Qualla: Queenstown Lifeboat Station

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lmacdonald21, CC BY-SA 4.0. At 2:10 in the afternoon of 7 May 1915, the day was so calm the water off the Old Head of Kinsale looked like polished pewter. Five minutes later the RMS Lusitania was struck by a single torpedo from German submarine U-20. She sank in eighteen minutes. Of the 1,962 people aboard, 1,197 died. Among the vessels that raced to the scene was the Queenstown lifeboat James Stevens No. 20, towed out from the Cobh quayside by a tugboat because there was no wind to sail her. She would pick survivors from the water and transfer passengers between ship's boats and larger rescue craft. The Queenstown Lifeboat Station had been operating for 49 years by then. It would close just five years later, after one of the strangest, smallest stories in Royal National Lifeboat Institution history.

Image: Lmacdonald21 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: Medals Before Boats

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The RNLI was founded in 1824 as the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, and from the beginning it gave medals for gallantry at sea regardless of whether one of its own lifeboats had been involved. Cork Harbour collected three Silver Medals befo...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: Funded by a Magazine

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. That changed on 8 April 1866 when the RNLI committee of management accepted a donation of £1,878 1s 11d from a most unusual source: the readers of The Quiver, a Victorian Sunday-reading family magazine published by Cassell, Petter and Galpin under the editorship of the Rev. Thoma...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: James Stevens No. 20

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Boats came and went over the next half-century - Quiver No. 3, then Endeavour (retired at only 11 years old), and finally the James Stevens No. 20. The James Stevens series was extraordinary in the RNLI's history: 20 lifeboats funded entirely by a £50,000 legacy from a Birmingham...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: Towed to the Lusitania

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mayday from RMS Lusitania reached Queenstown Coastguard at 14:15, five minutes after the torpedo strike. All available vessels were dispatched. Because the wind was almost nonexistent that day - which is one reason the German submarine had been able to manoeuvre into firing p...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Queenstown Lifeboat Station: Quiet Closure

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. On Friday 9 January 1920, the RNLI committee of management decided to close both the Queenstown and a companion station. After 54 years and unknown numbers of rescues, the lifeboat house just east of the Pilots Jetty on The Mall - granted by the Secretary of State for War and bui...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0