Historic Hero: Lifeboat Coxwain Richard Evans of Moelfre
11 May 2020
,The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s highest award for gallantry is its Gold Medal, only 150 of which have been awarded since 1824. Richard Evans (1905-2001), Coxswain of the Moelfre Lifeboat, Anglesey, remarkably was presented with two RNLI Gold Medals for heroic rescues at sea.
Richard Evans won his first Gold Medal on 27 October 1959 when in hurricane force winds the M.V. Hindlea, a small cargo ship, was dragging its anchor in Moelfre Bay and being driven onto the rocky coast. The captain of the Hindlea gave the order to abandon ship when only 200 yards from the rocky shore and coxswain Evans took the Moelfre reserve lifeboat Edmund and Mary Robinson, with an incomplete crew, close to the ship ten times, enabling the eight man crew to one by one jump onto the lifeboat. During the rescue the lifeboat was once washed onto the deck of the ship and back off, and the coxswain had to manoeuvre perilously close to the ship’s propellers which were churning at full speed, at times out of the water and above the lifeboat. At one point the lifeboat heeled over until its mast was under water before righting itself. Thirty five minutes after the last of the crew were saved, the Hindlea struck the rocks and was lost.
R.N.L.B. Watkin Williams, the Moelfre lifeboat from 1957 to 1977, on which Richard Evans won his second R.N.L.I. Gold Medal in 1966. The lifeboat was donated to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales in 1983 and displayed until 1998; it is currently in store but can be viewed by appointment.
Over his 50 years as a lifeboatman Richard Evans was involved in 179 launches which rescued 281 lives. In addition to his two RNLI Gold Medals, for other rescues he was awarded the Thanks of the RNLI on Vellum and the RNLI Bronze Medal, for the 1959 rescue was awarded the Queen’s Silver Medal for gallantry at sea, and in 1969 was awarded the British Empire Medal. In 1978 he was made an Honorary Bard at the National Eisteddfod.
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