Humber Lifeboat Station


The Humber Lifeboat Station is located on Spurn Point in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The station is one of nine Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboat stations situated along the Yorkshire Coast and the most southerly of them all. It is the only lifeboat station in the United Kingdom that is staffed full-time by a professional RNLI crew; this is due to the waters around this part of the coast being so dangerous and the station's remoteness from the mainland.
A lifeboat station has been located on Spurn Point for over 200 years and to date, the crews have been awarded 33 medals for gallantry. The current lifeboat is the Pride of the Humber, a Lifeboat.

History

A lifeboat station was established in 1810 at Spurn Point with a crew supplied by Hull Trinity House. A decommissioned gun battery emplacement that was last used in 1809, was requisitioned as the main lifeboat building and was also partly converted into the Life Boat House Hotel. The crew of the lifeboat were billeted in Kilnsea, up the coast, until 1819 when cottages were built adjacent to the life boat house. The lifeboat House Hotel was owned and operated by the master of the crew. Apart from selling drink and provisions, the master made a side income from loading gravel and sand onto passing ships. The land and money to fund the operation had been supplied by the local lord of the manor. He petitioned Trinity House to take up the offer of the land and supply a lifeboat to use at Spurn. This they did, engaging Henry Greathead of South Shields in building a ship with ten oars.
In the early days of the rescue boat, the mood of the crew at Spurn was sullen as they were not paid too well and were at the mercy of the master who ran the inn to provide what food and drink they needed. Locals from up the coast would come to load ships with gravel and sand, which they did brandishing revolvers, threatening the crew members who viewed the enterprise as taking away their self-sufficiency. In 1811, the master wrote to Trinity House to complain about this Law of the Dunes as he labelled it, with which they had no legal recourse to fight back with as the nearest officials were miles away.
In December 1823, a fierce storm worked the ropes loose on the lifeboat and it capsized. It was ruined and needed replacing. Something similar occurred 60 years later in 1883, again after a particularly stormy night, the crew discovered that their lifeboat had been loosed of its moorings during the storm. This time it was safe and was later found drifting off the island of Texel, off the coast of the Netherlands.
Between 1908 and 1911, the station came under the aegis of the Humber Conservancy Board, who argued that the lifeboat station and crew should be handed over to the RNLI. For their part, the RNLI were reluctant to take on the crew as they were paid, which went against its policy of having volunteers. Eventually, these issues were sorted out and the RNLI assumed command in 1911. In 1919, the first motorised boat, the "Samuel Oakes" was launched and in 1924, the name was changed from Spurn Lifeboat to Humber Lifeboat.
The lifeboatmen were known to have taken advantage of the railway between Spurn Point and Kilnsea as a means of quick transportation up the coast to the village. They had an ingenious method of travelling; they adapted a boat that was powered by wind to run up and down the line. When they met a military supply train travelling in the opposite direction, they were required to disembark and remove their sail wagon from the rails to allow the train to pass. This was even harder than it sounds as the sail wagon had no working brake!
Due to the remoteness of the station, its restricted access and the dangerous waters around this part of the east coast, the crew are on-site full time and are the only full-time paid RNLI crew in the United Kingdom. Up until 2012, the families of the crew lived in cottages on Spurn Head adjacent to the lifeboat station, but a decision was taken to have two crews revolving through a roster and so the families moved to new accommodation in Kilnsea. As the spit of land is prone to breaches, this was also viewed as in the best interests of the families of the crew members. Latterly, the families had been housed in cottages built in 1975 to replace the row of houses first built in 1819. These were demolished when the seven new houses were built at a cost of £100,000. The retaining wall built to hold the sea back from the domestic area still survives fulfilling its intended purpose. From August 2012 onwards, the two crews rotate through a shift of six days on and six days off.
The lifeboat is moored at the end of a pier that sets out into the Humber Estuary rather than a traditional launch down a ramp into the sea. This location has been described as being in the lee of bad weather, thereby providing a safer place to set off from. The crew have pushbikes to cycle down to the end of the pier and then use a boarding boat to get to the lifeboat. Despite some buildings being erected to launch the lifeboat, even from the early days, it was recognised of the difficulties in launching the boat from land, so it has been traditionally moored away from the coastline. A traditional lifeboat house with slipway was built in 1923 and used up until 1977, but it fell into disuse with bigger ships arriving that were better moored afloat. The slipway and lifeboat house were demolished in 1995.
The Humber Lifeboat has an operational area that covers the River Humber to Immingham Dock, south along the coastline to Skegness, northwards to Bridlington and up to a out to sea. This overlaps with the Lifeboat to the south and the Lifeboat to the north and to other rescue agencies along the river. The and lifeboats are the next nearest all-weather lifeboats along the east coast.

Notable rescues

During the stations 200 year plus history, 33 medals have been awarded to the crews for their gallantry. Exact records of the first 100 years of rescues are patchy, but between 1810 and 1854, over 800 people had been rescued from the seas around Spurn Head. Between 1911 and December 2009, the lifeboat was launched 2,268 times saving over 790 lives in the process. Not all has been happy times though, as at least three crew of the lifeboat were lost at sea during rescues in the 19th century.