Here is where you’ll find information on Dowager’s extensive history, beginning when she was first launched in 1933…
The Following account is taken directly from the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships (ADSL):
“Rescuing people in severe conditions is every-day work for the lifeboats and it is not only at Dunkirk that they have earned their medals. The Rosa Woodd and Phyllis Lunn was launched in 1933 and was Shoreham’s 5th lifeboat. The cost of £6,500 was met by a private legacy and other collections. But in order to accommodate the boat a new boathouse had to be built together with a slipway so that her launching was not dependent upon the state of the tide. She served for thirty years, during which time she was launched 244 times and saved 143 lives. She then spent another ten years on the reserve fleet of the RNLI. She made three trips from the beaches of Dunkirk back to Dover, but naval crews did not keep detailed logs which are the rule in the RNLI. There is a story that the naval officer in charge protected his men from shrapnel and strafing by constructing a makeshift wheelhouse from steel plate.
On 16th November 1941 she was called out to the President Briand, a mine-sweeper, which was in danger of being driven ashore by a strong south wind off Shoreham. The lifeboat’s coxswain was put aboard the President Briand and the SS Goole, a ‘blockship’, went out to tow her in. By then, the wind had increased to a gale and the Goole also got into difficulties. The lifeboat attempted to tow both ships, but the ropes parted. She had to go alongside six or seven times before taking off all twenty-one men including the lifeboat’s own coxswain. She came back to harbour through heavy, breaking seas eleven hours after she had first gone out. The acting coxswain, James Upperton, in charge for the first time, earned a silver medal for gallantry and Henry Philcox, her motor mechanic, the bronze medal.
On 8th August 1948, the Rosa Woodd and Phyllis Lunn again hit the headlines when, in a strong south-westerly gale off the Sussex coast, she went out to rescue a yacht. The lifeboat used her sails to help her engines and pursued the yacht for fourteen miles to Newhaven where, only 500 yards offshore, heavy seas washed right over her. Yet despite the tremendous seas, the lifeboat, with unbelievable skill, went straight into the surf and plucked the three men, two women and a boy off the yacht to safety.
In 1973 T.B. Lawrence bought the Rosa Woodd and Phyllis Lunn, then lying at Bangor near Belfast. He re-named her Dowager and apparently converted her into a cruising yacht.”
2024 is the year Dowager begins her next chapter under new ownership
In 2019, Dowager was sold after a long time under family ownership. Yet the ensuing years were not kind to the little ship, which continued to deteriorate until it was left abandoned in a boat yard in Suffolk. Despite her history, an ignominious end seemed assured in 2023 when she was repossessed due to storage debts, and the English weather battered her frame.
But all is not lost.
Though her 2 Diesel engines have been part-stripped at some point, and almost all of her electrics are torn out, the double-planked mahogany hull has held together incredibly well. Despite this, her steel keel is badly corroded and in need of urgent attention, and her superstructure has suffered from substantial rot.
Dowager was bought in the final days of January 2024 by Timothy Williamson with the ultimate aim to get her back on the water. What lies ahead is a massive undertaking requiring thousands of hours of work and a huge amount of money to restore this priceless vessel to a fantastic condition once more.
DOWAGER 