Southport and St Anne's lifeboats disaster

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On the 9 December 1886 the Mexico, a Hamburg-registered barque bound for Guayaquil from Liverpool went aground near Southport, in a full west north westerly gale.

A lifeboat, the Eliza Fernley, was launched from Southport in response to distress signals from the Mexico. When the craft reached the Mexico, it was struck by heavy seas and capsized. Two hours later, she was found approximately three miles from Southport at Birkdale. Thirteen of her fifteen crew had perished.

Between fifteen and twenty minutes after the Southport boat launched, the neighbouring St Anne's lifeboat was also called out. Her crew rowed her out to five hundred yards, and then hoisted sail, proceeding to two miles off Southport. In the words of Patrick Howarth, author of Lifeboat: In Danger's hour:

"What happened there has never been clearly established. Two red lights were seen at Southport, which may have been signals from the life–boat. All that is known is that at quarter past eleven the next morning the life–boat was found ashore, bottom up, with three dead bodies hanging on the thwarts with their heads downwards. Every man in the crew was lost".

Additionally, a third lifeboat, from Lytham reached the Mexico. By that time, the Mexico had settled on her beam ends, and the crew had lashed themselves to the rigging. The lifeboat, on her maiden rescue, rowed for a mile and a half through the River Ribble, and then rowed to the Mexico, rescuing all twelve members of the barque's crew. In the process, the crew shattered three of her oars, and the small craft was filled numerous times with water.

The disaster was the worst in the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, with 28 lifeboat crew lost.

A public fund for relief of the sixteen widows and fifty orphans was opened with the RNLI contributing £2,000, with more than £50,000 raised in total. A memorial statue of a lifeboatman looking out to sea on was placed on the promenade at St. Anne’s. At Southport, a memorial was erected in Duke Street Cemetery and a permanent exhibition can be seen in the Museum of the Botannic Gardens in Churchtown, Southport.

In 1925, the RNLI abandoned the Station at Southport and left the town with no lifeboat. However in the late 1980s, after a series of unfortunate tragedies, local families from Southport started to raise funds and eventually bought a new lifeboat for the town stationed at the old RNLI boathouse. The lifeboat is completely independent of the RNLI and therefore receives no money from that organisation. Instead it depends entirely on donations by the public.

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