The Southwold Lifeboat Museum is open once again following a period of renovation and extensive shut down and is welcoming visitors between 10:30am and 4:30pm every day except Wednesdays and Fridays.
This year apart from visiting the last sailing rowing lifeboat operating on the East Coast and viewing photographs of her crew and hear about the rescues the following additions are now included.
There is a new exhibition of a fisherman’s cottage which shows how the ”boat men” of Southwold lived and fished off the beach also this is accompanied by a video and description of life at that time.
The curator is also producing a series of photographs of Southwold’s connection to royalty in this Jubilee year with local photographs of people at the Duke of York’s Camp and the celebrations in Coronation year 1953.
We have also obtained a Breeches Buoy and this has now been rigged up demonstrating how sailors were rescued from boats close to shore using the rocket apparatus. A pole which was erected to resemble a ships mast and used for training the men and is still situated on Southwold common. Visitors can see how the system operated, even though the rescued seaman in the photo looks a little plump!
