Sheringham lifeboat station

Sheringham lifeboat station
RNLI Lifeboat station
Sheringham lifeboat station. Sheringham lifeboat station.
Country	England
County	Norfolk
District	North Norfolk
Town	Sheringham
Location	Sheringham lifeboat station, The Promenade, Sheringham, Norfolk
- coordinates	52°56′45.3912″N 1°12′9.4968″E
Founded	1838 taken over by RNLI in 1867
Date	Current boathouse 1936
Owner	Royal National Lifeboat Institution
File:Norfolk outline map with UK.png 9px

Sheringham lifeboat station is an RNLI operated lifeboat station located in the town of Sheringham in the English county of Norfolk. Since 1992, the station has been inshore operations only - currently with an Atlantic 85 rigid inflatable - offshore lifeboats are to the east at Cromer and the west at Wells-next-the-sea.

In its history there have been two Bronze Medals and 1 Silver medla awarded to crew by the RNLI.

The current lifeboat station was built in 1936 to replace a smaller older one which was located at the Old Hythe lifeboat house within the town of Sheringham.

History

Pre RNLI

From early times the main source of income in the town of Sheringham had been fishing. In the late 1800s there were upwards of 200 fishing boats operating from the Hythe and the beaches of the town. As the fishing industry flourished the loss of life at sea increased. These recurring tragedies led the wealthy Upcher family of Sheringham Hall to donate money to enable lifeboats to be built and their generosity founded the first lifeboat service in Sheringham. At first the lifeboat service was privately run, being joined and eventually taken over by the newly named Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1867.

First boathouse

In 1838 the first boathouse for the then private service was built to house the Augusta.

Second boathouse

In April 1866 the RNLI’s assistant inspector of Lifeboats, Captain D. Robertson, had visited the town as part of his tour of the locality and he suggested that a second station run by the RNLI be placed in Sheringham. The thinking behind this decision was that the RNLI’s lifeboat would bring a different option to the life saving capacities of the town’s private operation. The inspector also met with members of the Upcher family and an agreement was made with Henry Upcher that he would provide land for an RNLI boathouse at East Cliff close to the town center. Once the site had been agreed work began to build the station at a cost of £251. The building was of a brick construction and was arranged over two floors with the main boat hall at ground level and a lecture room above on the first floor. Public funds were raised to add the first floor, reached by an outside staircase, which was also used as a reading room where fishermen could rest and be educated in their free time. The route from the boat hall led past the area known as The Mo, across the promenade and onto a long timber constructed slipway. The boathouse was completed and became operational in 1867. The location proved to be unsuccessful as the access route to the sea was never straightforward and during the thirty four years that the lifeboat operated from this location, many costly repairs were made often due to the gangway being swept away in gales and high tides.

Duncan (RNLI)

The lifeboat Duncan was the first RNLI boat to serve at the new Sheringham station. She came to the town on the 31st July 1867 and had been built at the cost of £345 with this expenditure cost being met by a donation from Mrs. Agnes Fraser, nee Duncan, in memory of her father and uncle. The lifeboat had been designed by James Peake and built by Forrestt of Limehouse, London. Duncan was 36 feet long and 9 foot 4 inches wide and was self righting by virtue of her heavy iron keel and high end boxes. She was supplied with 12 oars and a single mast with sail.

Service

During the 19 years that Duncan was at Sheringham she was called to made 7 service launches and saved 18 lives.

Third boathouse

By 1904 a new boathouse and slipway had been constructed at the Old Hythe. The old boathouse (The Oddfellows Hall) on Lifeboat Plain was then given over to several uses, eventually standing idle and neglected until it was refurbished at a cost of £2.5 million to bring it back to us as a building for the community in 2007.

Gallery of the stations

• The Private Boathouse at Sheringham.jpg

  The first lifeboat house.

• 1904 Postacard of the Henry Ramey Upcher outside her boathouse.jpg

  Postacard of the Henry Ramey Upcher outside the first boathouse cica 1904

• Oddfellows Hall Sheringham 20 Oct 2007.JPG

  The first RNLI boathouse on Lifeboat Plain in Sheringham.

• The Lifeboat house at Old Hythe cica 1904.jpg

  The second RNLI boathouse at Old Hythe (cica 1904)

• Remains of Old Hythe Lifeboat station, Sheringham, 10 04 2010.JPG

  All that remains of the Old Hythe boathouse today (2010)

The Lifeboats

Including the private boats there have been 11 lifeboats stationed at Sheringham:

All weather lifeboats

Lifeboat	Service
Augusta (private)	1838 to 1894	70px
Henry Ramey Upcher (private)	1894 to 1935	70px
Duncan	1867 to 1886
William Bennett (ON 11)	1886 to 1904
J C Madge (ON 536)	1904 to 1936	70px
Forester’s Centenary (ON 786)	1936 to 1961	70px
The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows (ON 960)	1961 to 1986 1987 to 1990	70px
Lloyds II (ON 986)	1990 to 1992	70px

Inshore lifeboats

Lifeboat	Service
Inshore lifeboat (D 204)	1986 to 1987
Inshore lifeboat (B 536)	1992 to 1993
Lions International (B 539)	1993 to 1994
Manchester Unity of Oddfellows (B 702)	1994 to present (2009)

Augusta

Further information: Sheringham Lifeboat Augusta

The first lifeboat to serve Sheringham was the privately funded Augusta, which . The boat was provided by Mrs Charlotte Upcher of Sheringham Hall at a cost of £134.12s.2d. Mrs Upcher had been, for sometime, concerned with the appalling loss of life during severe gales along the East coast and in particular the gale of the 29th November 1826. During this brutal storm seven Sheringham fishermen were lost when their two boats overturned just offshore. Then, in January 1838, a large Sheringham fishing boat known locally as a "twenty footer" was damaged and sunk on Sheringham Shoal. These incidents prompted the establishment of the lifeboat service in Sheringham. The new lifeboat was built by Robert Sunman in the style of the local crab fishing boats. It was launched in November 1838 and was named Augusta after Mrs Upcher's recently deceased daughter. Augusta was 33 feet 6 inches long and 10 foot 3 inches wide. The power for the boat was provide by 16 oars. She was equipped with a dipping lug mainsail, mizzen sail and had fittings for a rudder at either end to avoid turning her in heavy seas.

Service

The Augusta was launched on 14 November 1838 with Coxswain Robert Long at the helm. Augusta’s services were not recorded at the time although tradition credits her with 200 launches and over 1,000 lives saved, however research so far has established more realistic figures of just over 200 lives saved in 16 launches with 4 further unconfirmed services. The first recorded launch where lives were saved was on the 5th of February 1841, to a vessel called Dygden, a barque, from Abo in Russia (Now Turko in Finland). During the 56 years of Augusta’s service, not one lifeboatman was lost, this may well be attributed to the skill of the Coxswain and crews and their local knowledge of this part of the coast and not least of all because they always wore their lifejackets.

By 1838 the Augusta was declared unseaworthy. In the late 1940s she was being used by the Norfolk Sea Scouts on the Norfolk Broads. By 1953 the now derelict lifeboat was found, cut in half and being used as a shelter at the Broads village of Ranworth. In recent years some of the Augusta’s original planking has been preserved in a tank in Sheringham by a local businessman.

Notable rescues of Augusta

Date	Casualty	Lives saved
7 June 1889	vessel South Shields, wrecked on Sheringham Shoals, assisted vessel
5 February 1841	barque Dygden of Abo, wrecked between Blakeney and Thornham	17
29 September 1842	schooner Hamburgh of Dundee, wrecked off Old Hythe	8
15 April 1845	brig Nautilusof Aberdeen, wrecked off Skelding Hill	8
April 1845	brig Alpha of Shields, wrecked on Sheringham Shoals	10
unknown date 1845	brig Gallena, wrecked off Salthouse	8
13 October 1846	fishing boats	81
4 April 1852	fishing boats, stood by
30 May 1855	sloop Reformation, wrecked off Old Point, saved crew
7 March 1864	lugger Chasseur (French)	5
1 January 1865	vessel Amphion, wrecked off Sheringham, landed the crew
22 October 1869	vessel Will’m Frothingham of the USA, assisted the vessel
13 October 1879	barque Villa Franca, wrecked off Old Hythe	60
1 January 1881	brig Alert, wrecked off Cley next the Sea	7
6 December 1882	barque Carolina Norwegian, saved the crew
20 September 1892	fishing boat, saved crew
16 August 1894	fishing boat Margaret Thompson of Sheringham, rendered assistance
16 August 1894	barque from Austria–Hungary, lost rudder on Sheringham Shoal, rendered assistance
16 August 1894	vessel Balaclava, lost mast off Blakeney, rendered assistance

Henry Ramey Upcher

Uniquely Sheringham has had in the past two lifeboat services running at the same time, one private and the other operated by the RNLI. The lifeboat Henry Ramey Upcher was the boat of the private service. This lifeboat was the gift of Mrs. Caroline Upcher of Sheringham Hall, donated to the fishermen in memory of Mrs. Upcher's husband.

Design and construction

Henry Ramey Upcher was built by Lewis 'Buffalo' Emery of Sheringham at a cost of £150. The boat was built in the style of the local crab fishing boats using local oak for the planking and copper fasteners. The boat was 39 foot 9 inches long and 11 foot 6 inches wide and was double ended. She was powered with 16 oars and she was fitted with a large dipping lug mainsail and a mizzen. She was much lighter than the RNLI boats and could be launched faster which made her very popular with the fishermen that crewed her. On the downside, her extra width tended to make her more liable to ship water in severe conditions and so was less suitable than the RNLI boats in heavy seas. Her naming ceremony took place on 4 September 1894 by Mrs Upcher. When launched the crew of the Henry Ramey Upcher commonly consisted of 28 men. This was a coxswain, second coxswain and 16 oarsmen; a further 8 men tended the sails and two worked the pumps near the stern.

Rescues and service

The Henry Ramey Upcher launched to over 50 services and she worked closely with the lifeboats, William Bennett and J.C. Madge of the RNLI. She remained in service until 1935 and she saved over 200 souls.

The Henry Ramey Upcher Lifeboat Museum

Today the Henry Ramey Upcher lifeboat is preserved in original condition in her own museum which is housed in the original lifeboat shed at the top of the slipway at Old Hythe. It is planned that she will be moved to a new £1.1 million museum along with two more of the town's historic lifeboats in late 2009. This museum will be housed in the building called the ‘The Mo’ on the promenade close to the Crown public house.

William Bennett ON 11

Lifeboat William Bennett ON 11 was the successor to Duncan. She arrived by sea at Sheringham on 7 July 1886. This lifeboat, like her predecessor, was built by Forrestt of Limehouse, London. At 41 foot 4 inches she was 5 feet longer than the Duncan. She was 9 foot 3 wide and was powered by 14 oars and was a self-righting design. This boat cost £500 13s 10d and was funded from the legacy of Mr William Bennett, a wealthy tea merchant, of Regent’s Park, London. The larger lifeboat however was of no advantage to the Sheringham crew. She was considerably heavier than the Duncan and the narrow access from the boathouse to the slipway made the William Bennett a very difficult boat to launch.

During the 18 years that William Bennett was stationed at Sheringham, the lifeboat only made 4 successful service launches, saving 11 lives.

J C Madge ON 536

The lifeboat J C Madge ON 536 replaced the William Bennett ON 11 in 1904. this lifeboat was a Liverpool class, non-self righting, pulling and sailing lifeboat. She cost £1,436 and was funded from a legacy left by Mr James C Madge, a chemist, who came from Southampton. J C Madge ON 536 arrived in Sheringham on the 2 December 1904 having been sailed around the coast from Blackwall Reach in east London.

Design and construction

The boat was built at the Thames Ironworks Shipbuilding Company Ltd at Leamouth. She was 41 feet long and 11 feet wide and was unique in that she was the only Liverpool class lifeboat to be built to these dimensions. She was powered by 16 oarsmen, which could be double banked in heavy weather, and she had two masts. The fore-mast carried a dipping lug sail and the mizzen mast a standing lug sail. The boat had two drop keels and was fitted out with water ballast tanks. J C Madge was launched from a carriage. The carriage was equipped with larger front wheels which had a series of flat metal plates around their circumference. This helped prevent the lifeboat carriage from sinking into areas of soft sand when launched at low tides. This gave the J C Madge an advantage over the private Sheringham lifeboats which had no carriages to help with their launches. To launch J C Madge heavy ropes were connected to the carriage and a team of 30 men were detailed to lug the lifeboat into the sea were, if conditions allowed, she was rowed out through the surf. If this was not possible then the lifeboat was pulled out to sea using a haul-off warp (a windlass), by use of a thick rope anchored some 200 metres off shore and fixed at the beach end to a post by the lifeboat house. There was a large manually operated winch situated at the back of the boathouse to assist in recovering the boat after launch.

See also

• Historic RNLI lifeboats

External links

• Sheringham lifeboat official website

Flanking stations to Sheringham
North sea	North Sea	North Sea
Wells next the Sea lifeboat Station 45px	20px N 20px W 100px E 20px S 20px	Cromer Lifeboat Station 45px