Montrose Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | Afloat |
| Address | Wharf Street, Montrose, Angus DD10 8AT |
| Telephone | 01674 674341 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Montrose is one of the oldest lifeboat stations in the British Isles, with a lifeboat first stationed in the harbour town in 1800 — a full 24 years before the RNLI itself was founded. Guarding the busy entrance to the tidal Montrose Basin and the North Sea coast of Angus, the station today runs a Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat alongside a smaller D-class inshore boat, continuing more than two centuries of service to fishermen, mariners and leisure sailors along this exposed shore.
In the late 1700s Montrose was a thriving port, and in 1800 the town’s shipowners and shipmasters acquired one of the early lifeboats built by Henry Greathead of South Shields, pioneer of the purpose-built rescue boat. Funded locally with help from Lloyd’s of London, the boat was first managed by a private committee, passing in 1818 to the Town Council and the Harbour Light Committee, who paid for it through a toll on vessels entering the harbour. After a visit by RNLI Inspector Captain John Ward, management of the station transferred to the Institution in 1869.
A second Montrose station operated from 1869 until 1950, and a short-lived third at Kirkside from 1885 to 1892. Across the 20th century the station progressed through pulling-and-sailing, then motor lifeboats, culminating in the Tyne-class Moonbeam from 1989. In 2015 Montrose received the £2.2 million Shannon-class 13-10 Ian Grant Smith, the first Shannon stationed in Scotland, driven by water jets rather than propellers.
Its long-serving predecessor, the Tyne-class 47-034 Moonbeam (ON 1152), had been on station since 1989. A D-class inshore lifeboat completes the fleet, and the station’s boats are credited with saving more than 700 lives across the first two centuries of service. The town’s lifeboat heritage is marked by an information lectern installed beside the Wharf Street station, drawing on local research into more than two hundred years of service by Montrose crews.
