Longhope Lifeboat Museum
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Longhope Lifeboat Museum: Courage, Tragedy, and Memory on the Edge of Orkney
The wind never truly stops at Brims. Stand at the old stone slipway on the southern shore of Hoy, and the Pentland Firth stretches before you — one of the most treacherous passages of water in the British Isles, where Atlantic swell collides with North Sea tide in a fury that has swallowed ships for centuries. It is here, in this exposed corner of the Orkney Islands, that a small lifeboat station was built to stand watch over some of the most dangerous seas in the world. Today, that station is a museum. Its walls hold the memory of extraordinary courage — and of one night that changed lifeboat design forever.
Photo: See Wikimedia Commons, See file page. Source
A Station Born from Necessity
The RNLI established a lifeboat station at Brims in 1874, recognising that the Pentland Firth — where tidal races can exceed ten knots and seas build with terrifying speed — needed a dedicated rescue presence on its northern flank. The first lifeboat house, costing just £228, was ingeniously designed with doors on two sides, allowing the crew to launch into either North Bay or Aith Hope depending on the wind. The first lifeboat took to the water on 25 September 1874, and from that day forward, the men of Longhope answered every call.
1874 Lifeboat station opens at Brims, Hoy. First launch on 25 September.
1891 Coxswain Benjamin Stout rescues 22 from SS Victoria, earning the RNLI Silver Medal and a gold watch from the German Emperor.
1906 A new lifeboat station with a proper slipway is built at Brims, costing £2,700.
1933 The lifeboat Thomas McCunn arrives, beginning 29 years of service.
1962 The T.G.B. replaces the Thomas McCunn as Longhope's lifeboat.
1969 The T.G.B. capsizes in a force 9 gale. All eight crew members are lost.
1970 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, unveils a memorial at Osmondwall Cemetery.
1999 Station closes; operations transfer to a new facility at Longhope pier.
2002 The Longhope Lifeboat Museum is officially opened by HRH The Princess Royal.
Service, Sacrifice, and the Pentland Firth
For over a century, the crews at Brims performed rescues that tested the limits of human endurance. Coxswain Benjamin Stout's rescue of 22 souls from the stricken SS Victoria in March 1891 was so remarkable that the German Emperor himself sent a gold watch in recognition. But it was Daniel Kirkpatrick — appointed Coxswain in 1954 — who came to embody the spirit of Longhope, earning three RNLI Silver Medals for gallantry in 1959, 1964, and 1968. In total, the station's crews have been honoured with 26 awards for gallantry across its history.
Photo: Alan Reid , CC BY-SA 2.0. Source
17 March 1969
The night that forever changed Longhope — and the design of every lifeboat that followed — began with a force 9 south-easterly gale that had been battering the Firth for days. Mountainous seas, heavy rain, and driving snow reduced visibility to almost nothing. At 8:00 pm, Coxswain Daniel Kirkpatrick and his crew launched the T.G.B. in response to a distress call from the SS Irene, a cargo vessel being driven towards the rocks east of Duncansby Head.
The last radio contact came at 9:28 pm. Then, silence.
The following afternoon, the Thurso lifeboat found the T.G.B. capsized approximately four miles southwest of Tor Ness. All eight men were gone. Coxswain Daniel Kirkpatrick and two of his sons — Daniel R. and John T. — were among the dead. So too were Mechanic Robert R. Johnston and two of his sons, James and Robert. Second Coxswain James Johnston and Eric McFadyen completed the crew. The body of Assistant Mechanic James Swanson was never recovered. In a cruel irony, the crew of the Irene had already been rescued by coastguard using breeches-buoy equipment before the lifeboat could reach them.
The tragedy devastated a community that numbered only a few dozen households. Two families — the Kirkpatricks and the Johnstons — each lost a father and two sons in a single night. A national appeal raised funds for the widows and children left behind. In August 1970, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, unveiled a bronze memorial at Osmondwall Cemetery on South Walls, where it stands to this day.
The disaster's legacy extended far beyond Orkney. The loss of the T.G.B. led directly to a fundamental change in lifeboat design: from that point forward, all RNLI lifeboats were built to be self-righting. The men of Longhope did not die in vain.
Photo: Chris Downer , CC BY-SA 2.0. Source
A Museum Built by Community
When the lifeboat station at Brims was decommissioned in 1999, the community of Hoy and South Walls refused to let it become another ruin on the shore. The Longhope Lifeboat Museum Trust was established in 2000 — a registered Scottish charity run by local volunteers — and they set about turning the 1906 boathouse into a museum worthy of the history it had witnessed.
Their centrepiece came home in 2001. The Thomas McCunn — which had served at Longhope from 1933 to 1962, answering 101 emergency calls and rescuing 308 people — was tracked down in southern England, purchased for just one pound, and sailed back to Orkney. She is now believed to be the only seaworthy vintage lifeboat still housed in her original station, and is still occasionally launched from the slipway on special occasions.
On 28 May 2002, HRH The Princess Royal formally opened the museum. Today, the Princess Royal serves as its patron.
What the Museum Preserves
Beyond the Thomas McCunn herself, the museum's collections tell the story of lifesaving at sea through objects you can almost feel the salt on. Service record boards chronicle past rescues and the lives saved. Oilskins, sou'westers, and thigh-length boots speak to the brutal conditions crews endured. Navigation instruments — a ship's compass, binoculars, dividers, parallel rulers — sit alongside rescue equipment including rocket lines, flare pistols, and ship's logs. Paintings by local artist Harry Berry (1905–1994) capture the drama of lifeboat launches in vivid colour. Medals and vellums record the bravery that was formally recognised, while quieter artefacts — a button stick, a keeper's personal effects — reveal the daily lives of the men who served.
A dedicated area honours those lost in the 1969 disaster, ensuring that the eight crew members are remembered not as statistics but as fathers, sons, and neighbours.
Photo: Sandy Gerrard , CC BY-SA 2.0. Source
A Living Legacy
Longhope Lifeboat Museum is not a memorial to a closed chapter. The RNLI lifeboat station at Longhope remains active — since 2006, the Tamar-class Helen Comrie has carried on the work that began in 1874. The station celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2024, a milestone marked by community events and a renewed sense of pride. In March 2026, the station's story continued to resonate when two grandsons of the 1969 crew reached the same age their grandfathers were when they were lost — a quiet, powerful reminder that the disaster remains a living memory, not a distant one.
The museum opens each spring and summer, Monday to Friday, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, with free admission. It sits at Brims on the shore of South Walls, reachable by the road that winds south from Longhope village on Hoy — itself reached by ferry from the Orkney mainland.
This article was partly inspired by old photographs and recordings that came to light when someone brought their personal memories to be digitised. It made us wonder what else is out there — in attics, shoeboxes, old cupboards — connected to Longhope Lifeboat Museum. If anyone holds old media connected to this organisation, services like EachMoment can help preserve them for future generations.