Heroes of the high seas
IN the 200 years since the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was founded, more than 144,000 lives have been saved and, sadly, 600 courageous crew members have died in the process. To celebrate the anniversary, a 200 Voices podcast series has been launched, in which volunteers, supporters and the rescued recount their stories, and, on Saturday, ‘RNLI 200: The Exhibition’ opens at Historic Dockyard Chatham, Kent.
In 1823, Sir William Hillary, resident of the Isle of Man, wrote a pamphlet detailing plans for a lifeboat service for the UK and Ireland. There were then some 1,800 shipwrecks a year in British waters and he often assisted in rescues off the Manx coast. Hillary’s idea to institute ‘a large body of men… in constant readiness to risk their own lives for the preservation of those whom they have never known or seen, perhaps of another nation, merely because they are fellow creatures in extreme peril’ was a noble one. When the Admiralty refused to help, he targeted London Society, garnering the support of politicians, philanthropists, bankers and so on, and, finally, George IV. The Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (as it was known for 30 years) was established on March 4, 1824, at the famed City of London Tavern in Bishopsgate—it was later called ‘the best thing to come out of a pub’.
The stories of men and women who have battled storms to save others are central to the exhibition, such as ‘the girl with windswept hair’ Grace Darling and the less wellknown Henry Blogg,’s final voyage; the ship’s wreck on a reef off the Isle of Man in 1822 is said to have inspired Hillary.
