Stories of bravery linked to Skegness Lifeboat picture

A woman from Teeside is seeking help with exploring her family tree, which she says has uncovered fascinating stories of bravery connecting her with former Skegness Lifeboat crew members.
Samuel Moody, coxswain on Skegness Lifeboat in 1852.Samuel Moody, coxswain on Skegness Lifeboat in 1852.
Samuel Moody, coxswain on Skegness Lifeboat in 1852.

Carolyn Liburd has made it her lockdown quest to find out more about a photograph of the crew from 1893, which was featured in an article in the Skegness Standard on July 20, 1932.

Until she began her research, she says she had no idea about her links with Lincolnshire.

"My mother's family was from Wolverhampton but she married a farmer from the North East and moved to a farm near Hartlepool in the 1960s," Carolyn explained..

Carolyn Liburd is hoping the original image from this article in the Skegness Standard of 1932 still exists.Carolyn Liburd is hoping the original image from this article in the Skegness Standard of 1932 still exists.
Carolyn Liburd is hoping the original image from this article in the Skegness Standard of 1932 still exists.

"I had no idea her family had roots from Lincolnshire until I started researching the family tree after she died.

"The link to Skegness fascinated me because there are just so many stories connected to that branch of the family.

"My 4x great-grandmother was the only one in her family who moved away from the area. - she married a farm labourer rather than a fisherman.

"But her father, brothers, cousins, nephews and nieces stayed in Winthorpe and Skegness for generations."

The naming ceremony of the RNLB Joel and April Grunnill Lifeboat in 1917.The naming ceremony of the RNLB Joel and April Grunnill Lifeboat in 1917.
The naming ceremony of the RNLB Joel and April Grunnill Lifeboat in 1917.

The photograph she would love to find an original copy of features Tom Smalley, 'Old Joe' Moody, Joe Grunnill, John Moody, Frank Moody, Montgomery Grunnill, Dashwood Grunnill, Charles Grunill, Harry Grunnill, John Green, Edwin Grunnill, Arkin Moody, Amos Grunnill and Edward Grunnill.

"Three of the men in the photograph, Edwin, Edward, and Dashwood, drowned just months after the picture was taken," said Carolyn. "Edward and Edwin died in July 1893, after a freak summer storm capsized their pleasure boat and about 30 passengers on it, resulting in the death of most on board;

"Dash, Edward's son, died in a terrible storm off the coast at Norfolk in October 1893. Ironically, his brother Mont was out in that very storm at Skegness, helping other vessels in distress with the lifeboat crew.

"Most of the men in the photograph are in my family tree, and I felt very proud when I uncovered some of the stories associated with some of them."

The RNLB Joel and April Grunnill lifeboat.The RNLB Joel and April Grunnill lifeboat.
The RNLB Joel and April Grunnill lifeboat.

Her research began with her 4x great-grandmother, Maria Moody, and her Lincolnshire roots.

"I was quickly hooked on Maria and her extensive family," said Carolyn. "Her father was born in Winthorpe over 250 years ago, a fisherman called John Moody.

"He was the son of the gloriously named Arkin Moody and his wife, Dorothy, who had moved to the parish of Winthorpe in 1765.

"They settled somewhere along Roman Bank, in a little house, long gone, near a path that cuts through the sandhills near Skegness to the wide expanse of open shore and the vast stretch of sea beyond it.

"The path still exists, as a public right of way across the course of North Shore Golf Club, but the small fishing and farming village of Georgian times is a very different place nowadays.

"Maria was born on Roman Bank in 1805, the year of the Battle of Trafalgar. Her three brothers all took to a life at sea, and her older sister Susannah married a fisherman called John Grunnill.

"Maria was the youngest of her siblings, and the only one to turn her back on the sea and move inland - but the census of 1841 shows her briefly back to visit her widowed mother on Roman Bank.

"Her mum was very poor - she was a pauper in her old age - but she was rich in family and many of them lived nearby on Roman Bank. It was quite an extensive clan and I've had great fun tracing some of the history of Maria's brothers and her sister, and her many cousins, nephews, and nieces in the area, and what happened to their families over the years. It's been a treasure trove of stories dug up from the records and archives of Ancestry and Find My Past.

"Maria's oldest brother, Arkin, baptised in the parish church at Winthorpe in 1792, became a fisherman like his father, and raised a large family of his own on Roman Bank. He was 13 when he became an apprentice seaman - though no doubt he had been helping his father out on his boat from a much earlier age. Nelson had his great victory at sea the year Arkin was apprenticed.

"Three of Arkin's sons, Joseph, Sam, and John, all became seamen too. I'm sure Joseph and John are in several other photographs of the lifeboat crew in the 1890s - if only I could make out their faces in the blurred images available online.

"John was Arkin's youngest son, born in 1829. He died in 1895, aged 66. He served as coxswain and second cox at various times. Joseph appears in one of the photographs named as 'Old Joe' - he was born nine years before his brother, in 1820. He died in 1896, the same year 'Telephonic communication' was made between Sutton on Sea and the different coastguard stations on the Lincolnshire coast. The day his obituary was posted in the local paper was the day the telephone connection was completed to Skegness.

"It read, 'There passed away on Sunday evening a familiar figure in the person of Joseph Moody, fisherman, one of the oldest inhabitants of Skegness, and who for several years was Coxswain of the Herbert Ingram lifeboat. Mr Moody was well known and respected by the many visitors to Skegness from the Midlands. "Old Joe will be greatly missed by a wide circle of friends.'

"Arkin's son, Sam, doesn't feature in the lifeboat crew photographs. He was wrongly accused of murder after getting very drunk in the Vine Hotel with his mates one fateful night.

"One of the men who was out with them was later found drowned in a ditch after being attacked on the way home, and the circumstantial evidence against Sam seemed strong so he was convicted of murder and shipped off to Australia.

"A death bed confession from the man who had actually committed the crime finally proved his innocence, but by then Sam had already died on the other side of the world and his young family, who had already lost their mother, had to cope as best they could without him.

"The workhouse swallowed the youngest of them, but luckily not for long and at least two of them became seafarers like their father and grandfather.

"One was known locally as 'Skipper' Sam, and the other, another Arkin Moody, married a lass from Boston (she was the daughter of a chimney sweep) and moved to Skegness with him to live the precarious life of a fisherman's wife.

"Arkin served on the lifeboat and, like so many of his relatives, I think he too appears in some of the faded photographs of lifeboat crew.

"Both Arkin and 'Skipper' Sam are buried in the churchyard at Winthorpe and their gravestones can still be seen there today. Skipper Sam's is decorated with an image of an anchor and Arkin's carved with 'Beloved husband… His last words were God bless us all'.

"But back to my 4x great-grandmother's siblings. Maria's older brother Samuel, born in about 1792, was very closely associated with the history of the Skegness Lifeboat. He was coxswain from about 1830, a position he held for many years.

"The original lifeboat house was on Lifeboat Avenue, and I found one newspaper article that referred to the house and the somewhat ramshackle collection of outbuildings around it by the nickname 'Moodyville'. Sam Moody was a brave and determined man, and was awarded two silver medals for his long service and his part in various daring rescues over the years.

His adventures were mentioned not only in many newspaper reports of the time, but even briefly noted in an article by Charles Dickens in 1856: '...there was a brig wrecked three miles from Skegness, on the coast of Lincolnshire. The coxswain of the life-boat, Samuel Moody, gallantly set out with his men through a violent storm, a heavy sea, and intense darkness. They brought ashore the entire crew with the master's wife and child…

"However, there was one life that Sam Moody didn't manage to save, that must have saddened him deeply. One of his brothers was called Joseph, and he drowned in 1827, aged 33, just off the coast at Skegness, when the vessel he was on got into trouble in sight of the shore, but too far away to be reached for assistance.

"His body washed up on the sand later in the day, together with the master of the vessel - the only two bodies to be recovered. Perhaps the incident was partly what inspired Samuel in his forty year long career at the helm of the lifeboat. His obituary in the local paper summed it up….He had often braved the dangers of the deep, and was successful in saving the lives of many of his fellowmen from peril.

"Samuel didn't have any children, but his brother Joseph had one son, Henry, who was raised by an older cousin after his father's death. Henry called one of his sons Samuel, after his gallant uncle.

"This Sam, born in 1857, was also a well known local figure at the time, although not for connection with the lifeboat. When Sam was a young man Skegness was still a tiny village, but he saw its potential as a resort, and worked hard to help it reach that potential.

"Rumour had it that he was the perfect model for the Jolly Fisherman in a series of posters advertising Skegness in 1908 - he was definitely short and chubby and jovial going from various photographs of him online. He was instrumental in keeping the rights of way across the golf course when it first opened, arguing that the golf club could not deny the people of Winthorpe and Skegness access to the beach across the sandhills, on a track that his family had used for at least a century before him. He was a familiar face to tourists up until he retired in the 1930s, because he had a horse drawn carriage which visitors to the town loved to travel in.

"Another of Henry Moody's sons, Frank Ward Moody, also appears in the 1893 lifeboat crew photograph. He served with the lifeboat for over a quarter of a century, and was presented with the framed vellum of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, in recognition of the lives he had helped to save. He was very proud of his family's contribution to the lifeboats -

"Acknowledging the gift, Mr. Moody remarked that his family had been connected with the local lifeboat for a century, in the course of which 132 lives had been saved. His father and grandfather had served before him, and his uncle was coxswain for 40 years, and at one period was uncle by birth or marriage to the whole of the men in the boat.

"The first time Frank went out with the lifeboat was the last time his father Henry ever went out. It must have been a bittersweet moment.

"The last of my 4x great grandmother's family connected to the lifeboats and Skegness was Susannah Moody, Maria's older sister, who married John Grunnill in St Mary's Church at Winthorpe in 1812.

"She was very young at the time - only about 16 if the records are correct - and she went on to have a very large family with John. Ten little Grunnills were born over the years. Many of them stayed in Skegness and raised large families of their own, and their name was associated with the lifeboat for many many years.

"I was proud to learn recently that two of John and Susannah Grunill's descendants even had a lifeboat named after them, the Joel and April Grunnill, launched in 2017."

"If anyone has any photos of the Moody or Grunnill family from times long past, I'd love to see them."

Anyone with information can contact Carolyn by emailing [email protected]