The hill-climbing lifeboat
120 years ago, the people of Lynmouth hauled a 10-ton lifeboat 13½ miles across Exmoor to save lives at sea. Retrace the first stage of their epic, overnight feat on foot – and wonder.
One extraordinary night in Devon.
ON JANUARY 12TH 1899, a storm like no other was wreaking havoc up and down the treacherous shores of Somerset and north Devon. Fierce winds barrelled up the Bristol Channel, whipping the sea into a ship-munching swell. At 7:52pm the Lynmouth lifeboat station received at telegram reporting a vessel in distress.
The 1900-ton sailing ship Forrest Hall was drifting ashore off Hurlstone Point, 11 miles down the coast. As it was too dangerous to enter the waves at Lynmouth, Coxswain Jack Crocombe decided to launch the lifeboat Louisa at Porlock Weir. But the most audacious rescue in RNLI history wouldn’t be easy.
Between Lynmouth and Porlock Bay, a rough and mud-clogged coach road climbed from sea level to 1400 feet and sharply down again – a journey of 13 ½ miles. The first hurdle was a 1-in-4 gradient up Countisbury Hill. It took 100 men, women and children ( plus 18 horses) to heave the lifeboat up the steep road.
At the top of Countisbury Hill, the crowd rested for refreshments at the Blue Ball Inn, while a carriage wheel was hastily repaired. Men with picks and shovels were sent ahead to widen the road and clear obstructing hedges. Most turned back, but 20 pressed on across Exmoor, carefully easing the lifeboat down Porlock Hill. At 6:30am the next day, the exhausted crew launched Louisa and rowed through heavy seas to reach the Forrest Hall, ensuring the safety of its crew.
In 1999, locals re-enacted the journey
with a restored Victorian lifeboat, as a tribute to their heroic forebears. The road from Lynmouth to Porlock was paved and widened in the 20th century, and now sees motorised traffic as the A39. But you still get a taste for its gruelling gradients on the South West Coast Path, which briefly runs along its seaward side up to Countisbury. For an excellent walk across Exmoor without life-and-death urgency, you can combine this uphill drag with a detour out to Foreland Point before a leafy inland return along the East Lyn River to Watersmeet.
WALK HERE: Turn to Walk 2 for a circular route following the first few miles travelled by the Lynmouth lifeboat over Countisbury Hill.