The Drayton Park lifeboat is a much loved feature of our school playground and an integral part of our school and community. The pictures and documents below share more about the William Henry and Mary King and its long and interesting history.

Special thanks are due to Andrew Myer for the research he has undertaken on this topic.

Please click on the PDF documents below to read more.

Sources

‘The Bridlington Lifeboat, the first 200 years, 1805-2005’, Fred Walkington, MBE, Phillimore & Co, 2005

‘Oakley Lifeboats, an illustrated history of the RNLI’s Oakley and Rother lifeboats’, Nicholas Leach, Tempus Publishing, 2003

Eryl Williams, Research Team, RNLI Henry Blogg Lifeboat Museum, Cromer

Dr Joanna Bellis, Heritage Curatorial Manager, RNLI Heritage Trust

‘The Bridlington Lifeboats, a history of the Bridlington station’, Ralph S. Fawcett, 1985

Cautionary notes

1. These pages about the exploits of William Henry & Mary King and her remarkable crews have been prepared, based on written sources and conversations, by London-based ‘landlubbers’ with no personal knowledge or experience of the lifeboat prior to her arrival at the school - so apologies for any inaccuracies or misunderstandings. If you spot anything wrong, please let us know and we will endeavour to correct it.

2. Sources of many of the illustrations shown here are lost in the mists of time – eg unattributed photos found in the school archives – and it is beyond our capacity to track them down. However it seems better to make them publicly available, here, rather than leave them hidden in a filing cabinet. If you are the originator of any of the images, please let us know the details and we will endeavour to attribute them accordingly.