She replaced H F Bailey (ON 670) which had been stationed at Cromer until 1924.

In 1936 she became the station's reserve lifeboat and was renamed J B Proudfoot.

The lifeboat was built by J. Samuel Whites at Cowes in the Isle of Wight in 1923.

She was powered by a single Weyburn 80 hp petrol engine.

The Cromer station had four motor-powered lifeboats all called H F Bailey after the donor, Henry Francis Bailey of Brockenhurst,[2] a London merchant who was born in Norfolk and died in 1916.