‘Marooned’ lifeboat attracts sightseers

Press, 26 November 1981, Page 1

‘Marooned’ lifeboat attracts sightseers

Mrs Helene Brown, of Los Angeles, poses for her husband’s camera yesterday, aboard the most unusual vessel now at the Port of Lyttelton, the Sumner lifeboat Rescue 111. The lifeboat, the only one of her kind in New Zealand, has been berthed at Lyttelton since she was launched from the slipway at Scarborough during an emergency on November 16. Having the boat at Lyttelton might be frustrating for the men of the Sumner Lifeboat Institution, but the Rescue 111, with her distinctive teak “whaleback” superstructure dotted with tiny portholes, and other unusual features, has become an attraction for locals and sightseers at the port. “What a lovely little ship,” said Mrs Brown, the executive director of the Ameri-

can Cancer Society, who was taking in the sights at Lyttelton yesterday with her husband, Mr Robert Brown. The Browns “exchanged” their home in Los Angeles for that of Mr and Mrs Richard Turner, of Avonhead, for the holiday. Mrs Brown will have talks with the New Zealand Cancer Society while she is here. The Rescue 111 has been at Lyttelton since she was launched from her shed on a stormy evening which saw the rescue jetboat Aid II pounded to pieces on the rocks at Sumner. Marine growth is taking its toll of the immaculately kept lifeboat, which has no antifouling on her hull because she had been kept high and dry. “We cannot leave her there for ever, but we have heard nothing from the

Christchurch City Council about fixing the ship,” said a lifeboatman yesterday.

Toredo worm has so ravaged the Scarborough slipway that the Rescue 111 can only be launched or returned to her shed within an hour each side of high tide. The 10.7ni (35ft 6in) double-ended, self-righting craft is built of oak, teak, and mahogany in the classic style of the hardy vessels of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

She had been stationed at Bridlington, Yorkshire, before the Sumner institution bought her and shipped her to New Zealand in the Gladstone Star in 1969. An appeal for $15,000 to replace the wrecked Aid II has now topped $12,000 mainly because of a gift of $lO,OOO by . Mrs Marion McTeigue, of Halswell.