Qualla: Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station

Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just after 3:00 p.m. on 7 May 1915, the crew of the Courtmacsherry lifeboat Kezia Gwilt put their backs into their oars and started pulling. The sea was glassy calm - no wind, no sail - and a steamship was reported in distress twelve nautical miles off the Seven Heads. As they rowed, they began passing other boats crammed with shocked, soaked survivors. Only then did they understand. The ship they were rowing toward was the RMS Lusitania, struck by a torpedo from German submarine U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale. She had sunk in seventeen minutes, taking 1,197 passengers and crew with her. By the time the Courtmacsherry crew arrived, every survivor had been picked up. They rowed instead among debris, recovering the dead, and did not reach Barry's Point again until one in the morning.

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station: First of Three

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Courtmacsherry's first lifeboat arrived in December 1825, just a year after the founding of the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Captain James D'Ombrain, Inspector General of the Irish Coastguard, had recommended three Irish stations - Arklo...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station: Kezia Gwilt

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1901 the station received a 37-foot, twelve-oared self-righting lifeboat built by the Thames Ironworks, paid for by the estate of an architect and wine merchant named Alfred Gwilt, and christened for his wife Kezia. She would become the most famous boat the station ever pulled...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station: A Neutral Sea

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War, but the war found Courtmacsherry anyway. The motor lifeboat Sarah Ward and William David Crossweller, the station's first powered boat, was called out repeatedly to pick up the crews of vessels torpedoed or bombed off the southern ...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Courtmacsherry Harbour Lifeboat Station: Supertaff and the Long Watch

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 24 October 1998, in winds gusting between 50 and 70 knots, the yacht Supertaff was demasted and capsized. A helicopter found her but could not lift the crew off in the conditions. The Courtmacsherry lifeboat Frederick Storey Cockburn launched at 7:55 p.m. and reac...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0