Qualla: Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station

Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The.Q, CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 1829, a fishing smack called the Peggy capsized in Sligo Bay as it tried to come ashore. A man named James Mulligan and two companions waded into the surf and pulled two crewmen out of the water. One later died. Three years on, in February 1832, the pleasure boat Caroline sank near Sligo with two aboard; a Mullaghmore boatman called Michael Duffy launched a yawl with five other men and saved one of them. Both Mulligan and Duffy were awarded the silver medal of the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck - the body that twenty-two years later became the RNLI. They had no lifeboats, no training, no station. They had the sea and the willingness to enter it.

Image: The.Q | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station: The Station That Came 170 Years Late

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nonamemaynooth, CC BY-SA 4.0. Despite Sligo Bay's long record of rescue and disaster, the RNLI did not formally establish a station at Rosses Point until 30 May 1998. The bay had been served by neighbouring stations, by individual boatmen, by sheer luck. The 1998 founding finally placed an institutional lifeb...

Image: Nonamemaynooth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station: Spix's Macaw, and What That Name Means

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Niallio77, CC BY-SA 3.0. The lifeboat that arrived in 1992, re-hulled and pressed into service, carried the name Spix's Macaw - after a small blue parrot native to a single Brazilian river system, then on the edge of extinction. The bird was declared extinct in the wild in 1999. RNLI lifeboats often carr...

Image: Niallio77 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station: Elsinore, the Boathouse, the Boat

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geofreund1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The permanent boathouse at Rosses Point went up in the shadow of Elsinore House - the ivy-covered ruin where the Yeats family had spent their childhood summers. It holds the lifeboat and launch tractor, with crew facilities, a workshop, and a small RNLI shop. On 26 February 2002 ...

Image: Geofreund1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sligo Bay Lifeboat Station: Sheila and Dennis

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sytheston at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The replacement, B-888, was named Sheila & Dennis Tongue. Sheila and Dennis Tongue had been born in Birmingham and later moved to Exmouth on the Devon coast, where they grew to appreciate the work of the RNLI watching the lifeboat go out from their adopted hometown. They left the...

Image: Sytheston at English Wikipedia | Public domain