Rhyl Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | SLARS |
| Address | East Parade, Rhyl, Denbighshire, LL18 3YP |
| Telephone | 01745 344040 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
At the mouth of the River Clwyd on the north Wales coast, Rhyl runs a Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat and a D-class from the promenade — one of the busiest stations in Wales. A lifeboat has served the town since 1852, and in 1962 its crew made history with the world’s first lifeboat rescue from a hovercraft.
A lifeboat was first placed at Rhyl in 1852 by the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners’ Royal Benevolent Society, passing to the RNLI in 1854. The station has a place in lifeboat design history too: Rhyl tested the early ‘tubular’ lifeboats that arose from the Duke of Northumberland’s 1851 design competition.
Its most famous service came on 17 September 1962, when the lifeboat Anthony Robert Marshall took off the three crew of a stricken hovercraft in a west-north-westerly gale, with heavy seas breaking over the promenade — the first time a lifeboat had ever rescued anyone from a hovercraft. Minutes later, the kerosene-laden craft crashed into the promenade. Coxswain Harold Campini received the Silver Medal.
An inshore lifeboat joined in 1967, and the present boathouse opened in 2001. After a 2017 fundraising appeal — launched with a surprise £10,000 donation from the writer of Mrs Brown’s Boys — a new Shannon-class lifeboat arrived in 2019, working alongside the D-class on a busy stretch of coast.
