Stranraer Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | Foreland Place, Stranraer, Dumfries and Galloway, DG9 7AN |
| Telephone | 01776 705806 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
At the head of Loch Ryan, the sheltered sea loch that forms Scotland’s main ferry gateway to Northern Ireland, Stranraer runs a single D-class inshore lifeboat, covering the loch and the coast from Ballantrae to the Mull of Galloway. The RNLI established the station in 1974.
As the RNLI continued to place inshore lifeboats around the coast, a station was established at Stranraer on 4 June 1974, with a D-class boat kept in a simple boathouse and operating only in the summer months. The town sits at the head of Loch Ryan, on the isthmus joining the Rhins of Galloway to the mainland.
One of the station’s more unusual calls came in September 1984, when an amphibious car attempting to cross the Irish Sea from Stranraer to Larne for a television programme broke down on entering the water and had to be towed ashore by the lifeboat.
A new boathouse was built in 1994, and the station became a year-round operation in 1996. The current D-class, the Sheila MacDonald, arrived in 2018; in the RNLI’s bicentenary year, Stranraer marked its own 50th anniversary.
