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Southport And St Anne's Lifeboats DisasterThe disaster which struck both the Southport and St Anne's lifeboats was the worst in the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, with 28 lifeboat crew lost. On the 9 December 1886 the Mexico, a Hamburg-registered barque bound for Guayaquil from Liverpool went aground near Southport, in a full west north westerly gale. The Southport Lifeboat was launched in response to distress signals. When it reached Mexico it was struck by a heavy breaking sea and capsized. She was found two hours later about three miles from Southport. Only two out of the crew of fifteen men survived. Around fifteen to twenty minutes after the Southport crew set off, the neighbouring St Anne's lifeboat was also called out. The boatmen rowed out the first 500 yards, then sail was hoisted and the lifeboat proceeded to about two miles off Southport. In the words of Patrick Howarth, author of Lifeboat: In Danger's hour: "what happened there has never been clearly established. Two red lights were seen at Southport, which may have been signals from the life~boat. All that is known is that at quarter past eleven the next morning the life~boat was found ashore, bottom up, with three dead bodies hanging on the thwarts with their heads downwards. Every man in the crew was lost". A third lifeboat, from nearby Lytham, on its maiden rescue reached the Mexico, though not before she had settled on her beam ends, whereupon the crew had lashed themselves to the rigging. The lifeboat (having been rowed down the Ribble river for one and a half miles and, when at sea, having filled with water four or five times, and shattering three oars) rescued all twelve members of the barques crew. A public fund for the relief of the sixteen widows and fifty orphans was opened with the RNLI contributing 2000, with more than 50,000 raised in total. A memorial statue of a lifeboatman looking out to sea on was placed on the promenade at St. Annes. See also External link Enquiry report into disaster
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