A NEW lifeboat named in honour of a woman who died in a coach crash was launched yesterday.

Jacqueline Hunsley was among 27 tourists killed in 1999 when a coach crashed off the road at Long Tom Pass, 135 miles east of Johannesburg, South Africa.

She was a lifelong supporter of the lifeboat service and her legacy has now helped to buy an inshore lifeboat for Redcar, east Cleveland, which will carry her name.

Her donation helped pay for a £29,000 D-class inshore lifeboat, crew training and computer upgrades.

The lifeboat, called Jacky Hunsley, is an updated version of the D class - one of the workhorses of the RNLI fleet - and is known as the Inshore Boat 1 (IB1).

Miss Hunsley, from Leeds, bequeathed the RNLI a share of her estate stating that the money be used in the area of the North Yorkshire coastline.

Speaking at the launch yesterday, Redcar RNLI lifeboat operations manager Dave Cammish said: "The crew is delighted and privileged to receive this lifeboat, which we will put to good use for many years to come.

"Legacies are a vital source of funds for the RNLI and without the generosity and thoughtfulness of people like Jacqueline Hunsley, we would be unable to carry on saving lives at sea."

Redcar RNLI helmsman Mike Picknett said: "The new IB1 has improved speed and manoeuverability compared to the D class Peterborough Beer Festival 1 that has served us well since 1997.

"It is ideal for many of the shouts we get off the Redcar coast and will enable us to carry out these rescues faster and more effectively than ever before."

After ten years service, the Peterborough Beer Festival 1 will now form part of a relief fleet, based in Cowes, the Isle of Wight.

"We had a little bit of a tear in our eyes as well," said Mr Cammish. "We are saying goodbye to an inshore lifeboat that has served us well for the past ten years and we look back at some of the situations we have taken her into. Every time she has looked after us and brought us back in one piece, together with survivors, and we will bear that in mind when she disappears into the dusk for the last time."

A plaque has been put on the wall of the lifeboat station to commemorate Miss Hunsley's donation.

Dr John Dartnell, of Marton, Middlesbrough, a retired British Steel research scientist, was injured when the coach crashed in South Africa, in September, 1999.