Scarborough got a new lifeboat station in 2016, and shortly afterwards, in 2021, a brand new lifeboat to go with it!
The all-weather Shannon-class lifeboat was named after Frederick William Plaxton, the founder of Scarborough coach building firm Plaxton Ltd. It cost in excess of £2 million pounds and is capable of reaching a speed of 25 knots.
There has been a lifeboat station at Scarborough since 1801, the third oldest lifeboat station in the United Kingdom.
The lifeboat is launched and recovered using a Shannon Launch and Recovery System (SLARS): a tracked vehicle which transports the lifeboat from the boathouse to the sea, tilts to act as a slipway for launching, and then uses a powerful winch to haul the boat back onto the carriage for recovery.
Earlier this year (July 2025) I photographed the whole procedure of recovering the lifeboat at low tide on Scarborough’s South Bay.
Just so it does not feel left out, there is another smaller lifeboat called D-856 John Wesley Hillard IV, a D-Class inshore lifeboat, which arrived on on Thursday 10 June 2021. It had come in a bit before the larger one on 8th July (see below).
All photographs by Raymond JC Cannon
Links
Scarborough Lifeboat Station – RNLI Lifeboat Stations
Ray Cannon's travel and photography blog 
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