Jesse Lumb, one of the brothers who ran the mill in the late 19th century and early part of the 20th century, lived on as a character long after his lifetime - even in the 1970s, the mill was still referred to as "Jesse's".

Jesse was remembered by his sister in another way: Annie Lumb (1857-1936) bequeathed £9,000 for a lifeboat to be commissioned and named after Jesse, who had died in late 1929. The lifeboat was stationed at Bembridge, Isle of Wight, between May 1939 and January 1970. In 1970 it was transferred to the reserve fleet. It was launched 294 times and saved a total of 224 lives in its service period.

As a consequence of its actions in World War II, the lifeboat was moved in 1980 to the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

In the early 1970s, Barry Constantine, service engineer at Lumb's, heard of the lifeboat and visited it in Southampton. With the support of Brian Exley, Barrie constructed a scale model of the lifeboat from material found at the mill. The model is painted in authentic RNLI colours.

Photographs of the lifeboat are courtesy of Barrie Constantine.