Qualla: Port Erin Lifeboat Station

Port Erin Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sunshineramsey71, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 28 August 1883, a brass band met a horse-drawn cart at the shore of Port Erin Bay. The cart had come overland from Douglas, twenty-five kilometres away, pulled by eight horses. On it was a thirty-two-foot pulling-and-sailing lifeboat called Ann and Mary of Manchester, paid for from the bequest of one Richard Roberts of Blackley, Manchester, who had decided in his will that fishermen on a small island he probably never visited deserved a chance. The Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, Henry Loch, gave a speech. The Manchester gentleman's name was read out. The boat was launched into Port Erin Bay for a demonstration, and the village had its first lifeboat. Every lifeboat since then has come the same way: someone, somewhere, decides that an island they may never see deserves better than to lose its fishermen.

Image: Sunshineramsey71 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Port Erin Lifeboat Station: The First Boat, and the Slipway That Followed

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil Catterall, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ann and Mary of Manchester needed somewhere to live. A boathouse went up on Breakwater Road in 1884, opposite the Raglan Pier, at a cost of 250 pounds. The coxswain and his crew rowed her out on alarms for nine years, but ten oars in an Atlantic swell were never going to be e...

Image: Phil Catterall | CC BY-SA 2.0

Port Erin Lifeboat Station: The Names on the Boats

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Hoare, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every RNLI station carries its donors' names in the registry of its lifeboats. At Port Erin the roll runs from Ann and Mary of Manchester, through William Sugden, to the Osman Gabriel, a thirty-seven-foot motor lifeboat named in 1973 for Major Osman Gabriel, who paid for her. She...

Image: Richard Hoare | CC BY-SA 2.0

Port Erin Lifeboat Station: Why the South-West Needs a Lifeboat

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W.H.J. Boot, Public domain. The water between Bradda Head and the Calf of Man is the kind of water that punishes inattention. Tidal races run between Kitterland and the mainland. The prevailing south-westerlies blow straight into Port Erin Bay, turning the harbour entrance into a wall of white on a bad day....

Image: W.H.J. Boot | Public domain

Port Erin Lifeboat Station: A Crew in a Small Village

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Hoare, CC BY-SA 2.0. Port Erin had a population of 3,730 at the 2021 census, and the lifeboat crew is drawn from those streets. The cox and the helms are people you might pass at the Co-op by the railway station, or walking a dog up the path to Bradda Head. The station does open days in summer; in wi...

Image: Richard Hoare | CC BY-SA 2.0