Qualla: Ballyglass Lifeboat Station

Ballyglass Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alvaro, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the children of Belmullet National School were asked in 2018 to name their new inshore lifeboat, Sophie Reilly's entry won: Clann Lir, the Children of Lir. The legend is local. The four cursed swans of Irish mythology spent three of their nine hundred years off the coast of Inishglora, the small island visible from these shores. A boat named for them, painted the RNLI's familiar orange, was christened at the station on 13 October that year. It joined an all-weather lifeboat called Bryan and Gordon at Ballyglass Pier on Broadhaven Bay, the two of them now standing watch over an Atlantic stretch that had no offshore lifeboat for sixty-two years.

Image: Alvaro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ballyglass Lifeboat Station: Closing the Gap

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1988, the RNLI's Committee of Management made a decision that should have been made decades earlier. The west coast of Ireland had not received a new offshore lifeboat station since 1927, leaving a long stretch of Atlantic with no heavy-weather rescue cover. Ballyglass Pier on...

Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballyglass Lifeboat Station: Named by a President

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 4 May 1991, the station received its permanent boat. Mary Robinson, then in her first year as President of Ireland, travelled to the Mullet Peninsula to name the new lifeboat Mabel Williams in honour of its donor's wife. RNLI chairman Michael Vernon formally handed the vessel ...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ballyglass Lifeboat Station: The Cave Rescue of 1997

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alvaro, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a night in 1997, the Ballyglass crew, working alongside members of the Garda Síochána's underwater unit and local fishermen, carried out a rescue inside a North Mayo sea cave that would mark the station forever. The full extent of the cave operation and the conditions facing t...

Image: Alvaro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ballyglass Lifeboat Station: Two Stations, One Coast

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alvaro, CC BY-SA 3.0. What people call Ballyglass Lifeboat Station is really two stations under one name. The all-weather lifeboat 17-15 Bryan and Gordon, on station since 1998, launches from Ballyglass Pier into Broadhaven Bay and out past Erris Head into the open Atlantic. The smaller inshore lifebo...

Image: Alvaro | CC BY-SA 3.0