The 41ft Beach type was designed for stations that required the lifeboat to be launched across a beach, where the Barnett and Watson cabin types were considered too large and the 35'6" types too lightweight. They were developed from the Norfolk and Suffolk type, and were designed by the RNLI's consulting naval architect, J.R. Barnett. The type is sometimes referred to as the 'Aldeburgh type' after the first station to receive one.[1] Production ran from 1931 to 1936 and four boats were completed. In 1949 a revised version was built for service at Eastbourne. The later 41ft Watson type had a similar design to the Beach type and often the Beaches are confused for the similar sized Watson.[2]
The four boats of this type built in the 1930s were sent to Dunkirk to take part in the Dunkirk Evacuation. The Viscountess Wakefield was the only boat, not only of this class, but of those sent by the RNLI, to be lost in the evacuation.[3]
Description
The Beach type refers to five boats with similar characteristics, but as they were designed for the conditions faced by each stations there were significant variations between boats. All boats shared an aft cockpit with a watertight engine room ahead under a shelter. The boats built in the 1930s carried sails as an auxiliary to the twin Weyburn AE6 6-cylinder petrol engines.
The first boat of the class, Abdy Beauclerk, had large bulwarks at the fore end. The next two, Charles Cooper Henderson and Charles Dibdin, had low endboxes fore and aft. These three boats had large masts to carry lug sails. The last of the pre-war boats, The Viscountess Wakefield, had bulwarks both fore and aft and only had a mizzen mast to carry a steadying sail. All four had a wooden shelter covering the engine room and the forward end of the cockpit.
The type was put back into production in 1949, thirteen years after the last had been built, in a revised version with a cabin in the forward end of the boat and an aluminium alloy shelter instead of wood. In 1963 two of the boats were re-engined with 47bhp Ford-based Parsons Porbeagle 4-cylinder diesel engines.[4]
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Royal National Lifeboat Institution