ICR proud to be working to support the RNLI

This month we were very excited to be commissioned by @rnli to undertake significant conservation work to an important historic vessel on display in the Poole Old Lifeboat Museum. Our work included surface stabilisation and consolidation treatments.

Thomas Kirk Wright is one of only 2 surviving unaltered Surf Class lifeboat and was built by Groves & Gutteridge at Cowes, Isle of Wight in 1938. At 9.8m overall length, beam of 2.8m and draft of 0.75m creating a displacement of 4.5 tons she carried a crew of 5. She was powered by 2 x 12hp Weyburn petrol engines driving 4 Hotchkiss cone impellers to a maximum speed of 8 knots with a range of 45 nautical miles. The hull is of double diagonal construction of Honduras Mahogony laid on English Oak frames and was designed to be unsinkable but not self-righting.

The vessel served for 23 years on station at Poole and ended service life in 1962. The innovative Hotchkiss cone impellers enabled the vessel to operate in very shallow waters which proved very valuable when serving as a Dunkirk Little Ship during the D-Day evacuations in 1940

The vessel and propulsion system received an @imecheglobal Engineering Heritage Award in 2025 

This propulsion system was a forerunner of the waterjets used on the latest Shannon Class lifeboats