The Lizard Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Slipway |
| Address | Kilcobben Cove, The Lizard, Helston, Cornwall, TR12 7PH |
| Telephone | 01326 290621 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
At the most southerly point of mainland Britain, The Lizard runs a slipway-launched Tamar-class all-weather lifeboat from Kilcobben Cove, guarding one of the busiest and most dangerous shipping approaches in the world, where up to 400 ships a day pass Lizard Point. Lifeboats have served this rock-bound coast since 1859, from a succession of stations built at different points around the peninsula.
The RNLI established its first lifeboat at the southern tip of The Lizard in 1859, in a boathouse on the cliffs above Polpeor Cove, after the steamer Czar foundered on the Vrogue Rock. The station’s first lifeboat was a 30-foot, six-oared boat. Over the following decades successive stations operated at different points around the peninsula to cover the westerly approaches to the English Channel.
The work here has always been hazardous. On 2 January 1907 a Lizard lifeboat was washed among the rocks and smashed while on exercise in a hurricane; three of her ten crew were drowned — Coxswain Peter Mitchell, Richard Harris and Nicholas Stevens.
The present station at Kilcobben Cove, set at the foot of a 45-metre cliff and reached by some 170 steps or a funicular, opened in 1961 and was rebuilt in 2012 to house a larger lifeboat. The Tamar-class Rose was placed on service in 2011, sliding down a slipway into deep water at any state of the tide. From here the crew answer the heavy traffic of the shipping lanes and the casualties of a notoriously rocky coast. A Lizard launch even featured in the first live transatlantic satellite broadcast from the UK, in 1962.
