Wexford Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | Wexford Harbour, Wexford, County Wexford, Ireland |
| Telephone | 053 915 2220 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
Wexford Lifeboat Station serves Wexford Harbour and the surrounding coast of the “sunny south-east.” Its lifeboat heritage reaches back to 1838, when the first boat for Wexford Harbour was stationed at Rosslare Fort, on the sandy spit at the harbour mouth. After the old station was lost to coastal erosion in the 1920s, the RNLI returned to Wexford in 2002, opening the present inshore station, which operates a D-class lifeboat.
At the request of the Coastguard, a lifeboat was stationed at Rosslare Fort, on the spit at the south side of Wexford Harbour, from 1838, with a larger sailing lifeboat added in 1858–59 to reach the dangerous offshore sandbanks. The remote Rosslare Fort station unusually had a paid crew, who lived in cottages by the coastguard fort. Among the Wexford crews’ feats was a celebrated 1840 rescue when master pilot Mark Devereux rode a horse into the surf to reach survivors of the schooner Mary, one of several Devereux services recognised with medals.
Severe storms in the winter of 1924–25 breached the spit and overwhelmed the station, which had to be abandoned; the lifeboat operated from Wexford Quay until 1927, when cover passed to the reopened Rosslare Harbour station further south. For 75 years Wexford itself had no lifeboat. As inshore rescue needs grew, the RNLI returned in 2002, operating from the Wexford Harbour Boat Club until a permanent station was built in 2007.
The station’s current D-class inshore lifeboat is Alfred William Newman (D-782).
