Lucy Lavers

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Aldeburgh lifeboat, Lucy Lavers, had only just arrived from Groves and Gutteridge on the Isle of Wight where she was built, when she was called to service at Dunkirk. Her exceptionally shallow draft of around 2ft. made her particularly suitable and she took her place alongside the other eighteen lifeboats which were at Dunkirk. Lucy Lavers was the Aldeburgh number two lifeboat for nineteen years and during this time she was called out on thirty occasions and credited with saving seven lives before she joined the relief fleet. During this period, she went out fifty-two times and saved thirty seven souls.

In 1968 she retired from the RNLI and became a pilot boat in the Channel Island port of St. Helier, Jersey. Subsequently she was a private fishing boat and in 1986, now called L'Esperance, she was bought by the Dive and Ski Club of St. Helier where Mike Gibson cared for her. During the tourist season, she provided around four-hundred trainees with practical experience on a training course from the bays of St. Aubin, St. Brelade and Portelet as well as the Island of Sark.

In 1997 she was retired and largely stripped for the restoration of another lifeboat, but the hull, which is in good condition, was transferred to the Dunkirk Little Ships Restoration Trust. The Trust arranged to transport her to Simon Evans boat yard at Sens in France where she has been well looked after.

July 2011. Lucy Lavers has now become the flagship restoration project for a new charity called "RESCUE WOODEN BOATS" which aims

“To acquire, restore, maintain and use heritage maritime wooden craft and in so doing, provide education into their history, construction, maintenance and use and into the crafts involved in all of these”

It's great to see Lucy Lavers being brought back to life with this fantastic new charity.

Check out the web site at http://www.rescuewoodenboats.com/
 

Here are some photographs of Lucy Lavers arriving at the Stiffkey Yard in Norfolk.
 

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