Loch Ness Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Floating cradle |
| Address | Temple Pier, Drumnadrochit, Highland, IV63 6XR |
| Telephone | 01456 450355 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
On the deep, dark waters of Loch Ness, the RNLI runs one of its rare inland lifeboats — a fast Atlantic 85 based at Temple Pier, Drumnadrochit, on the Great Glen sea-transit route. The station was established in 2008.
Loch Ness has long formed part of the sixty-mile transit between Inverness and the west coast, opened by Thomas Telford’s Caledonian Canal in 1822 — but for most of its history the loch had no dedicated rescue boat. After the Marchioness disaster on the Thames in 1989 highlighted the dangers of inland waters, a boathouse was built at Temple Pier in 1996, and the RNLI established a lifeboat station on Loch Ness in 2008.
The loch is more than twenty miles long, over 200 metres deep, and prone to sudden squalls funnelling down the glen — busy in summer with tourist cruisers, yachts and canoeists. One of the station’s more unusual calls came in October 2020, to a Second World War Catalina flying boat that suffered engine failure before take-off; the crew recovered the historic aircraft to a mooring.
Since 2018 the station has run the Atlantic 85 Sheila & Dennis Tongue IV.
