Falmouth Lifeboat, Falmouth

Falmouth Lifeboat Station is the base for Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) search and rescue operations at Falmouth, Cornwall in the United Kingdom. The first lifeboat was stationed in the town in 1867 and the present station was opened in 1993. It operates a Severn Class all-weather boat (AWB) and an Atlantic 75 inshore lifeboat (ILB).HistoryFalmouth is situated on the Carrick Roads, a large natural harbour on the south coast. It developed as a port for packet boats in the seventeenth century. These moved elsewhere in the 1850s but a new commercial dockyard was founded in 1860. A committee was set up in 1865 to request the RNLI to station a lifeboat at Falmouth. A wooden lifeboat house was sanctioned and constructed near the recently constructed docks, being opened on 28 August 1867. The building cost £158 and a 10-oared lifeboat was built in London at a cost of £280. This was paid for by money raised in Gloucester and so the boat had been named City of Gloucester in that city earlier that year, on 9 April. Another £98 10s paid for a carriage that enabled the boat to be transported to the best launch site for any particular rescue. In 1918 the RNLI's lease on the land at the docks was terminated and the lifeboat was moved to moorings in the main harbour. A boarding boat was provided to enable the crew to reach their boat.The first motor lifeboat at Falmouth was Watson Class The Brothers, originally stationed at Penlee Lifeboat Station, it was transferred to Falmouth on 14 April 1931. It was powered by a Weyburn 80BHP petrol engine. The replacement Watson-class boat, B.A.S.P. (the initials of the donors, Blackburn, Armstrong, Smart and Price) which arrived in 1934, had been the first lifeboat at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight and the second of three Watson-class built by J Samuel White of Cowes to be stationed at Falmouth, is now preserved in the RNLI historic lifeboat collection at the Dockyard, Chatham. The third Watson was Crawford and Constance Conybeare in 1940.

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