The decision to put a lifeboat at Bull Bay was made by the RNLI in 1867 with a blunt assessment: 'an additional life-boat would be useful on that rocky coast, there being a large passing trade, and a long gap between the two life-boat establishments at' Cemlyn and Penmon. The cliffs and rocks between Amlwch and Cemaes had eaten ships for generations. The Marquess of Anglesey granted the land for the boathouse, the boat was paid for by a £400 gift from Miss Holt of Anglesey, and the first lifeboat - a 32-foot self-righting boat with ten oars - arrived in March 1868. She was named Eleanor at the donor's request, and launched from a small sandy cove that gave shelter even when the rest of the coast was unworkable.

Lifeboats were almost always paid for by individual donors and named after their benefactors, families, or causes. Bull Bay had four boats in succession. Eleanor served sixteen years. Curling came in 1884, paid for by Miss Curling of Camberwell. A new Curling replaced her in 1889. The final boat was James Cullen, funded from a £900 bequest by Miss Marianne Cullen of Nottingham, who had also paid for twelve almshouses in Carrington - a Victorian woman quietly converting her estate into housing for the poor and rescue for sailors. James Cullen arrived in 1904, housed in a new boathouse with a slipway built over the shore on steel piles at a cost of £2,000.

On 20 February 1915, the Cardiff cargo steamer Cambank was torpedoed off Point Lynas by the German submarine U-30. Four of her crew of 25 were lost when the torpedo struck. The remaining 21 abandoned ship in one of the lifeboats, where Bull Bay's James Cullen found them and brought them home. The First World War had moved the danger from rocks and storms to mines and torpedoes, and lifeboat crews along the British coast spent four years answering distress signals from ships that had simply been blown apart. Bull Bay's records show 41 launches across the station's lifetime; the Cambank rescue was among the most clearly war-related.

The RNLI committee of management met on 22 April 1926 and decided to close Bull Bay. Two world-class motor lifeboats - one at Holyhead, one at Moelfre - could now cover the same coast with far greater range and reliability than a rowing-and-sailing boat could ever achieve. The station that had launched 41 times and saved 63 lives was wound up. The slipway boathouse remained, and is today the Bull Bay Community Boathouse - a sailing and rowing club that keeps the lifeboat tradition alive in a smaller way. The Trireme Ynys Mon Rowing Club is based here. The cove that once sheltered the Eleanor still shelters wooden boats; the rescue work moved a few miles down the coast to Moelfre, where it continues.