The Lifeboat Service in Ireland

For the past two hundred years, lifeboats have been stationed around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, ready to rescue the shipwrecked. In times past, shipwrecks were much more common and there was little provision to help those stranded at sea. Places such as the west coast of Ireland would see hundreds of wrecks per year, from small sailing vessels to large steamers. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, volunteer lifeboats bgan to be stationed around the coast in the most dangerous are