A DONAGHADEE volunteer who has been at the heart of the Sir Samuel Kelly lifeboat preservation project, has been named a winner in the National Historic Ships UK awards.
Shirley Cochrane, from Donaghadee Heritage Preservation Company, was announced as the winner of the 2025 Marsh Volunteer Award – Shipshape Network, at a ceremony in Bristol on Monday night.
Shirley has been involved with the Sir Samuel Kelly project since the preservation society was founded.
She co-ordinates volunteer staffing, leads visitor tours, researches and writes promotional content, archives material, organises events and liaises with local schools.
With her own personal connection to the Sir Samuel Kelly lifeboat – her grandfather was coxswain on the boat in the 1950s – Shirley was judged as a ‘wonderful example of volunteering at its best’.
Built in 1949, the Watson Class lifeboat Sir Samuel Kelly served at Donaghadee from 1950 until 1976. On January 31 1953 the cross-channel ferry MV Princess Victoria foundered in storm force conditions approximately 8.5 miles NE of Donaghadee.
The Sir Samuel Kelly – with Shirley Cochrane’s grandfather aboard as coxswain – proceeded to the area and picked up 33 of the 44 survivors of the disaster. The lifeboat has naturally a special link to the local community as it was of course crewed by members of local seafaring families.
From 1976-79 the Sir Samuel Kelly was part of the RNLI Reserve Fleet. In August 1979, whilst stationed at Courtmacsherry in West Cork, the lifeboat was involved in the rescue of yachts in the Fastnet Race Disaster spending many hours on service, again in stormforce conditions.
The RNLI retired the vessel by the end of 1979, after which she was purchased by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. By the 1980s the lifeboat was in a state of disrepair as there weren’t the funds to restore or maintain her. Past and current lifeboat crew and other local supporters stepped in to bring the vessel home to Donaghadee.
In 2017 the Donaghadee Heritage Preservation Company secured the transfer of the vessel into its ownership from the National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI) with plans to undertake a full restoration and construct a Heritage Centre to house the vessel.
A shelter was built in 2019 at the cost of £11,000. In 2023 displays and a raised walkway were built and the project received Heritage Lottery Funding. In 2024, a new exhibition room was built and an outreach worker funded by the Lottery. Work continues to improve the shelter and exhibition space, with the next phase being to strip and paint the vessel’s interior.
The Shipshape Network was set up in 2010 by National Historic Ships UK, a government funded, independent organisation which gives objective advice to UK governments and local authorities, funding bodies, and the historic ships sector on all matters relating to historic vessels in the UK.
The Shipshape Network is aimed at enabling contacts and forging partnerships so that results can be achieved which would not be possible on an individual basis.
