St Ives Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | SLARS |
| Address | Wharf Road, St Ives, Cornwall, TR26 1LF |
| Telephone | 01736 796422 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
In the historic fishing port of St Ives on the north Cornish coast, the station runs a Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat and a D-class inshore boat over the exposed waters of St Ives Bay and the Western Approaches. A lifeboat has served the town since 1840; its crews hold thirty-eight gallantry medals, and the station bears the memory of two lifeboats lost within a year, in 1938 and 1939.
After the schooner Rival came to grief on the pier in a gale on Christmas Eve 1838 — five saved only by the courage of people ashore — the town resolved to build a proper lifeboat, and the first, Hope, was acquired in 1840. Boathouses followed at Porthgwidden, Fore Street, and from 1911 on the Quay; the present station at the West Pier dates from 1993–94.
The station endured a terrible eighteen months. On 31 January 1938 the Caroline Parsons rescued all twenty-three crew of the steamer SS Alba, but then capsized and was wrecked on the Three Brothers rocks; the lifeboat crew survived, though five of the rescued men were lost. Less than a year later, on 23 January 1939, the John and Sara Eliza Stych launched into a Force 10 storm and was repeatedly capsized; seven of her eight crew died, only William Freeman surviving.
The Cocking family gave generations of coxswains to St Ives, more than one decorated for bravery and one lost in the 1939 disaster. A first motor lifeboat had come in 1933, partly to cover the area after the Hayle station closed. In October 2015 the station received a waterjet-driven Shannon-class lifeboat, the Nora Stachura, which works alongside the D-class across St Ives Bay and the open coast.
