RNLB The Ramonet

The Ramonet

1865 - 1890

The present station was established by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in October, 1865 and the first lifeboat placed by them at Shoreham was the Ramonet, which cost £286 and was a gift of Miss Robertson of London per Stephen Cave, M.P. She was a pulling and sailing lifeboat, 33 feet 2 inches long with a beam of 8 feet 1 inch, of the self-righting type, with a crew of twelve, pulling ten oars.

To house this boat a new brick boathouse was built by a Mr. A. Thorncroft at a cost of £133 10s. Od. at Kingston, in a position just west of the existing boathouse, and in 1870 a slipway was built from the boathouse to the water at the expense of the Harbour Board. The Ramonet remained at Shoreham for 25 years until 1890 during which time she launched on service three times and saved twelve lives.

It was on the 16th December, 1874 that the only disaster that has ever occurred to Shoreham lifeboats happened. The Ramonet was launched on exercise about nine thirty in the morning, the weather was none too good, being very bitter with driving sleet and snow. The lifeboat made heavy weather of the breaking sea on the bar, unable to steer a straight course, so the coxswain decided to abandon his attempt and started to turn in order to get back into the safer waters of the harbour - at this point she was struck broadside by a great wave and capsized, in which position she laid for five minutes before she was driven on to the beach 500 yards from where it had capsized. One of the crew, Robert Brazier, was drowned. The Institution gave £150 to the local fund raised for his dependents, it also awarded its Silver Medal for gallantry to Mr. W. T. G. Sheader, examining officer of H.M. Customs, who swam out through the surf in an attempt to rescue Robert Brazier.