The Mary Stanford lifeboat, which was based in Ballycotton, in East Cork, in the last century, was the first lifeboat in RNLI history to be awarded a gold medal for gallantry for her role in the ...

The fate of the Mary Stanford lifeboat remains the greatest single disaster in the history of the RNLI. Of the 17 men lost, the body of the youngest, John Head, aged just 17, was never recovered.