Clifden Lifeboat Station
| All-Weather Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
| Launch Method | Afloat |
| Address | The Quay, Clifden, County Galway, Ireland |
| Telephone | 095 21775 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Clifden Lifeboat Station serves the rugged, island-fringed coast of Connemara from the small town of Clifden, at the head of Clifden Bay in west County Galway. Established in 1988, the station covers a remote and beautiful stretch of the Atlantic coast, and operates both a Shannon-class all-weather lifeboat and an Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat, providing fast cover across this scattered seascape of bays, channels and islands.
A lifeboat station was established at Clifden in 1988 to improve cover along the Connemara coast, an intricate shoreline of inlets and islands long known to fishermen and, in earlier centuries, to shipwreck — the brig Halifax was lost in Ardbear Bay in 1847. The station began with an inshore lifeboat, and an Atlantic-class boat later allowed faster cover across Clifden Bay and out towards the open Atlantic. The current Atlantic 85, Joyce King (B-869), arrived in 2013. In 2022 the station received an all-weather Shannon-class lifeboat, 13-43 St Christopher — the first RNLI ‘Launch a Memory’ lifeboat in Ireland, her hull carrying the names of thousands of loved ones who were remembered through donations. The station’s boats range north among the islands of Connemara and south to the notorious tides of Slyne Head, a graveyard of sailing ships in earlier centuries. From the quay at Clifden, the two boats together cover one of the most scenic but exposed coasts in the west of Ireland.
