Margate Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboats | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | The Rendezvous, Margate, Kent, CT9 1HG |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Margate has a proud and tragic lifeboat history reaching back to 1857, when local boatmen founded a surfboat service after the loss of the lugger Victory. The town is forever marked by the 1897 surfboat disaster, and its lifeboats took a heroic part in the Dunkirk evacuation. Today it runs an Atlantic 85 and a D-class.
After the dramatic rescue of the crew of the Northern Belle in January 1857 — in which the Margate lugger Victory was lost with all hands — fifty boatmen set up a dedicated surfboat service, the Friend of all Nations. A lifeboat, Hannah and Angela, was given to the town by Miss Burdett-Coutts in 1857, and the station passed to the RNLI in 1860.
For many years the town ran both the Institution’s lifeboat and the privately funded surfboat, often crewed by the same men. The all-weather lifeboat was withdrawn in 2021, and Margate is now an inshore station.
