WATCH: Oldest lifeboat station in Cork - ‘We save lives, we’ve done it for 200 years’

THE Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) station at Courtmacsherry is the oldest and longest operating one, certainly in Cork, and possibly in the country.

An affable contention lies between the stations at Courtmacsherry and at Arklow in Co-Wicklow; 199 years ago, in 1825, both were the first to become active on the island of Ireland.

However, as the basic documentation and archiving methods of the day were no match for the sophisticated digital archiving procedures adopted by today’s RNLI, the particulars relating to key events from that era have faded with the age of time.

The first station house, it is believed, was built in Arklow, and stood in place without a lifeboat for a number of months, while it is said, in that same year, that Courtmacsherry RNLI received its lifeboat, though it took a while before it had a station.

Some 90 years later, on May 7, 1915, when the ill-fated RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the south coast of Cork, of the Courtmacsherry and Cobh, then Queenstown, RNLI were at the scene as the vessel went down in 18 minutes, taking 1,201 of the 2,000 engers’ lives.

For geographical strategic purposes, the Cobh RNLI station was later relocated to Crosshaven, rendering the Courtmacsherry station as the only operating station to have attended the sinking of the Lusitania.

At that time, the Courtmacsherry lifeboat station was situated at Barry’s Point, not far from the village. Since 1925, it has had three main locations.

It started out being housed where it is now, in the centre of the village. Back then, the building was the Coast Guard station which accommodated the Lifeboat.

In 1867, it got its own station with a slipway, which is still visible across the bay. Today it is under private ownership, but it is still referred to as ‘the Boathouse’ by the current RNLI volunteers in Courtmacsherry.

It later moved to Barry’s Point, where it stayed until 1998, before it returned to where it is now, when the building became available.

The love and for the community’s RNLI station is fierce. On the day of our interviews with Duty Captain and Coxswain, Mark Gammon, and station mechanic Stewart Russell, four additional volunteers, including three retirees, showed up in of their colleagues.

Station PRO Vincent O’Donovan, Jim Crowley, Dermot O’Mahoney and Philip White offered gems of tales, anecdotes, and historical insights.

As the Duty Captain of the lifeboat at Courtmacsherry, Mark Gammon is on duty 24 hours a day.

“The lifeboat attends to a call about every two weeks,” says Mark, a volunteer Coxswain.

And we’re just waiting for a service call. If a service call comes in, we launch the lifeboat and off we go.

From a broken-down vessel to a surfer in trouble, to a tragedy at sea, a call-out, or ‘shout’, as it’s called, can take any shape. When the call comes, there’s no way of guessing what lies ahead.

“We’re a long time at it,” said Mark. “There’s good commitment from the crew, so we just get on with it.

“A call-out could be a windsurfer in Garretstown, which is just around the corner of the bay.

“I think the last call we had with our old station boat, the Trent, was 64 miles from Courtmacsherry. Actually, we were near the Scilly Islands,” Mark recalled.

How was it that a station from the Cork coast attended to a vessel as far away as the Scilly Islands?!

“Well, it was a sailing vessel, actually, from Courtmacsherry that was in difficulties. And we were the nearest lifeboat that was tasked.

“We were probably the closest lifeboat, but the Scilly lifeboat could have been on another shout at the same time,” Mark explained.

Stewart Russell, who is from the UK and has previously volunteered at Plymouth RNLI, is the station mechanic at Courtmacsherry. He talked me through the training protocol adopted by the RNLI.

“The training is way different now to what it was years ago. It’s quite rigorous now,” Mark said.

“There are a lot of different courses to do, and everybody’s got to go to the Maritime College in Cork to do their personal survival techniques. That’s how they start off.

“And from then it all depends which way they go, whether they go down the training as a navigator, or they could be training as a mechanic, or down the coxswain’s route. And they do the different courses then to attain that standard.”

Stuart agrees.

“There’s a whole programme. It takes about two years to go from nothing to a fully qualified crew member.

“You have to do a sea survival course, personal survival techniques, a bit of firefighting and basic first aid, stuff like that.

“And then a lot of the stuff is done on station. We train them in how to tie knots, and use the equipment on boards. There’s a lot of sophisticated equipment nowadays.

“And then, once you do your basic crew stuff, you can then decide whether you want to go down the technical route, which is my side of things, or whether you go down the command and coxswain’s side of things, in which you start off as a navigator, and you’re using a lot more of the electronic equipment on board, and then you can carry on to coxswain command side of things.”

Stuart was originally a clock maker, but for most of his life he has been around engines, of one type or another, “from knee-high to a grasshopper,” as he said himself.

“My dad runs a body shop, and I’ve been building engines for my own bikes, race bikes, stuff like that,” said Stuart, “and doing a lot of work on cars.

I was a volunteer in Plymouth, and through a series of circumstances, I became one of the mechanics there on the 7 Class lifeboat.

In the 199 years that the RNLI has had a station in Courtmacsherry, what impact has it had on the village?

“There’s a great community spirit, and nearly every young fella wants to the lifeboat. It’s an integral part of the community here and has been for a long time.”

There are 50 volunteers including fund-raisers in this RNLI branch.

Mark added: “We talk about training: the boat is launched every week, and the crew go training once a week. So that’s where we keep our skill level up high.

“The lifeboat message is very simple, it has been since 1824. We save lives at sea, irrespective of who they are, and the basic message hasn’t changed for 200 years. And I think that’s worth repeating.”

Courtmacsherry RNLI Press Officer, Vincent O’Donovan added, “The Shannon-class lifeboat that we have here now on station in Courtmacsherry, arrived just last year.

“The Val Adnams is the most modern lifeboat in the RNLI fleet, and we were very proud to have the donor of the lifeboat, Val Adnams, here with us last September.

“It’s jet-propelled, it’s a fantastic boat, designed by an Irishman, called after an Irish river, the Shannon, and designed by Peter Eyer from Derry.

“So we’re very proud to have that boat here in Courtmacsherry, and the value of it is about £2.6 million, sitting there on the water, ready at all times to go to the rescue of others.”

TOMORROW: Our series on the RNLI stations of Cork visits Crosshaven