A LIFE-BOAT museum was formally opened at Whitby on the 26th of July, 1958, by Lady Georgiana Starkey, daughter of Earl Howe, Chairman of the Committee of Management of the Institution. Whitby was the last station at which a pulling life-boat was in service. This was the 34-feet selfrighting boat Robert and Ellen Robson, which was built in 1918. The boathouse in which the pulling life-boat was kept has been converted into a museum, and the life-boat is herself one of the principal exhibits. Photographs, models, paintings and records, many of which have been assembled in recent years by the honorary secretary of the branch, Mr. Eric Thomson, tell the story of Whitby life-boats, and in addition there are a number of models of vessels of other kinds. The boathouse attendant is Mr. Harry ("Lai") Richardson, a former Whitby coxswain with a distinguished record both as a member of the life-boat crew and as a voluntary worker who has raised large sums for the Institution.

There are two other life-boat museums in Britain. One is the Eastbourne museum, which was opened on the 22nd of March, 1937. In this case the building was erected in 1898, the money being provided by a fund raised by the Daily Telegraph as a memorial to the actor William Terriss, who was murdered outside the stage door of the Adelphi theatre in London in 1897.

The other museum is the Grace Darling museum in Bamburgh, which was opened in 1938 to mark the hundredth anniversary of the rescue by Grace Darling and her father of survivors from the Forfarshire. The money in this case was raised by the Bamburgh Grace Darling Memorial Committee.

In addition, at a number of life-boat stations historical exhibits are shown in the boathouses, and at a few places former life-boats of earlier types are also on show..