The public are invited to attend a two-part naming ceremony by the RNLI for their new lifeboat, ‘Gladys Hilda Mustoe’.

The volunteer team at Salcombe RNLI lifeboat station will be holding a formal naming ceremony for their new Atlantic 85 Lifeboat on Tuesday, May 1. The ceremony will be held in two parts, the first in Salcombe, and then later in the evening in Kingsbridge.

The lifeboat arrived at the station in December 2017 and has been funded by a generous donation left by the late Gladys Hilda Mustoe.

Gladys Mustoe retired from Kings College Hospital in South London in 1999, where she worked for most of her adult life. Her job was to raise funds for the Kings Medical Research Trust. Gladys loved the sea and she enjoyed cruising, particularly in the Mediterranean, as she loved the temperate climate.

Although she was very ill with cancer for the last few years of her life, Gladys was determined to carry on as best she could, hardly speaking of the devastating effect the illness was having on her.

Gladys’s family and friends will be very much involved in the naming of the ceremony.

Mark Dowie, Lifeboat Operations Manager at RNLI Salcombe said: “We are really looking forward to the formal naming ceremony of our new B Class lifeboat following her arrival in December.

“It’s a wonderful occasion for us all and the wider community. We are extremely grateful to Gladys for her generous legacy - it’s an enormous privilege and ensures that the charity’s volunteers at Salcombe have the best possible kit and equipment to continue saving lives at sea as we approach our 150th anniversary as a station.”

The first part of the naming ceremony will begin at 10.30am at the Salcombe Lifeboat Station, where friends and family of Gladys will deliver speeches and formally hand over the inshore lifeboat to the care of the RNLI, and the lifeboat will be officially named by Gladys’s nephew, Clive Kirby.

It will conclude with the volunteer crew launching the lifeboat where she will proceed at slow speed past Whitestrand and Normandy to give the local community and visitors a chance to view her.

Once the tide comes in, the lifeboat will then launch and make its way to the Crabshell Quay in Kingsbridge for the second part of the event at 5.30pm.

At 6pm, it will arrive at the Crabshell Quay, and will be met by the Mayor of Kingsbridge, Chris Povey. Mark Dowie, LOM, will then advise the Kingsbridge Town Mayor that the Gladys Hilda Mustoe was handed to the RNLI, accepted, dedicated and named and that she is now on station to save lives at sea within Kingsbridge/Salcombe estuary and beyond.

To cap off the day, there will be a toast to the lifeboat and her crew, followed by a celebration at the Crabshell Quay at about 6.45pm.