Qualla: Ballycotton Lifeboat Station

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kevin higgins, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lighthouse on Ballycotton Island is 196 feet tall - sixty metres of granite tower rising from a rock half a kilometre offshore. On the morning of 10 February 1936, sea spray was being blown clean over the top of it. The wind was a measured hurricane, force twelve on the Beaufort scale, and the seven men of the Ballycotton lifeboat had walked, unsummoned, down to their boathouse and were waiting. Someone, somewhere off the East Cork coast, was going to need them. They could not have guessed that what was coming would keep them at sea for forty-nine hours, that they would attempt six separate boardings in seas they could not see across, that they would ram their own boat against a lightship in the dark, and that when it ended their coxswain Patrick Sliney would be the first man in the history of the RNLI ever to win a gold medal for an Irish service.

Image: kevin higgins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: The Station Before the Storm

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aubrey Dale, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded in London in 1824 but came late to the Irish coast. By 1854, when the RNLI began a major Irish expansion, there were still only four lifeboats stationed around the entire island. A snowstorm in February 1855 stranded a barque in...

Image: Aubrey Dale | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: The Daunt Lightship

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zairon, CC BY 4.0. The Daunt Rock sits ten miles east-southeast of Cork Harbour entrance, a shallow ledge that has wrecked ships for as long as ships have used the harbour. A lightship - a manned floating lighthouse - had been moored over it since the nineteenth century, riding to massive anchors t...

Image: Zairon | CC BY 4.0

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: Five Attempts in the Dark

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kondephy, CC BY-SA 4.0. The next day they went out again, warning passing ships about the lightship's drifted position. They returned to Cobh for fuel, found the petrol was not ready, lost more hours waiting. When they got back to the lightship she had drifted again, into a position so close to the rock...

Image: Kondephy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: The Medals

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Irish Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Own photograph of stamp., Public domain. The RNLI awards medals sparingly. Gold medals - the very highest service award - are given perhaps once a decade in the entire institution. After the Daunt Rock rescue, the Institution awarded coxswain Patrick Sliney the gold medal: his rescue ranks among the dozen most decorated...

Image: Irish Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Own photograph of stamp. | Public domain

Ballycotton Lifeboat Station: The Family Trade

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look at the Ballycotton medal roll and the names repeat. Slineys and Walshes again and again across the twentieth century. Coxswain Richard Harding won a silver medal in 1911 for saving nine from the Tadorna in a November storm - twelve others on the same ship were rescued by roc...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0