Seaside Rescue: About the RNLI
Risking their lives at sea and battered by storms, wind and rain, last year, lifeboat crews rescued 8,104 people - an average of 22 people a day. And a lot of them don't even get paid to do it!
Below are ten more facts about the RNLI you may not already know...
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a registered charity, was founded in 1824, as the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.
Since it began, its lifeboats have saved more than 137,000 lives.
There are over 4,800 lifeboat crew members in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, including 340 women.
There are 233 RNLI lifeboat stations in the UK and Republic of Ireland, plus seasonal beach lifeguard units throughout the south west of England. It runs an active fleet of 332 lifeboats.
Day or night, when their pagers go off, the crew responds immediately. Called away from families and work, leaving an evening out or a night tucked up in bed, they brave the cold and wet to do a job that could kill them.
The average time to launch a lifeboat is seven minutes for an inshore boat and 12 minutes for the all-weather equivalent.
All crew members require thorough training, which includes boat handling, radio communications, first aid, navigation and radar training.
The RNLI depends on volunteers - ordinary people doing an extraordinary job - for nothing!
When a call for help is received, the coastguard contacts the lifeboat operations manager and requests the launch of the lifeboat. If permission is given to launch, the crew are paged - a call to action that is also backed up by maroons in some cases.
The E Class lifeboat is the fastest in the fleet, travelling at speeds of up to 40 knots (just over 46mph).
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