Eyemouth Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | Afloat |
| Address | Gunsgreen Quay, Eyemouth, Scottish Borders TD14 5SD |
| Telephone | 01890 750293 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Eyemouth Lifeboat Station serves the Berwickshire coast of the Scottish Borders from a busy fishing town nine miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. A lifeboat was first stationed here in 1876, in a community whose history is forever shaped by the 1881 fishing disaster, when 189 local fishermen were lost in a single storm. The station today operates a Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat and a D-class inshore boat from Gunsgreen Quay.
With over 350 fishermen working out of Eyemouth, an inspector’s visit in December 1875 made the case for a lifeboat plain, and a station was agreed. A 30-foot pulling-and-sailing lifeboat from Woolfe of Shadwell, with a launch carriage and a boathouse on the East Pier, was in place by 1876. The disaster of 14 October 1881 — when a sudden, ferocious storm overwhelmed the Berwickshire fishing fleet at sea and 189 men were lost, 129 of them from Eyemouth alone — cast a long shadow over the town and is remembered as “Black Friday.” The station received its first motor lifeboat, the Liverpool-class Frank and William Oates, in 1937.
Across the 20th century it progressed through successive all-weather classes, and in 2018 took delivery of the Shannon-class 13-29 Helen Hastings (ON 1336). A D-class inshore lifeboat, Sheila (D-877), was added in 2023, giving the station both offshore and close-in capability on this exposed stretch of the Borders coast. The 1937 motor lifeboat, the Liverpool-class Frank and William Oates, was the gift of Charles George Oates in memory of his brothers, one of them the African explorer and naturalist Frank Oates.
Eyemouth’s boats have long worked the dangerous waters around St Abb’s Head, frequently in company with the neighbouring St Abbs lifeboat.
