Nowadays when we hear mention of disaster at sea, we might think first of the loss of the Titanic or of environmentally damaging spillages from huge oil tankers. Storm warnings mean falling trees, roads blocked, flooding, power lines down. We probably don’t think too much about ships at risk. Enormous container ships can cope with the weather and there aren’t as many fishing boats as there once were. But it wasn’t always like that.

In the days before HGVs and container ships goods were transported internationally and round our coasts in smaller cargo ships which were very vulnerable in bad weather. Over the centuries there were countless wrecks and countless rescue attempts, with much loss of life. The first purpose built lifeboat was launched in 1785, in the first half of the nineteenth century the organisation which was to become the RNLI was established to provide a search and rescue service twenty four hours a day and seven days a week, manned by volunteers who were usually fisherman or former seamen. Over the following two centuries more than 600 of these volunteers have lost their lives but never as many at one time as in the Mexico disaster off Southport in 1886.

The Mexico was a German ship bound for Ecuador which had set out from Liverpool on the 5th of December. A violent storm blew up as she was passing Great Orme Head. She was badly damaged and blown off course towards St Annes, then driven aground by heavy seas on to a sandbank in the Ribble estuary.

On the evening of the 9th of December distress signals were seen on shore and the Southport lifeboat, the Eliza Fearnley, was launched with a crew of sixteen. She managed to reach the Mexico, but overturned in the heavy seas before she could attempt a rescue. Two of the crew were trapped under the boat but succeeded in freeing themselves and swimming to the shore to raise the alarm. All of the others drowned. Not long after the Eliza Fearnley, the St Annes lifeboat, the Laura Janet had also set out with thirteen men on board. They rowed out for 500 yards before hoisting their sails, the only driving force until the first steam powered lifeboat in 1890. Boats had no motors until 1905. Despite the weather, the Laura Janet is known to have reached two miles off Southport, but nothing is known of her after that. The boat was found upturned the next morning and all the crew were lost. Finally the new Lytham lifeboat, the Charles Biggs, put to sea for the very first time. The crew rowed one and a half miles to the Mexico where they found that the men had lashed themselves to the rigging for safety. They got them off and brought them to the shore before the Mexico sank. All her sailors survived. Twenty seven lifeboat men perished.

The loss of so many men aroused enormous public sympathy, with a fund being opened to help the sixteen widows and fifty children left without support. Donors included Queen Victoria and the German emperor and a large sum of money was raised, some of it used to build memorials, the most striking being the statue in St Annes of a lifeboatman looking out to sea. The disaster also raised awareness throughout the country of the vital work of the lifeboat service and the public began to recognise the need to support these volunteers. In 1891 a Manchester man, Sir Charles Macara, organised Lifeboat Saturday, a parade of bands, floats and lifeboats through the city, and the first recorded street collection for charity took place. His wife went on to form a Ladies Guild to organise further street collections and other fund raising activities. Within ten years, there were forty Ladies Guilds all over the country, doubling the income of the RNLI. Their work continues today to raise the funds needed to support the work of the lifeboat service, which receives no government funding and which is still almost entirely staffed by volunteers who risk their lives every time they put to sea.

While the tragic loss of the crews of the Southport and St Annes lifeboats remains to this day the worst disaster in the history of the RNLI, it also had a positive consequence in raising awareness of the work of this vital service.