After her withdrawal from service she lay for some years in a backwater of Dublin's Grand Canal Dock, but has now been returned to Ballycotton and restored.

The first acknowledged by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, as the RNLI was then called, was when they awarded a silver medal in 1826.

In spite of the danger, a local man, Dennis Cronen rowed out and rescued him and then sheltered him in his cottage for four days.

At the time of her launch in 1901, she was the largest ship in her day, one of the "Big Four", the first to exceed 20,000 tons, dwarfing the Ballycotton Lifeboat, which came to the rescue.

Mountainous waves were crashing over the pier and breakwater transforming the harbour into a seething cauldron, the spray was flying over the lantern of the 196-foot-high (60 m) lighthouse;[10] "stones, some a ton in weight, were being torn from the quay and flung about like sugar lumps".

[11] At 8 am next morning an SOS was received: the LV Comet, on station at Daunt rock, had broken from her moorings and was drifting dangerously.

Without waiting for orders, in horrendous conditions, Coxswain Patrick ("Patsy") Sliney took Mary Stanford to sea.

Mary Stanford made several attempts to get a steel cable aboard the Comet.

The Commissioners of Irish Lights vessel ILV Isolda had arrived and stood by while Mary Stanford went to Cobh at 7 am to refuel, and promptly returned.

When she was 60 yards from the rock, as darkness approached, the Coxswain decided the only option was to try to get alongside and for the crew to jump for the lifeboat.

On the sixth attempt, as the Mary Stanford came alongside, the two were seized by the lifeboat crew and dragged aboard.

(This moment was depicted on an Irish postage stamp)[12] They then went to Cobh and disembarked the rescued at 11 pm and then returned to Ballycotton.

[15] When a postage stamp was issued by the Irish postal service to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the RNLI, a portrait of this rescue was chosen.

[16][17] The design of the stamp was based on the painting by Bernard Gribble,[18] which depicts the last two lightshipmen being pulled onto the lifeboat.

On 27 January 1941 a mine exploded on the Ballycotton shore, demolishing the curate's house and smashing the windows in the church.

[19] Coxswain Patsy Sliney retired in 1950, he had taken part in the rescue of 114 lives and was awarded Gold, Silver and bronze medals.

An organisation called the "Irish Nautical Trust" announced plans to establish a floating museum in Grand Canal Dock.

A group was formed to return Mary Stanford to Ballycotton by April 2014[1][22] where, after restoration work, she was put on display.