in Clachan and it was only by chance, at his funeral, when his family recalled the incident, that the linksbecame apparent.

On Monday, September 17, 1928, the 416-foot British steam tanker Olivia , was inward-bound from Liverpool for Ardrossan with a cargo of benzine oil.

The ships master, taking a brief break from the bridge before they prepared to enter harbour, had left the mate on watch. As events proved, the ship was slightly too far to the west of her intended course and, scraping over the reefs,she went ashore near Bennan Head at the south end of Arran. One of her cargo tanks was pierced and fumes from theescaping cargo were soon likely to engulf the ship.


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On hearing of her distress, the Arran coastguard team quickly set up a rocket- line and evacuated the crew, including the masters wife and 12-year old son , by breeches buoy. The ships officers, thinking everyone safe, then left in theships own life-boats which had been swung out and put in the water earlier.

Some time later Campbeltowns motor life-boat, the William McPherson , arrived on the scene and discoveredanother fifteen crew still on board the grounded tanker - fifteen Chinese crew who were in great fear that they would be interned if they landed on Arran !

It was only with great difficulty that the Campbeltown life-boat crew got them off the Olivia and only when they got

back to Campbeltown that, through the chance appearance of one John Murray, who had some understanding of theChinese languages, that the crewmens fears became clearly understood !

Ten of the Olivias eighteen cargo tanks and her pump room damaged. Some more of her cargo was jettisoned intothe sea and she was refloated about 7 a.m. on September 29th, towed to Lamlash and then to Greenock for repairs.

Campbeltowns second motor life-boat, the Barnett designed City of Glasgow , arrived in 1929. Institution funds, inrecognition of the splendid financial support given by The City of Glasgow branch and coming to 10,197, coveredher building cost. At the end of the year, on December 31st, 1929 the Southend life-boat station was closed downafter its 61 years of operation.

The Southend life-boat, the third John R. Ker , was sold to Major Parsons at Carskiey. She was re-named Knot and sailed round to Campbeltown where local boatbuilder Robert Wylie fitted her with a 20-hp Gardner diesel engine

and then taken back to Southend again being wintered in her old home, the original stone-built boathouse.Machrihanish life-boat station closed down in 1931, the Henry Finlay , which had been there throughout the fulleighteen years of the stations life, had never once been launched to a casualty !

Campbeltowns life-boat, the City of Glasgow , towed the old Machrihanish life-boat to Ardrossan, the reserve life-boat , the Richard Cresswell , still being at Campbeltown on stand-by till later that year and the Henry Finlay wasunceremoniously shipped off by rail to Tynemouth.

The near simultaneous closures of Southend and Machrihanish meant that there was not a single life-boat station onthe weary stretch of the Scottish western seaboard between Campbeltown, Castlebay and Stornoway - The Kintyrestations were at that time under the control of the R.N.L.Is Inspector for Ireland, Lt. Cdr. J. M. Upton.

Over the years and the centuries there have been countless, many nameless, wrecks around Kintyres waters and inliving memory that of the 441-foot long Liberty ship Byron Darnton , bound from Copenhagen via The Clyde toNew York. 2,170 of these ships were built during the course of World War II - the Robert E. Perry was built in ajust 4 days 15 hours and 30 minutes thanks to simple design and well-organised conveyor-belt construction methods.

There can be little doubting the fact that, though they were expected to last only one trip, if that at all, crossing The Atlantic, they were strong ships and the bow section of the Byron Darnton lies still to this day on the outside of Sanda Island where she ran aground in heavy weather and bad visibilty on March 16, 1946.

The Campbeltown life-boat City of Glasgow being away for overhaul, the relief 45-foot long Watson Class boat,the Duke of Connaught , set off but, unable to approach the wreck in darkness, waited for daylight in the north leeof Sanda. With the wrecks port side beam on to the shore and her outer, starboard, side being covered continuously

with mountainous seas, it was only on his third attempt that Duncan Newlands, the Campbeltown coxswain,managed to get his boat between the ships dangerously heeling hull and the shore.

Fourteen hours after the Byron Darnton had grounded, the life-boat came away with all thirty-nine crew, six menand nine women passengers - and a husky dog ! Last to leave was the ships radio operator.

As they passed Johnstons Point, the life-boats engine flooded. Fortunately, she was one of the services older boatsand the next five miles homewards were made under sail until the boats mechanic, not a local Campbeltown man butthe mechanic attached full-time to the relief boat, managed to re-start the machinery. In the meantime, just two hoursafter the life-boat had left the wreck, it broke in two. The captain, Robert King, managed to board the stern sectionnext day and managed to salve some of the passengers possessions but the stern would quickly slide into deep water.

The nation, indeed The World, would be gripped by the story of Captain Carlson, the Flying Enterprise and the tug


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Turmoil - the tug sometime in Campbeltown too, along with the tugs Bustler and Metinda II and the nameof the Turmoil was fresh in Kintyreans minds as, in 1950, she had been towing the former Anchor Lines Colonial from Lisbon, for breaking up at Dalmuir, when the tow parted in a south-easterly gale and the Colonial ran ashore, where she had to be broken up, near Peninver, north of Campbeltown.

The 1,100 gross ton Turmoil , a Bustler-class tug, 205-feet long, 40.5 feet beam and 16-feet 11 inches draft, builit in1945 by Henry Robbs Leith yard, had a top speed of 16 knots. The 1944 U.S.A. built Flying Enterprise was atypical Victory-class single-screw turbine cargo-passenger ship.

On December 21, 1951, the Flying Enterprise , under the command of Captain Henrik Kurt Carlsen of Woodbridge, New Jersey, sailed from Hamburg for the U.S. and three days later, on Christmas Eve, with winds of 97mph registering in The Scilly Isles, she was in trouble.

On Christmas night she suffered structural damage and two days later a giant wave threw her completely over on to herport side. She failed to right herself and put out an SOS message which was picked up by the U.S. freighterSouthland which arrived as darkness fell and rescue was put off until daylight on the following morning, December29th.

Unable to get lifeboats alongside, the stricken ships passengers and crew had to jump into the sea, all survived.Captain Carlsen, now famously, stayed aboard his ship and waited for the salvage tug Turmoil which arrived on

January 3, 1952, five days later !

Kenneth Dancy, a temporary mate on the Turmoil , jumped from the tug to the freighter to secure a line. Towing started on January 5 but, four days later, the weather deteriorated and the tow-line broke, the signs were that theFlying Enterprise was beginning to break up. At 3.22 p.m. the following afternoon, January 10, Carlsen and Dancy stepped from the, by now horizontal, funnel and abandoned her. Nine minutes later, they were picked up by theTurmoil which docked with the heroes at Falmouth two days later - Captain Carlsen died in October 1989.

At the end of 1952, on Monday, December 22, the Girvan and Campbeltown life-boats were called out with threetugs from Metal Industries Faslane yard in The Gareloch. This time it was to the aid of the Finnish ore - carrierMargareta which had gone ashore on the south face of Ailsa Craig in heavy weather.

Eleven men from the Margareta were landed at Campbeltown, the ships captain, Captain Sundell, staying aboard with the rest of the crew to survey the damage till the ship began to slide off the rocks and they too had to be rescued.

A week later, on December 29, 1952, the Steel & Bennie tug Brigadier and her crew managed to patch up thedamaged bow section of the Margareta and towed her up-river for repair.

The 52-foot long Barnett designed City of Glasgow II took over the Campbeltown station in 1953, she, costing 31,629, being a gift from The City of Glasgow Lifeboat Fund.

The 302,748 54-foot long, self-righting, Arun-class Walter and Margaret Couper , gifted by Miss Margaret E.Couper in memory of her father and mother, arrived in 1979 and would serve until 1999 when the 1,796,000 Severnclass Ernest and Mary Shaw , gifted from the estate of the late Ernest Shaw and his widow, Mary Shaw, took overthe station. A small inshore lifeboat also was added to the Campbeltown station strength in 1993.

On December 19, 1991, a gigantic freak wave smashed the wheelhouse of the Russian fish factory ship Kartli whichhad been trying to weather a violent storm some nine miles west of Islay. Crumpling like a sheet of paper, thealuminium bridge structure caved in killing three crew, including one of the three women aboard the ship.

The ship disabled, her electrical and electronic equipment swamped by the seas and drifting helplessly before thestorm, four R.A.F. helicopters, under the direction of an R.A.F. Nimrod aircraft, the Fleet Auxiliary Olna , theNavy tug Roysterer , the British tanker Drupa and the Islay lifeboat began a co-odinated and eventually successfulrescue of all her remaining crew.

The Kartli , abandoned and left at the storms mercy, came ashore on the north-west side of Gigha and where shelay until broken up in the big winter gales of 1993.

Since its establishment in 1861, Campbeltown life-boats have been launched on more than 300 occasions and savednearly 500 lives : -


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Lord Murray (1861 - 1876) 8 launches 35 savedPrincess Louise (1876 - 1888) 1 0 Mary Adelaide Harrison (1888 - 1898) 2 4 James Stevens No 2 (1898 - 1912) 26 46 Richard Cresswell (1911 - 1931 as reserve) 0 0 William McPherson (1912 - 1929) 12 29 City of Glasgow (1929 - 1953) 91 173 City of Glasgow II (1953 - 1979) 110 50 Walter and Margaret Couper (1979 - 1999) 274 130

Ernest & Mary Shaw (1999 - date Jan 2002) 14 4

Campbeltowns reserve life-boats , between 1929 and 1953, were launched on 7 occasions and saved 56 lives and,between 1979 and January 2002, were launched on 50 occasions saving a further 21 lives. The inshore lifeboat,introduced in 1993, had been launched on 27 occasions and saved 9 lives too up until January 2002.

Women and children first ! - On February 26, 1852, The Black Watch Regiment drowned while standing to attentionon the deck of the sinking Birkenhead and 'letting the women and children be saved' and hence the origin of thephrase.

Kintyre's Lifeboats

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