New lifeboat honours fund founder

The new lifeboat will operate alongside the station's rescue hovercraft

The RNLI has taken delivery of a brand new £160,000 lifeboat to patrol the waters around the Merseyside coast.

The Atlantic Eighty-Five B Class is the 51st RNLI lifeboat to be provided by the Lifeboat Fund and is named after its founder Charles Dibdin.

It replaces the Atlantic 75 lifeboat, Rock Light, which had been launched 510 times and rescued 486 people in its 13 years of service at New Brighton.

The new lifeboat has radar to help it operate in poor visibility.

The New Brighton crew will be training on their new vessel which is faster and bigger than its predecessor, with room for a fourth crew member as well as more space for casualties.

Cliff Downing, New Brighton RNLI lifeboat operations manager, said the vessel would enable the volunteer crew to carry out their life-saving work more safely and effectively.

The new lifeboat will operate at New Brighton alongside the RNLI's rescue hovercraft, Hurley Spirit.

Charles Dibdin started the Lifboat Fund in 1866 with an appeal to colleagues to raise £300 for a new lifeboat.