Two volunteers from New Quay lifeboat station travelled 313 miles to Penlee in Cornwall on 7 November – to present a set of old cast-iron door handles. Mechanic Bernie Davies explains: ‘On reading on Facebook that someone had stolen the old Penlee Lifeboat Station door handle, I was shocked and upset. I remembered I had kept our old lifeboat station’s cast-iron door handles, which were exactly the same. I saw that they were appealing for replicas, so I went to my garage and rummaged around.’ The theft of the Penlee door handle was a loss felt all around the RNLI, as it was from this station that the lifeboat Solomon Browne set out on 19 December 1981, never to return. Sixteen people were lost that night,
including eight volunteer lifeboat crew.