Saving lives at sea
Did you know that the Aberdeen Lifeboat station is one of the oldest in Scotland? It was established in 1802 by the Harbour Commissioners who maintained control of the station until 1925 when it was passed over to the RNLI. [1] After the transfer, the Commissioners continued to pay £500 per year upkeep. The close link with the Harbour Commissioners means that we hold a folder relating to the lifeboats in the Harbour Board collection. This folder is only a couple of centimetres thick but it holds an extremely eclectic collection of papers. There are papers relating to specific boats used by the lifeboat service since lifeboats were often left as part of legacies; this was the case with the George and Elizabeth Gow and the Hilton Briggs . The George and Elizabeth Gow was gifted by Elizabeth Gow in 1936 to honour her late husband. Like much of the harbour infrastructure, the George and Elizabeth Gow was taken over by the armed forces during the war and was given to the Air Ministr...