Qualla: Longhope Lifeboat Museum

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. Eight men. That is the number that anyone in Longhope will tell you first, before any of the museum's exhibits, before any of the dates. Eight men were lost on the night of 17 March 1969 when the Longhope lifeboat TGB capsized in the Pentland Firth on her way to a Liberian cargo ship in trouble. The crew were all volunteers. They were all from the same small island community. Many of them were related - fathers and sons aboard the same boat. The little museum at Brims, built around the older lifeboat Thomas McCunn, is partly a tribute to lifeboat history and partly something quieter: the place where Longhope keeps the memory of the night that took so much of itself.

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: The Station at Brims

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0. The original Longhope Lifeboat Station was built in 1901 on the north shore of Aith Hope, at Brims on the island of Hoy. It was a simple stone boathouse with a slipway running down to the water - the kind of building you see at hundreds of points around the British coast, plain a...

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Image: Chris Downer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: Thomas McCunn

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. The museum's centrepiece is the lifeboat Thomas McCunn (ON 759), the boat that served Longhope from 1933 until 1962. She was a 45-foot Watson-class motor lifeboat, the workhorse design of the inter-war RNLI fleet, built to handle weather that would put any ordinary vessel back in...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: The Night of 17 March 1969

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the evening of 17 March 1969 the Liberian-registered cargo ship Irene was driven by hurricane-force winds onto the rocks of South Ronaldsay. Around 8 pm the Longhope lifeboat TGB launched with her crew of eight to assist. She never reached the Irene. Sometime that night the TG...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: What the Community Built

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. Longhope did not collapse. The lifeboat station was reopened within months. New volunteers came forward - some from the same families that had just lost their men. The community held together because there was no other choice and because that is what these communities do. The Lon...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longhope Lifeboat Museum: A Working Coast

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Pentland Firth has not become any safer. Even now, with GPS and modern hulls and engines and forecasting, the tide race that has destroyed ships for centuries continues to demand respect. The Longhope lifeboat - a Tamar-class boat at the new station now - launches when called...

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Image: Alan Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0