In 1863, the six-oared, 30 ft.  ‘Agar–Robartes’ lifeboat was the first stationed at Porthleven, Cornwall. It had long been thought that a lifeboat would be useful because of the number of ships driven ashore in the area and on 31 July 1862, a meeting of the Lifeboat Institution was told that a local M.P., Thomas James Agar-Robartes was prepared to donate £150 towards the cost of a lifeboat for the village. The offer was accepted and the money was presented on 31 October 1862. The lifeboat was transported from London by rail and arrived at Truro station on 4 March 1863. It was then pulled on its carriage from Truro to Porthleven by a team of seven horses – three pairs and a leader – accompanied by crowds of people and a military band. She was named, at the request of the local residents, the ‘Agar-Robartes’ after the philanthropic donor and was in service from 1863-1882. The lifeboat house was erected on land leased from Mr. Edward Coode, of St. Austell, and was built for £145.

The ‘Agar-Robartes’, started out as a six-oared boat with a crew of nine but was converted in 1866 into a ten-oared boat needing a crew of 13. Its first emergency launch came on 5 December 1866, when it went to the aid of the Finnish barque Salmis which was seen running for the harbour in bad weather. It took the lifeboat crew an hour to pull through heavy seas to the Salmis, which had dropped both her anchors to avoid being driven ashore. Four of the lifeboat crew climbed on board by a rope and agreed to try to get the barque into Falmouth. They worked the vessel safely out of the bay during the night and into Falmouth, where they were thanked by the captain, his wife and the 16 crew for saving them. A month later, on 5 January 1867, a severe storm forced a large number of vessels to anchor in the shelter of the cliffs off Gunwalloe and Mullion. Next morning, a schooner was seen to be in danger of going ashore. It was too rough to launch the lifeboat at Porthleven, so six horses were hitched to the carriage in order to drag it 10 miles to Gunwalloe. As they passed through Helston on that Sunday morning they gathered quite a following from people who abandoned the idea of going to church so they could watch the excitement.

Alexander Kay Brander was born in Torpoint, Cornwall and began painting during the 1860s when he was a coastguard stationed at Tresco, on the Isles of Scilly. He later moved to Falmouth and then nearby to Budock. Various collections hold examples of his work, including the Museum of Cornish Life in Helston, the Old Cornwall Society in Newquay, the Annan Museum in Scotland and Marlipins Museum in West Sussex.