The Wreck of the Home

Most people will have heard of the Louisa lifeboat and her extraordinary overland journey to Porlock Weir. But how did lifeboats come to be stationed at Lynmouth in the first place? The answer lies in another storm, another ship in peril—and a tragedy witnessed from the shore.

© the copyright holder. Image credit: Paignton Health & Wellbeing Centre

On 22 August 1868, the ship Home, registered at St Andrews in New Brunswick, was caught in a heavy gale in the Bristol Channel. Dismasted and anchored on a lee shore, she lay in a desperately exposed position in Lynmouth Bay.

A lee shore is among the most dangerous situations a sailing vessel can face. With the wind driving directly towards the land, a damaged ship has little room to manoeuvre and risks being forced onto rocks or broken apart in the surf.

Lynmouth had experienced sailors and fishermen, but no lifeboat. The nearest RNLI station lay at Ilfracombe, some twelve miles away by sea. A message requesting assistance was sent, but conditions outside Ilfracombe Harbour were judged impossible. The wind was blowing almost directly onto the coast, while the water between Warphouse and Beacon Point was described by witnesses as one mass of breaking sea. Had the Ilfracombe lifeboat failed to clear Hillsborough, both boat and crew could have been dashed against the point.

At Lynmouth, those watching from shore could only attempt a rescue with whatever means were available.

One of the Home’s crew tried to swim ashore carrying a line, but was overwhelmed and drowned. During the following morning, another man was in one of the ship’s boats alongside the vessel when a tremendous sea swept it away. The boat was driven onto the rocks and he too lost his life.

The remaining crew were saved through what the RNLI’s contemporary account described as the “exertions of the inhabitants of Lynmouth”, undertaken with considerable difficulty and danger. Robert Roe, Lord of the Manor, received the Institution’s Silver Medal for his part in the rescue, while seven other men were given a monetary reward in recognition of their courage.

The loss of two lives made painfully clear the gap in rescue provision along the Exmoor coast. Between Ilfracombe in Devon and Burnham in Somerset lay a long and difficult stretch of shoreline without a lifeboat station of its own.

Local residents pressed the RNLI to act. Following an inspection, the Institution agreed in October 1868 that a station should be established at Lynmouth.

Its first lifeboat was funded by an unnamed Yorkshire woman in memory of her brother and was therefore named Henry. She was a 30-foot, ten-oared, self-righting pulling lifeboat—the word “pulling” meaning that she was propelled principally by oars rather than an engine.

On 20 January 1869, Henry began another remarkable overland journey, although one less dramatic than that later undertaken by Louisa. Drawn by eleven horses, the lifeboat travelled twenty miles from Barnstaple to Lynmouth along steep and difficult roads.

The people of Lynton and Lynmouth turned out to welcome her. Triumphal arches decorated with flags had been erected along the route, and the following morning Mrs Roe formally named the boat before she was launched and her new crew put through their first exercise.

Until a permanent boathouse could be completed on land provided by Robert Roe, Henry was kept in a shed on the beach. She remained at Lynmouth until 1887, when she was replaced by Louisa.

Thirty years after the wreck of the Home, it was Louisa and the lifeboatmen of Lynmouth who undertook the journey that would make the station famous. Yet the roots of that celebrated rescue lay in the events of August 1868: in two lives lost, in the courage of local people who went to the aid of strangers, and in a community determined that the next ship in danger should not face the Exmoor coast alone.

The overland launch of Louisa is rightly remembered as one of the great stories of lifeboat history. The wreck of the Home deserves to be remembered too—not simply as a disaster, but as the moment from which Lynmouth’s own lifeboat service was born.

Sources: contemporary reports published in the RNLI journal The Life-Boat, January and July 1869. RNLI account of the wreck and decision to establish the station · RNLI account of the arrival of Henry