Kintyre’s Lifeboats

One of the best and most convenient life-presevers was the safety-cape invented by a member of The Skating Club of Edinburgh using
material furnished by The Albion Clothing Co. of that city. Suited to lie easily round the neck and shoulders and hang as low as the elbows,
it was made of ‘Macintosh cloth’. A tape from the inner part of the cape’s back was tied round the wearer keeping the cape down in the
event of the individual being immersed in the water. The cape could be partially inflated with air, blown into it by a small mouth-piece
concealed in the cape’s folds, enabling it to swell to about an inch in thickness.

By rough approximations, the surface of The Earth is covered by 322,280,000 cubic miles of sea water, Scotland has
2,400 miles of mainland coast and a further 3,900 miles of island coasts.

Britain’s first lifeboat station was established at Bamburgh, in Northumber- land, in 1721. All the early lifeboat
stations were privately maintained and among the early lifeboat stations were at Redcar, where the oldest surviving
lifeboat in The World, the 1800-built “Zetland”, saved some 500 lives.

Sir William Hillary, a soldier and traveller, settled in Douglas and founded The Isle of Man District Association,
became its first president and became a regular member of the life-boat crew, often as the boat’s coxswain, the station
being established in 1802. In 1823, Hillary published a pamphlet urging the need for an organised lifeboat service
instead of the piecemeal service which was provided by individual private organisations and such was the interest this
aroused that on March 4, 1824, The Archbishop of Canterbury chaired a meeting which, to Hillary’s satisfaction, led
to the founding of The National Institution for The Preservation of Life from Shipwreck with King George IV as its patron,
thirty years later a Royal Charter would change its name to The Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The Isle of Man
can therefore claim to be the birthplace of today’s R.N.L.I..

The R.N.L.I. medals - gold, silver and bronze, designed by A.G. Wyon - bear the head of Sir William Hillary, their
reverse showing a survivor being pulled aboard a boat and the words “Let not the deep swallow me up”.

Sir William, who died on January 5, 1847 and is buried in St George’s Churchyard at Douglas in The Isle of Man, was
himself awarded three gold medals for his own rescues and his awards are equalled only by those of Cromer lifeboat’s
coxswain Henry Blogg, who also earned four silver medals making him the highest decorated of all lifeboatmen.

Despite the large number of shipping losses around The North Channel, the number of lifeboat stations has been
relatively small. There have only been nine since 1861 when Campbeltown, the oldest station, was initiated. Two of
the nine stations, Southend and Machrihanish, were closed about 1930.

Several life-boats were designed in the 1700’s, notably one by Lionel Lukin, a London coach-builder who
experimented with his “un-immergible” coble on the Doctor’s Pond at Dunmow in Essex where he had been born.

Lukin’s principles included incorporating enclosed watertight ‘hollows’ at the coble’s bow and stern, an idea used for
2,000 years on Chinese junks ! Lukin’s coble would serve too for some time at Grace Darling’s village of Bamburgh
where, on September 7, 1838, the famous lighthouse keeper’s daughter had saved the crew from the wreck of the
“Forfarshire”.

The loss of the “Adventure” with most of her crew, just 300 yards off South Shields’ Herd Sands in September 1789,
led the South Shields people to subscribe to a reward for anyone who could design a boat which could be launched
successfully from the shore.

The award went to a designer called Henry Greathead and, in 1790, a life-boat constructed by him successfully
rescued the crew of a ship stranded in near identical circumstances to those when the “Adventure” had been lost in the
previous year.

Greathead’s boat, named the “Original”, a sailing-rowing boat, was about 30-feet long, 10-feet in beam and 3-feet 3-
inches deep at her mid-ships. She was double-ended, both ends identically formed, so that she could go through the
water with either end foremost. The boat’s shape lengthwise was a curve so formed that a line drawn from the top of
one stem to that of the other, at the opposite end, was 2½ feet above the midships gunwales. There were five
thwarts, seats, for the rowing crew, doubled banked, so that it had to be manned by ten oars-men.

The whole boat was cased and lined with cork, four inches thick on the out - side and covering the whole shear, side,
of the boat. The cork on the inside of the boat was even thicker and it took seven-hundredweight of cork to cover the hull
outside and in. The cork was secured with copper slips or plates.
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The advantages of the design were that the boat’s curvature gave it great facility in turning, a single stroke of the
steering oars - there was one at each end - moving the boat as though on a centre-pin; the covering of cork on the
outside, being immediately under the gunwale, gave great liveliness and a ready disposition for the boat to recover her
balance after being suddenly canted aside by a heavy wave and that the boat’s capability of being propelled with either
end forwards increased her manageability.

Greathead recommended that the boat should be painted white, a colour that most readily catches the eye. He also
advised that the steersman kept the head of the boat to the sea and give her ‘an accelerated velocity’ to meet the waves.
A life-boat station, to be organised by a committee, was advised to have two crews, some 20 to 24 volunteer crewmen
on stand-by.

Several other trials of Greathead’s boat proved his design’s utility and, in 1802 The Society of Arts presented him with
a gold medal and fifty guineas, a reward of £1,200 was given to him by a special Parliamentary decree. Trinity House
too followed suit and the Committee of Lloyd’s devoted £2,000 to the purpose of building life-boats along the
principles of the proved design and some thirty boats were thus funded.

In the same year that the lifeboat station at Douglas was established, 1802, a 30-foot long Greathead boat was
stationed at Aberdeen. She was credited with seven launches, saved four lives and was herself wrecked while in service
on March 2, 1820. Even in 1936, Aberdeen’s “No 2” life-boat was a ‘pulling-sailing boat’ as were those at another
thirty stations round the
British and Irish coasts.

Greathead’s lifeboat design, so successful elsewhere, was disliked by the Suffolk men, who maintained that a local
lifeboat, based on their own broad- beamed, lug-rigged craft was more suitable for East Anglian beaches.

It is interesting to note therefore that Lukin himself designed the Norfolk and Suffolk boat and declared “It is
particularly advisable that all lifeboats should be in the form most approved by the pilots and seamen on the coasts where they are to
be used as no one form will fit all shores.”

St. Sampson, in The Channel Islands, was established in 1803 as it was closest to the Guernsey approaches and the
infamous Casquet rocks and it is in The Channel Islands in the 1950’s that we find another ‘confirmation’ of Lionel
Lukin’s persuasions about lifeboat hull design.

Henry Greathead’s hull design for his boat, the “Original”, at South Shields, had been inspired by a design submitted
too at that time, when the “Adventure” was lost, by William Wouldhave, the parish clerk of South Shields.

Wouldhave’s design was based on a curved wooden dipper, found at a well and the shape of the dipper embodied the
principle of ‘self-righting’.

So to The Channel Islands and an article in, I think, a mid-1950’s copy of the magazine “Yachting World” or “Motor Boat and
Yachting” which featured the enterprise of a local fisherman who, fascinated by the way the birds serenely floated about on the wave-tops in
the wildest of storms, designed a boat for himself based on the underwater body form of the seagulls. He took a lot of time to draw out the
lines of his hull and then took some years to persuade a boat-builder to put life into his creation.

The article noted that on a number of occasions they had used the ‘gull-boat’ in preference to the lifeboat, proof
indeed that Lionel Lukin’s views ‘ held water ’ !

Although nothing seems to be recorded about her locally, a life-boat called the “Princess Alice” seems to have been
stationed at Campbeltown from 1860 till 1868. In any case, the “Lord Murray”, costing £158 and the gift of Lady
Murray of Edinburgh, arrived in 1861 and a boathouse was built at The New Quay.

Southend’s life-boat station opened in 1869, eight years after Campbeltown. It’s three serving life-boats were all
named “John R. Ker” after the son of the first boat’s benefactor, Robert Ker of Hamilton whose son had been
drowned at the north Kintyre village of Clachan in the 1860’s. The son John’s name is inscribed above the door of the
old life-boat house.

On New Year’s Day 1875, a severe south-east gale blew up wrecking the barque on Sanda Island. The gale too caused
considerable damage to fishing boats in Campbeltown, wrecked at schooner at Feochaig, just south of Campbeltown
and overcame a Norwegian barque sheltering in Machrie Bay on the west of Arran.

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The “Perica” grounded on Sanda about 9.30 p.m. on New Year’s night and almost immediately dismasted, one mast
fatally injuring the ship’s mate and wrecking one of her long-boats. Her sailmaker too had been killed when he had
fallen from a spar. Fortunately, the ship’s predicament had been seen by the island’s lighthouse keepers who alerted
other islanders and one, Alexander Ritchie, the island’s tenant farmer, swam out into the sea to rescue three men as
they tried to swim ashore, he was later awarded an R.N.L.I. silver medal.

The Sanda islanders and a horse dragged a skiff a mile-and-a-half across Sanda and, as the storm eased down at
daylight, launched the skiff and succeeded in rescuing the ship’s captain, his wife and two children, the 2nd mate, the
steward and the carpenter, three other men were lost from the ship and the bodies of two other men, killed earlier on
board the ship, were too brought ashore and later buried in the island cemetery.

Nobody on the mainland knew anything about the incident until later and, in any case, the Southend life-boat’s
coxswain had left the village before daybreak on New Year’s Day to go into Campbeltown, not expecting the weather
to turn out as it had.

The Southend life-boat had, until then, been crewed by local men but the loss of the “Perica” focused minds for the
Southend men were mainly farmers and the life-boat needed seamen ! A radical decision was taken and a standing
order issued to convey fishermen from Campbeltown as quickly as possible and whenever necessary to crew the
Southend life-boat.

The Southend life-boats were launched off the shore, rarely easy, in front of the old life-boat house and a new slipway
and a new boathouse - the four corner pillars remain - were built when the third “John R. Ker” arrived in 1905, the
total cost of boat, boathouse and slipway amounting to £4,000.

Then, in 1876, the “Princess Louise”, named after John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquis of Lorne’s wife,
Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.

In 1888, the self-righting “Mary Adelaide Harrison”, the gift of Mr H. Harrison of Liverpool, costing £396, arrived
in Campbeltown and then; in 1898, the “James Stevens No 2”, costing £538 and funded partially from part of a legacy
from James Stevens of Birmingham. A new boathouse, costing £885, was then built for her on the Kilkerran Road.

One of the most splendid rescues of the “James Stevens No 2” occurred on the morning of Friday, February 27, 1903
when the 154-foot Norwegian barque “Argo”, inward bound from Willmington to London with a cargo of resin, her
ten-man crew under the command of Captain N. J. Ellefsen, ran aground in tempestuous seas at Macharioch, just
south of the Arranman’s Barrels.

Three of her crew managed to get ashore in one of the boats and, a man sent off to raise the alarm, the boat tried to
return to the stricken ship. It was sweot away and found two weeks later at Davaar Island, the bodies of its two-man
crew never recovered.

The alarm raised the Southend lifeboat, the “John R. Ker”, unable to launch because of the heavy seas, the signal gun
was fired for the Campbeltown boat, the “James Stevens No 2” at 9 a.m.. She was launched at 9.45 a.m. and, with high
tide, took a short-cut out over the shingle between Davaar and the shore and was taken in tow by the tug “Flying
Dutchman”, thus reducing her time to the casualty. The tug’s assistance was undoubtedly instrumental in saving the
nine remaining members of the barque’s crew as the ship was now showing signs of breaking up and as the life-boat
got alongside the masts began falling into the sea.

In appreciation of their courage and skill, King Oscar of Norway, ‘the grand old monarch of a great seafaring people’,
awarded the life-boat coxswain, George McEachran and his Campbeltown crew, a specially struck
commemorative medal for their work.

In the last week of December 1908, a great gale blew up and continued for several days bringing heavy snowfalls to
much of Scotland. On Monday, December 28, the Campbeltown life-boat, the “James Stevens No 2”, was called out
at 10 a.m. to attend the “Bessie Arnold”, a 104-ton schooner which, inward bound to Clydebank with iron ore, had
gone aground at Sliddery on the south-west of Arran. The Campbeltown life-boat, under heavily reefed sails, arrived
on the scene about 1 p.m..

As the life-boat dropped her anchor and ‘kedged-up’ to the wreck, three men could be seen huddlng on the wreck’s
bows. The wreck was lying beam on to the shore and continually washed by heavy seas, one of these lifted the life-
boat some ninety-feet forward sending her crashing on to the wreck.
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The same wave washed away the three men in the schooner’s bows, swept the life-boat’s bowman, Neil MacKenzie,
overboard and injured another crewman and injured the life-boat’s coxswain, George McEachran. Moments later,
another wave lifted the life-boat off the wreck.

The rocket-crew from Kildonan were on the scene and the life-boat, holed, her rudder ripped off and too having
hauled crewman Neil MacKenzie back on board after some twenty minutes in the freezing water, headed back for
Campbeltown where they beached the water-logged boat in front of The Royal Hotel.

Later that same night, the gale still raging, the crew were called out yet again, to the Irish ketch “Jane” which had
driven ashore just 100 yards away from the beached life-boat ! Such was the severity of the storm that it proved
impossible to help the crew of the “Jane”, though her skipper died, his two sons were rescued by other means from
the shore.

For their exploits that day, the life-boat crew were awarded double pay but, their work was not yet to be finished for
the very next afternoon, that of December 29, 1908, another disaster began to unfold on the west side of Kintyre.

The two-year-old, 120-foot Fleetwood steam trawler “Albany (F 42)”, caught in the still raging gale, had turned north
to try to find some shelter and, in the blizzard conditions, had run aground some 150 yards offshore at Tangytavil.
Two of her crew clung desperately to her engine casing, the other eight, taking refuge in her wheelhouse, were little
better off when the seas smashed the windows. Three other Fleetwood trawlers stood offshore through that night but,
in the morning light, realising that they couldn’t help, sailed off leaving the men to their fate.

All through that day the ten-man crew continued to cling on and eventually, in the late afternoon, they saw some signs
of activity on the snow covered shore but darkness fell again. Ashore, the alarm had been raised but the Campbeltown
road was blocked by snow and of course the Campbeltown life- boat, the “James Stevens No 2”, was still holed and
out of action in front of The Royal Hotel. Boat-less and hampered by the deep snowdrifts, the life-boat crew set off
across the peninsula to see what could be done.

Meanwhile, back at the wrecked trawler, her skipper, Captain Courtney, no doubt encouraged by the small number
of people now assembled on the beach, tried to swim a line ashore but was beaten back by the seas and hauled back on
to the “Albany”. Night fell again and the following day, Hogmanay, the crew tried time and time again to get a line on
to the shore as the Campbeltown life-boat crew hadn’t been able to bring any equipment with them through the
snowdrifts.

Then, on New Year’s Day 1909, two-and-a-half days after the “Albany” had grounded, success and, one by one, all
ten of her crew were hauled slowly through the surf to safety. All survived their ordeal and were sent home a few days
later.

In 1911, through the generosity of a Mrs Cresswell of Egham, the “Richard Cresswell” arrived in Campbeltown and
would be stationed there until 1931 alongside Campbeltown’s first motor lifeboat, the “William McPherson”, which
arrived in 1912, just as the Machrihanish life-boat station was completed and given the 35-foot, self-righting, ‘pulling-
sailing’ boat, the “Henry Finlay”. The Watson designed motor lifeboat “William McPherson”, the gift of a Mrs
MacPherson of Helensburgh, cost £3,423.

Too in 1911, a second lifeboat was sent to Campbeltown to act as a ‘boarding-boat’ for the soon to arrive and too to
act as a lifeboat within the Campbeltown Loch area but she was never actually called out on rescue duties.

Sometimes stories, like life-boats, turn ‘full circle’. Southend’s three life-boats, all named “John R. Ker”, were
bequested as a consequence of a boy being drowned at Clachan. Edgar Moller, the ‘boy’ in the next incident, ended up
retiring in Clachan and it was only by chance, at his funeral, when his family recalled the incident, that the links
became apparent.

On Monday, September 17, 1928, the 416-foot British steam tanker “Olivia”, was inward-bound from Liverpool for
Ardrossan with a cargo of benzine oil.

The ship’s master, taking a brief break from the bridge before they prepared to enter harbour, had left the mate on
watch. As events proved, the ship was slightly too far to the west of her intended course and, scraping over the reefs,
she went ashore near Bennan Head at the south end of Arran. One of her cargo tanks was pierced and fumes from the
escaping cargo were soon likely to engulf the ship.

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On hearing of her distress, the Arran coastguard team quickly set up a rocket- line and evacuated the crew, including
the master’s wife and 12-year old son, by breeches buoy. The ship’s officers, thinking everyone safe, then left in the
ship’s own life-boats which had been swung out and put in the water earlier.

Some time later Campbeltown’s motor life-boat, the “William McPherson”, arrived on the scene and discovered
another fifteen crew still on board the grounded tanker - fifteen Chinese crew who were in great fear that they would be
interned if they landed on Arran !

It was only with great difficulty that the Campbeltown life-boat crew got them off the “Olivia” and only when they got
back to Campbeltown that, through the chance appearance of one John Murray, who had some understanding of the
Chinese languages, that the crewmen’s fears became clearly understood !

Ten of the “Olivia’s” eighteen cargo tanks and her pump room damaged. Some more of her cargo was jettisoned into
the sea and she was refloated about 7 a.m. on September 29th, towed to Lamlash and then to Greenock for repairs.

Campbeltown’s second motor life-boat, the Barnett designed “City of Glasgow”, arrived in 1929. Institution funds, in
recognition of the splendid financial support given by The City of Glasgow branch and coming to £10,197, covered
her building cost. At the end of the year, on December 31st, 1929 the Southend life-boat station was closed down
after its 61 years of operation.

The Southend life-boat, the third “John R. Ker”, was sold to Major Parsons at Carskiey. She was re-named “Knot”
and sailed round to Campbeltown where local boatbuilder Robert Wylie fitted her with a 20-hp Gardner diesel engine
and then taken back to Southend again being ‘wintered’ in her old home, the original stone-built boathouse.

Machrihanish life-boat station closed down in 1931, the “Henry Finlay”, which had been there throughout the full
eighteen years of the station’s life, had never once been launched to a casualty !

Campbeltown’s life-boat, the “City of Glasgow”, towed the old Machrihanish life-boat to Ardrossan, the reserve life-
boat , the “Richard Cresswell”, still being at Campbeltown on stand-by till later that year and the “Henry Finlay” was
unceremoniously shipped off by rail to Tynemouth.

The near simultaneous closures of Southend and Machrihanish meant that there was not a single life-boat station on
“the weary stretch of the Scottish western seaboard” between Campbeltown, Castlebay and Stornoway - The Kintyre
stations were at that time under the control of the R.N.L.I’s Inspector for Ireland, Lt. Cdr. J. M. Upton.

Over the years and the centuries there have been countless, many nameless, wrecks around Kintyre’s waters and in
living memory that of the 441-foot long Liberty ship “Byron Darnton”, bound from Copenhagen via The Clyde to
New York. 2,170 of these ships were built during the course of World War II - the “Robert E. Perry” was built in a
just 4 days 15 hours and 30 minutes thanks to simple design and well-organised ‘conveyor-belt’ construction methods.

There can be little doubting the fact that, though they were expected to last only one trip, if that at all, crossing The
Atlantic, they were strong ships and the bow section of the “Byron Darnton” lies still to this day on the outside of
Sanda Island where she ran aground in heavy weather and bad visibilty on March 16, 1946.

The Campbeltown life-boat “City of Glasgow ” being away for overhaul, the relief 45-foot long Watson Class boat,
the “Duke of Connaught”, set off but, unable to approach the wreck in darkness, waited for daylight in the north lee
of Sanda. With the wreck’s port side beam on to the shore and her outer, starboard, side being covered continuously
with mountainous seas, it was only on his third attempt that Duncan Newlands, the Campbeltown coxswain,
managed to get his boat between the ship’s dangerously heeling hull and the shore.

Fourteen hours after the “Byron Darnton” had grounded, the life-boat came away with all thirty-nine crew, six men
and nine women passengers - and a husky dog ! Last to leave was the ship’s radio operator.

As they passed Johnston’s Point, the life-boat’s engine flooded. Fortunately, she was one of the service’s older boats
and the next five miles homewards were made under sail until the boat’s mechanic, not a local Campbeltown man but
the mechanic attached full-time to the relief boat, managed to re-start the machinery. In the meantime, just two hours
after the life-boat had left the wreck, it broke in two. The captain, Robert King, managed to board the stern section
next day and managed to salve some of the passengers possessions but the stern would quickly slide into deep water.

The nation, indeed The World, would be gripped by the story of Captain Carlson, the “Flying Enterprise” and the tug
5
 “Turmoil” - the tug sometime in Campbeltown too, along with the tugs “Bustler” and “Metinda II” and the name
of the “Turmoil” was fresh in Kintyreans’ minds as, in 1950, she had been towing the former Anchor Line’s
“Colonial” from Lisbon, for breaking up at Dalmuir, when the tow parted in a south-easterly gale and the “Colonial”
ran ashore, where she had to be broken up, near Peninver, north of Campbeltown.

The 1,100 gross ton “Turmoil”, a Bustler-class tug, 205-feet long, 40.5 feet beam and 16-feet 11 inches draft, builit in
1945 by Henry Robb’s Leith yard, had a top speed of 16 knots. The 1944 U.S.A. built “Flying Enterprise” was a
typical Victory-class single-screw turbine cargo-passenger ship.

On December 21, 1951, the “Flying Enterprise”, under the command of Captain Henrik Kurt Carlsen of
Woodbridge, New Jersey, sailed from Hamburg for the U.S. and three days later, on Christmas Eve, with winds of 97
mph registering in The Scilly Isles, she was in trouble.

On Christmas night she suffered structural damage and two days later a giant wave threw her completely over on to her
port side. She failed to right herself and put out an SOS message which was picked up by the U.S. freighter
“Southland” which arrived as darkness fell and rescue was put off until daylight on the following morning, December
29th.

Unable to get lifeboats alongside, the stricken ship’s passengers and crew had to jump into the sea, all survived.
Captain Carlsen, now famously, stayed aboard his ship and waited for the salvage tug “Turmoil” which arrived on
January 3, 1952, five days later !

Kenneth Dancy, a temporary mate on the “Turmoil”, jumped from the tug to the freighter to secure a line. Towing
started on January 5 but, four days later, the weather deteriorated and the tow-line broke, the signs were that the
“Flying Enterprise” was beginning to break up. At 3.22 p.m. the following afternoon, January 10, Carlsen and Dancy
stepped from the, by now horizontal, funnel and abandoned her. Nine minutes later, they were picked up by the
“Turmoil” which docked with ‘the heroes’ at Falmouth two days later - Captain Carlsen died in October 1989.

At the end of 1952, on Monday, December 22, the Girvan and Campbeltown life-boats were called out with three
tugs from Metal Industries’ Faslane yard in The Gareloch. This time it was to the aid of the Finnish ore - carrier
“Margareta” which had gone ashore on the south face of Ailsa Craig in heavy weather.

Eleven men from the “Margareta” were landed at Campbeltown, the ship’s captain, Captain Sundell, staying aboard
with the rest of the crew to survey the damage till the ship began to slide off the rocks and they too had to be rescued.

A week later, on December 29, 1952, the Steel & Bennie tug “Brigadier” and her crew managed to patch up the
damaged bow section of the “Margareta” and towed her up-river for repair.

The 52-foot long Barnett designed “City of Glasgow II” took over the Campbeltown station in 1953, she, costing
£31,629, being a gift from The City of Glasgow Lifeboat Fund.

The £302,748 54-foot long, self-righting, Arun-class “Walter and Margaret Couper”, gifted by Miss Margaret E.
Couper in memory of her father and mother, arrived in 1979 and would serve until 1999 when the £1,796,000 Severn
class “Ernest and Mary Shaw”, gifted from the estate of the late Ernest Shaw and his widow, Mary Shaw, took over
the station. A small inshore lifeboat also was added to the Campbeltown station strength in 1993.

On December 19, 1991, a gigantic freak wave smashed the wheelhouse of the Russian fish factory ship “Kartli” which
had been trying to weather a violent storm some nine miles west of Islay. Crumpling like a sheet of paper, the
aluminium bridge structure caved in killing three crew, including one of the three women aboard the ship.

The ship disabled, her electrical and electronic equipment swamped by the seas and drifting helplessly before the
storm, four R.A.F. helicopters, under the direction of an R.A.F. Nimrod aircraft, the Fleet Auxiliary “Olna”, the
Navy tug “Roysterer”, the British tanker “Drupa” and the Islay lifeboat began a co-odinated and eventually successful
rescue of all her remaining crew.

The “Kartli”, abandoned and left at the storm’s mercy, came ashore on the north-west side of Gigha and where she
lay until broken up in the big winter gales of 1993.

Since its establishment in 1861, Campbeltown life-boats have been launched on more than 300 occasions and saved
nearly 500 lives : -
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“Lord Murray” (1861 - 1876) 8 launches 35 saved
“Princess Louise” (1876 - 1888) 1 “ 0 “
“Mary Adelaide Harrison” (1888 - 1898) 2 “ 4 “
“James Stevens No 2” (1898 - 1912) 26 “ 46 “
“Richard Cresswell” (1911 - 1931 as reserve) 0 “ 0 “
“William McPherson” (1912 - 1929) 12 “ 29 “
“City of Glasgow” (1929 - 1953) 91 “ 173 “
“City of Glasgow II” (1953 - 1979) 110 “ 50 “
“Walter and Margaret Couper” (1979 - 1999) 274 “ 130 “
“Ernest & Mary Shaw” (1999 - date Jan 2002) 14 “ 4 “

Campbeltown’s reserve life-boats, between 1929 and 1953, were launched on 7 occasions and saved 56 lives and,
between 1979 and January 2002, were launched on 50 occasions saving a further 21 lives. The inshore lifeboat,
introduced in 1993, had been launched on 27 occasions and saved 9 lives too up until January 2002.

Women and children first ! - On February 26, 1852, The Black Watch Regiment drowned while standing to attention
on the deck of the sinking “Birkenhead” and 'letting the women and children be saved' and hence the origin of the
phrase.