The Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society sent a lifeboat to Teignmouth in 1851. It was kept near the Custom House in an earlier boathouse on the beach. In 1854 the Benevolent Society transferred its lifeboats to the RNLI. A new boathouse was provided on The Den with the doors facing the harbour and the River Teign. On 10 October 1907 the lifeboat Alfred Staniforth was launched to aid the schooner Tehwija which had run aground near the mouth of the river with eight crewmen on board. It took the lifeboat crew two attempts to row out over the bar at the mouth of the river into the heavy seas. The ship's crew were pulled off but within fifteen minutes the storm had completely wrecked the grounded ship. W.J. Burden, the Honorary Secretary of the lifeboat station, had gone out in the lifeboat to steer it while Coxswain George Rice and the bowman added extra power to the oars. Burden and Rice were both awarded RNLI Silver Medals for their work that day. The RNLI started to deploy motor lifeboats after World War I which allowed stations to cover larger areas. Brixham Lifeboat Station received theirs in 1922 and in 1933 but the 'pulling and sailing' boat at Teignmouth was retained until 6 November 1940. The Henry Finlay was then left in the boathouse on standby through World War II but the station was closed permanently in July 1945. On 3 November 1990 the RNLI reopened Teignmouth as an inshore lifeboat station. The old boathouse had been used as a café for a few years but was available for conversion back into a boathouse, which was completed in 1991.
Description
The boathouse is a single storey masonry building. The slate roof overhangs both sides by a considerable extent and is supported on upright posts. When it was refurbished for its 1991 reopening a fund-raising gift shop was installed under the eastern overhang. Large doors open onto the road. When the lifeboat is to be launched a small County tractor pushes it on its 'bedstead' carriage down the road opposite to a slipway on the harbour.
Area of operation
The can go out in Force 6/7 winds and can operate at up to for 2½ hours. Adjacent lifeboats – both ILBs and larger all-weather lifeboats – are stationed at to the east, and to the west.
Lifeboats
'ON' is the RNLI's sequential Official Number; 'Op. No.' is the operational number painted onto the boat.
