Qualla: Douglas Lifeboat Station

Douglas Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. On the night of 20 November 1830, Sir William Hillary was 59 years old. He had founded the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck six years earlier, weathered previous rescues in which he had already received two Gold Medals, and was, by any reasonable measure, allowed to stay ashore. Instead, when the Royal Mail steamer St George was driven onto Conister Rocks in Douglas Bay, he climbed aboard the lifeboat True Blue with coxswain Isaac Vondy, 14 crew, and two volunteers, and went to get the crew off. After two hours of rowing through violent seas, the boat finally got alongside. Hillary and three other men were washed overboard, recovered to the boat, and Hillary finished the rescue with six broken ribs. The RNLI's third Gold Medal went to him. This is the station those people built.

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Image: Man vyi | Public domain

Douglas Lifeboat Station: Before the Institution Existed

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Glyn Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Douglas had a lifeboat before there was a national institution to run one. In 1802, John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl and then Governor of the Isle of Man, paid 130 pounds for an 8-oared, 25-foot boat he named Atholl. There is no record of her ever performing a rescue, which is not...

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Image: Glyn Baker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Douglas Lifeboat Station: True Blue

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finn Bjorklid, Public domain. The most famous of Douglas's early boats was True Blue, in service from the late 1820s until 1851. Her record includes the St George rescue described above, the salvage launch to the Glasgow boat Eclipse in January 1830 with a boat that was not yet finished, and a long string of ...

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Image: Finn Bjorklid | Public domain

Douglas Lifeboat Station: The Modern Station

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ojsyork, CC BY 4.0. Today the station sits at Battery Pier on Douglas Head, just below the lighthouse and the headland's small cluster of memorials. The boats have evolved through every generation of RNLI design, from rowed wooden lifeboats to steam, then motor, then the Mersey-class Ruby Clery, ret...

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Image: Ojsyork | CC BY 4.0

Douglas Lifeboat Station: The Tower in the Bay

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Padyer at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The small castellated structure visible offshore from Douglas Head is not decorative whimsy. It is the Tower of Refuge, built by Hillary in 1832 on the Conister Rocks that had wrecked the Vigilant and the St George and any number of vessels less famous. Stocked with provisions an...

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Image: Padyer at English Wikipedia | Public domain