Name Helen Smitton

What is the vessel’s ability to demonstrate history in her physical fabric?

HELEN SMITTON has been professionally reconstructed in a way that leaves her main structure intact and her appearance as it was in 1910.  Approximately 95% of her original wooden hull remains as no frames needed replacing.  Some 70% of her steel floors and fastenings have been replaced or repaired, as have most of her major fastenings including the keel bolts.  Approximately 60% of the weather deck structure and her end box decks have had to be replaced.  Most major fittings survive, but 90% of the galvanised steel fittings and numerous bronze fittings have had to be replicated to the original specification.  She has been conserved using traditional methods and materials, with the exception of the use of epoxy resin to repair major structural members (such as stringers) and marine plywood to reconstruct the drop keel trunk.  Her original petrol engine and fuel tanks do not survive and the vast majority of her air cases are missing.  Her mizzen mast is original, but the main mast is believed to be a replacement. HELEN SMITTON’s construction provides an early example of a double-diagonal/calico hull and deck, and she has her builder’s number, TL47, carved into her stem.

What are the vessel’s associational links for which there is no physical evidence?

HELEN SMITTON has a strong association to the port of St. Abbs where she served from 1910 to 1936.  She was built for the station after Jane Hay campaigned for a lifeboat following the loss of all hands on the ALFRED ERLANDSEN, wrecked on Ebbs Carr rocks on 17 October 1907. Jane Hay went on to become the first Honorary Secretary of the station and, upon her death, she left a legacy to the RNLI which was used to construct a lifeboat house for HELEN SMITTON.  The vessel was designed by the reputable naval architect G.L. Watson and was one of only two of her kind built.  Her sister ship, ELLIOT GALER, was wrecked in the Milford Haven Waterway in the 1980s.  HELEN SMITTON was crewed by local fishermen as St. Abbs was a working herring fishing port.

 How does the vessel’s shape or form combine and contribute to her function?

HELEN SMITTON’s shape was influenced by those of previous lifeboats, with her design closely related to the 38’ sailing and pulling lifeboats.  However, being intended for use on a slipway and as one of the first purpose-built motor lifeboats, she has a wider beam and is more heavily built. She has a flush weather deck with an engine box amidships, but no protection for her crew. Her design encapsulates the seaworthy characteristics of a traditional Scottish fishing vessel, with a lugsail, wide beam, flush deck, low freeboard and heavy hull. She was fitted with a watertight and air tight weather deck, end boxes and engine box. Ventilation for the engine was taken from automatic closing valves in the end boxes.  Her engine exhaust amidships had a system of valves allowing the fumes to be directed to the leeward side.  Her large relieving tubes had flap valves to shed water from the weather deck and her lifting rudder was cradled within the quadrant, controlled by lines from the ship’s wheel. She had five rowing positions per side.  Her propeller was fitted in a protective tunnel with direct access from deck level, via hatches, for the removal of wreckage or rope which might foul it.  Her steel drop keel was hinged within the ballast keel, so that it was capable of being instantly cut adrift at need.