Moelfre Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | Slipway |
| Address | Lifeboat Lane, Moelfre, Anglesey, LL72 8LG |
| Telephone | 01248 410367 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
On the north-east coast of Anglesey, Moelfre runs a slipway-launched Tamar-class all-weather lifeboat and a D-class over a coast of rock and fierce tides. One of the most celebrated stations in the RNLI, serving since 1848, it holds thirty-seven medals — four of them Gold — and is forever associated with Coxswain Dic Evans and the wreck of the Royal Charter.
A lifeboat was first stationed at Moelfre in 1848 by the Anglesey Association for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, founded twenty years earlier by the Rev. James and Mrs Frances Williams; the RNLI took over in 1855. The coast here is treacherous — on the night of 25–26 October 1859 the steam clipper Royal Charter, almost home from Australia, was wrecked off Moelfre with the loss of around 400 lives, commemorated by a memorial on the headland and an obelisk at Llanallgo.
The station’s fame rests above all on Coxswain Richard ‘Dic’ Evans, one of very few to win the RNLI Gold Medal twice — for the Hindlea in 1959 and the Nafsiporos in 1966. A seven-foot bronze statue of him, unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 2004, stands by the Seawatch Centre.
Moelfre now runs the Tamar-class Kiwi and a D-class, the station and shop open daily. Its crews have answered this coast for nearly two centuries with extraordinary courage.
