This board is at the RNLI Historic Lifeboat Collection at Chatham and it records the first lifeboat at the Banff and Macduff station. The lifeboat was presented to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1859 by Messrs Macfie & Sons, before being replaced by a new boat in 1870.
In that relatively short service it helped save the crews of the schooner Auchincruive of Grangemouth in 1861 and the brig Regina of Swinemünde (now Świnoujście in Poland) in 1870, rescuing fifteen men in total, as well as being launched on four other occasions to assist vessels in distress.
What rather interested me is why this particular board was at Chatham, but the lifeboat station was closed in 1924 and so this was likely placed in safe storage. There had been problems finding crew during the First World War, so the lifeboat station had been temporarily closed in 1917, but continued crewing difficulties made the closure permanent.
Richard Lewis (1822-1883) was the Secretary of the RNLI between 1850 and 1883, credited with turning around the fortunes of a then depleted and financially deprived organisation into a world class search and rescue service.
I’m pleased that someone with some initiative ensured that this board was kept, so much is just thrown into skips and the heritage lost forever.