Following the ‘Mary Stoddart’ disaster, a lifeboat station was established in 1859 at the Southern end of the Promenade. In 1900 a new boathouse was built, Blackrock Lifeboat Station, close to the Fane River estuary. The building still stands and is a listed privately owned building.

The boathouse was completed in 1900. It always housed two lifeboats both named ‘General R. Dudley Blake’. In September 1935 the Blackrock lifeboat service was withdrawn and moved to Clogherhead.