Qualla: Cloughey Lifeboat Station

Cloughey Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. On the night of 11 January 1924, with the Cloughey coxswain John Young away from the village and his brother and second coxswain Robert C. Young in bed with a serious illness, a call came in at 23:30. The third brother, Andrew, left Robert's bedside and walked out into a south-east gale to take the boat himself. By daylight, after standing by in worsening conditions, the Cloughey lifeboat had taken five men off the rigging of the sunken brigantine Helgoland. When Andrew returned to the village he found that Robert had died two hours after the boat had launched. The watching Inspector of Coastguards said it was the finest piece of seamanship he had ever seen. Andrew Young was awarded the RNLI Bronze Medal. He was the eldest of three coxswain brothers in a station that, between 1885 and its closure in 1965, saved 311 lives from the rocks of the Ards Peninsula.

Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0

Cloughey Lifeboat Station: Faith, Hope and Charity

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. The RNLI established a lifeboat station at Cloughey in 1885, after years of lobbying by local residents and a careful assessment by the committee in May 1883 that the village had plenty of good boatmen to form a crew. The new station was funded out of a £1,500 legacy from Mrs S. ...

Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0

Cloughey Lifeboat Station: The Beaconsfield and the Croisset

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the barque Beaconsfield grounded on the ridge at North Bock on 9 April 1898, bound for Glasgow with a cargo of teak, the Cloughey men found a crew who refused to leave the ship. Of the sixteen aboard, only two would come away in the lifeboat that first day. The rest insisted...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cloughey Lifeboat Station: The Young Brothers and the Aruntzazu-Mendi

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. Andrew Young took the new motor lifeboat William Maynard to sea in September 1931, the first coxswain of the first engine-powered boat at Cloughey. By 1939 the station was due for replacement again. The Herbert John ordered for Cloughey burnt up in a fire at Groves and Guttridge ...

Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0

Cloughey Lifeboat Station: The End at Manse Road

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. In 1965 the RNLI moved a larger 41-foot Watson-class lifeboat to the peninsula, the Glencoe Glasgow, and moored her afloat at Portavogie harbour instead of keeping her at Cloughey. The Cloughey crew kept operating her under the new name Cloughey-Portavogie. After eighty years of ...

Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0