FISHGUARD: The lifeboat paid for by a generation of Blue Peter viewers is retiring after 34 years

If you posted foil, stamps or old keys to the Blue Peter “Pieces of Eight” appeal in 1993, part of what you sent has been going to sea from Fishguard ever since.

Blue Peter VII, the Trent class all-weather lifeboat the appeal paid for, arrived at the Pembrokeshire station in 1994. The RNLI has now confirmed she will retire in 2028, after 34 years of service, and be replaced by a new class of boat.

She is the only all-weather lifeboat in the fleet to carry the Blue Peter name, and the station says she is “a special part” of its history and of the town’s.

Volunteer press officer Cedwyn Rogers said the crew had known their boat, “one of the oldest assets in the RNLI fleet”, was approaching retirement. “Blue Peter VII has been such an iconic feature of our community for over 30 years, and we sincerely hope when the time comes that everyone will help give her a memorable send off,” he said.

What replaces her

Fishguard is one of 13 stations across the UK and Ireland chosen for the RNLI’s new Coastal Lifeboat, an 11-metre, self-righting boat driven by water jets, like the Shannon class, so it can work in shallower water and turn faster.

The charity says it is built for the ten miles closest to shore, can go out to 25, and will do 35 knots, around 40mph, against the Trent’s 25. Fishguard’s D class inshore boat stays alongside it.

The reasoning is in the RNLI’s own figures: between 2017 and 2025, 98 per cent of its lifeboat launches were within ten nautical miles of the coast, and more and more of them are to swimmers, kayakers and paddleboarders who set off from the beach.

Lifeboats launched 9,058 times across the UK and Ireland last year, the charity says, three and a half times what it expected 50 years ago.

Crew from every part of the station met the RNLI’s regional managers on Monday 5 October to hear what the change means locally. Mr Rogers called it “an exciting new chapter for the station, one where we are equipped with modern assets to deal with contemporary demand”.

Angle changes too, Mumbles and Tenby do not

The RNLI’s 2040 fleet plan names four Welsh stations. Fishguard and Holyhead both lose a Trent for a Coastal Lifeboat in 2028. Rhyl’s Shannon is replaced by a smaller Atlantic 85 inshore boat the same year.

The fourth is Angle, which guards the mouth of the Milford Haven waterway and its tanker traffic. Its Tamar class boat, one of the biggest in the fleet, is to be replaced by a Coastal Lifeboat in 2029.

The charity says it makes “evidence-based decisions” to have “the right lifeboats in the right places”, and that the new class bridges the gap between the Atlantic 85 and the Shannon. There are no station closures in the plan.

None of the stations between Port Talbot and Tenby is on the list, including Mumbles. In 2022 it launched more often than any other station in Wales.

The Mumbles crew had Swansea Council’s unanimous backing earlier this month, after Cllr Hannah Williams, whose husband saved 92 lives in 25 years on the boat, called the abuse of lifeboat volunteers in England “truly appalling”.

Chief executive Peter Sparkes said what would never change was “our charity’s purpose, to save lives at sea”.

The Trent class, introduced in 1994, leaves the fleet entirely by the end of 2028, as the RNLI announced last year. Fishguard’s volunteers will keep training on and operating Blue Peter VII until her replacement arrives, and the station hopes to give her “the farewell that her years of service deserve”.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.