Qualla: Portrush Lifeboat Station

Portrush Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Faherty, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 1 November 1889, the Portrush lifeboat Robert and Agnes Blair launched for the first time in service. She had been on station less than a month. The call was to a French schooner, the Dryad, which turned out not to need help. On the way home in heavy seas, on the run back to Bushfoot Strand, the Robert and Agnes Blair capsized three times. She was washed up at Portballintrae. Three of her crew did not come home. The men who pull out of Portrush Harbour today work in better boats and better weather forecasts, but they pull out into the same Atlantic that took their predecessors that night.

Image: Mike Faherty | CC BY-SA 2.0

Portrush Lifeboat Station: A Silver Medal for a Drowned Boat

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Osioni, Public domain. The station began in 1842, before it formally existed. In January of that year, three fishermen drowned when their small boat sank off Portrush. A man named William Richardson saved the life of a fourth. The Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck -...

Image: Osioni | Public domain

Portrush Lifeboat Station: Ellen Myvanwy

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Two years after the disaster of 1889, the Robert and Agnes Blair launched again into a north-westerly gale on 2 March 1891 - to the schooner Ellen Myvanwy, anchored in the Skerries Roads with three men aboard. The lifeboat was beaten back for two days. On the third attempt the cr...

Image: Public domain

Portrush Lifeboat Station: The Move to Ramore Head

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aubrey Dale, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1900 the RNLI decided to relocate the station to the eastern side of Ramore Head, the long peninsula on which Portrush sits. A new boathouse and slipway were built at Lansdowne to take a thirty-five-foot lifeboat called Hopwood, which arrived in 1902. The station moved again i...

Image: Aubrey Dale | CC BY-SA 2.0

Portrush Lifeboat Station: The Katie Hannan and the Rocks

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Barmanitan, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 29 January 2008, the Portrush lifeboat 17-23 Katie Hannan, on station since 15 June 2000, was attempting to rescue three men in a rigid inflatable boat in extremely rough conditions near Rathlin Harbour. The lifeboat was swept onto the rocks and grounded. The coastguard took o...

Image: Barmanitan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Portrush Lifeboat Station: What the Wall Holds

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The current station sits on Kerr Street. Inside, the roll of honour remembers, by name, the crew lost in the 1889 capsize and the others who have died in service of the Portrush boats. The medals - silver, bronze - hang on the wall, an institution's quiet way of saying that some ...

Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0