The 41ft Beach Type Motor Lifeboat was a non self-righting displacement hull lifeboat built between 1931 and 1949 and operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution between 1931 and 1979.
The 41ft Beach type was designed for stations that required the lifeboat to be launched across a beach, where the Barnett and Watson cabin types were considered too large and the 35'6" types too lightweight. They were developed from the type, and were designed by the RNLI's consulting naval architect, James Rennie Barnett.
The type is sometimes referred to as the 'Aldeburgh type' after the first station to receive one.
Production ran from 1931 to 1936 and four boats were completed. In 1949 a revised version was built for service at Eastbourne. The later type had a similar design to the Beach type and often the Beaches are confused for the similar sized Watson.
The four boats of this type built in the 1930s were sent to Dunkirk to take part in the Dunkirk Evacuation. The Viscountess Wakefield was the only boat, not only of this class, but of those sent by the RNLI, to be lost in the evacuation.
The Beach type refers to five boats with similar characteristics, but as they were designed for the conditions faced by each stations there were significant variations between boats. All boats shared an aft cockpit with a watertight engine room ahead under a shelter. The boats built in the 1930s carried sails as an auxiliary to the twin 35-hp Weyburn AE6 6-cylinder petrol engines.
The first boat of the class, Abdy Beauclerk (ON 751), had large bulwarks at the fore end. The next two, Charles Cooper Henderson (ON 761) and Charles Dibdin, (Civil Service No.2) (ON 762), had low endboxes fore and aft. These three boats had large masts to carry lug sails.
The last of the pre-war boats, The Viscountess Wakefield (ON 783), had bulwarks both fore and aft and only had a mizzen mast to carry a steadying sail. All four had a wooden shelter covering the engine room and the forward end of the cockpit.
The type was put back into production in 1949 for one more lifeboat, thirteen years after the last had been built. The Beryl Tollemache (ON 859) was a revised version, with a cabin in the forward end of the boat and an aluminium alloy shelter instead of wood.
In 1963, two of the boats were re-engined with 47-bhp Ford-based Parsons Porbeagle 4-cylinder diesel engines.
The last lifeboat, Beryl Tollemache (ON 859), named in memory of the donor's daughter, was withdrawn from service at in 1977. During her 28 years on station, she had been launched 176 times, saving 154 lives.