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The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster

Off Mousehole, Cornwall

Eight lifeboatmen lost trying to save the crew of the Union Star.

On the night of 19 December 1981, the coaster Union Star lost power in a hurricane off Cornwall. The Penlee lifeboat, Solomon Browne, went to help and managed to take some people off, but both vessels were lost.

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When
19 December 1981
Where
50.0700, -5.5300
Group
Shipwrecks

Visiting

The old Penlee lifeboat station, with its memorial garden, is near Mousehole.

Cover of Blood and Gold by Cale Mills
Read the full story in the book

Blood and Gold

Sixteen true stories of mutiny, mercy, treasure and the gallows from the Golden Age of Piracy: Henry Every, Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, Edward England, Howell Davis, Christopher Moody, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, Israel Hands, Calico Jack, Edward Low, Captain William Kidd and Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy. Where the record is uncertain, the book says so.

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