Robert Rees of Morfa Nefyn tied a rope around his waist and, with the help of 4 other men, succeeded in saving 28 lives.

[1] After storms subdued, the Reverend Owen Lloyd Williams, Vicar of Boduan, wrote to the RNLI in London to ask for a lifeboat station to be established at Porthdinllaen.

After an inspection of the area in February 1864 by Captain J.R. Ward, and his fully supporting recommendation report, the establishment of a lifeboat station was approved by the RNLI on 3 March 1864.

The boat was made possible by a donation of £250 by Lady Cotton-Sheppard (née Elizabeth Cotton of Thornton Hall, Oxfordshire), the third that she had underwritten.

[4] Funded by a bequest within the will and by agreement with the executors of the estate of John Dominic Spicer of Oxfordshire, who died in October 2010, the new boat was temporarily kept on a mooring while work to build a new boathouse was undertaken.

[4] Due to the size and scale of the new boat, a new lifeboat house and slipway was constructed with much improved crew and workshop facilities, at a cost of £8 million.