Today (4th March 2024) sees the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, founded as the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.

That original name outlines the purpose of the institution: far too many people were being lost to shipwrecks. It was an occupational hazard of seafaring, as old as time, and our records show both that many ships went aground several times, getting off again, before finally being lost, and that individuals could likewise be shipwrecked several times in their careers with the same ship or across several ships.

The RNLI was much needed, and its foundation timely. We know that in English waters alone 220 losses were reported in 1820, 434 in 1821, 191 in 1822, 281 in 1823, and 287 in 1824. Two-thirds of those in 1824 were accounted for by two devastating storms in October and November that year, and they covered everything from small local vessels to large ocean-going ships and everything in between. Numbers of shipping losses fell back towards 171 in 1825. [1]

It’s important to say that the loss of ships and the loss of life isn’t always correlated and the purpose of the Institution was to save lives, not ships, and their foundation took place against an increasingly globalised trade which saw growing numbers of ships in English waters, in turn escalating the potential for wreck events to occur.

There are certainly events where the total loss of a ship also entails the loss of all hands – particularly where the vessel founders at sea, or gets into a very difficult position at the base of a cliff or upon dangerous rocks which make rescue nearly impossible. Sometimes, though, a vessel might go to pieces but all hands be saved. The inbound liner Suevic was wrecked off the Lizard in 1907 and to this day remains the RNLI’s biggest rescue, with over 500 crew and passengers successfully rescued, no-one being left behind. Her aft section was salvaged in the end, and rebuilt with a new bow, but the remains of her original bow still lie on the rocks from which the lifeboatmen rescued all hands over a hundred years ago.

Conversely, a ship might remain intact but all the crew are lost, for example, swept overboard.

The RNLI and their volunteers helped sailors and passengers beat those odds, and they built on past efforts to improve the lot of the seafarer: from the lighthouses and light vessels operated by Trinity House that either warned ‘keep away, keep away’ or signalled ‘here is the safe light that guides you in’ [Our blog on Trinity House’s 500th anniversary in 2014] to the efforts of local communities and individuals. Services for coastal defence – the coastguard, the preventive and revenue men who made up the anti-smuggling forces, and the sea fencibles (coastal forces for home defence) – would often go to the assistance of vessels in distress where needed.

The impulse was always to help. It was traditional for ships to assist one another in distress where they possibly could as it was always recognised that they themselves might be in need another time. In the event of a collision, the colliding ship not stopping to assist the crew of the collidee, which would normally bear the brunt of the impact, was as strongly deprecated as a hit and run would be on today’s roads.

There were local boatmen who would always go to the assistance of others in various places, sometimes as a result of pilotage work, such as the Scillonian gigs and the Deal boatmen, a difficult and dangerous job: half the crew of a Scillonian gig were drowned going to the rescue of the Mary in distress in 1816, while in 1809 with the sea ‘dashing over them mountains high’ the crews of several wrecks, including the Admiral Gardner (now a protected wreck) driven onto the Goodwin Sands ‘were all collected on the poops waiting for that relief which the Deal boatmen seemed anxious to afford them.’ [2]

Elsewhere there might be local charitable organisations: we read in 1797 that the sole survivor of the John’s Adventure was brought ashore at Bamburgh, Northumberland, ‘much swelled’, having ‘nearly lost the use of his speech, sight and limbs, but by the care of the Dispensers of Lord Crewe’s noble charity, he is happily restored’. [3]

There were also technological innovations that arose out of particular tragedies. One tragedy at the mouth of the Tyne inspired a competition to build the first self-righting lifeboat that could be kept permanently on station wherever needed. In 1789 collier Adventure was returning to her home port at Shields from London, but a northerly gale prevented her from coming into port and despite her crew’s valiant efforts to weather the storm and keep trying ‘in a most tempestuous sea’ they were unsuccessful, ‘the sea making a free passage over her’ and she was wrecked with loss of life in full view of the local population on the notorious Herd Sand. [4]

The same conditions that made it so difficult for her to come in made it equally difficult for vessels to go to the rescue: ‘ . . . the waves ran so high that no boats durst venture to the assistance of the crew . . . ‘. This became a common theme of many later rescues by the RNLI: they often made they way to stricken vessels against almost insuperable odds.

In a similar vein, Captain Manby was inspired by other wreck events to develop his rocket apparatus, which fired a line establishing a means of communication with the stricken ship close inshore, to which a thicker rope could be attached to afford a means of escape. ‘His invention of throwing a rope to a ship stranded on a lee shore [i.e. with wind and tide flowing towards the land making it very difficult to get off again] proved the certainty of its never-failing success on the Elizabeth of Plymouth’ at Great Yarmouth in 1808. [5]

Each of these individual and collective efforts incrementally aided the safety of life at sea but they were all disparate efforts, either with specific purposes or locally focused. The establishment of the RNLI turned lifesaving into a nationally cohesive effort with specialist resources, harnessing that will to help others seen over the centuries and making it possible for members of the public to contribute to their work, as they still do today. They have always worked with local resources, crews and boats and other organisations, historical and modern, in what we today would call inter-agency working, their boats crewed by sailors who had intimate knowledge of local conditions and hazards, and whose efforts were always recognised on a national basis.

The records in the Historic England database of wrecks therefore include over 1,500 wrecks attended by the RNLI since 1824. [6] Without doubt the death toll in all cases would have risen but for their involvement. For example, we learn in October 1824 that the schooner Reuben, of and for Grangemouth, from the Baltic with oats, stranded at Cheswick Sands and went to pieces. The local preventive boatman and fishermen who came to the rescue were awarded £2 each by the Institution – not everyone on board could be saved, but their attendance prevented a loss with all hands. [7]

In peace and in war the RNLI has come out to rescue crew and passengers, and over the history of this blog we have covered a variety of events they have attended. For example, the perils of the sea, of hidden dangers and high winds, were exacerbated during the two World Wars both for the rescuers and the rescued, amongst minefields and under aerial bombardment. We have twice paid tribute to the ‘greatest lifeboatman of them all’ Henry Blogg, in his rescue of the crew of the Fernebo in 1917 and the wreck of the Monte Nevoso in 1932.

It is always worth reiterating that the conditions that see ships coming to grief are the very same conditions lifeboat crews have to battle, sometimes from the opposite direction, making rescue operations extra arduous. A lee shore or high seas – or both – could mean that local lifeboats had great difficulty putting out, and it was always a race against time before a ship broke up or sank.

Sadly the rescuers could also become victims, such as in the Mexico disaster of 1886 off Southport, in which all the crew were ultimately rescued (and the ship recovered to be wrecked once more as the Valhalla) by the Lytham lifeboat, the Southport and St. Annes lifeboats having been lost while attending the same wreck.

Historic England’s records of shipwrecks have enabled us to appreciate not only the activities of the RNLI in and of themselves, but also the documentary record they have left behind.

A very typical characteristic of wreck reports over the centuries is that they vary enormously between sources, literally between viewpoints. The view of events from witnesses on land is very different from those at sea, and we frequently reconcile reports that come in from different coastal settlements that will describe the same location of loss very differently: 2 miles east of one, 3 miles west of another, for example. Conflicting testimonies are often given in Board of Trade inquiries into wreck events, particularly in the event of collision, where each side will seek to blame the other. Ships in convoy will each have a different understanding of what is going on during a convoy battle or naval engagement, each holding their own while rendering assistance to another, while unable to see the whole, widely-dispersed battlefield and individuals on those ships will similarly have a different understanding of what is happening according to their rank, station, activity and location. All of this can be exacerbated by literal fog or the ‘fog of war’.

The perceptions of rescuer and rescued will also naturally vary, but this is where the records of the RNLI come into their own for the purposes of shipwreck documentary research (as well as human and historic interest) and greatly increase our understanding of events, of timelines, weather conditions, and the disintegration of the vessel, recorded in great detail.

For example, in our recent blog on the Solstad in January 1944, it is the RNLI’s record of attendance that sheds more light on the event than official convoy records, and as these events slip out of living memory, the documentary resource they represent becomes ever more important in our understanding of archaeological remains.

The rich heritage of lifeboats can be found everywhere on the English coast – from listed lifeboat stations to memorials to those lost in ships and from lifeboats, and the archaeological remains of ships which were attended by the RNLI. Why not go to the Heritage List for England and Historic England archives using the keyword lifeboat to discover that heritage in our listed buildings, protected wrecks and photographic records, or visit the RNLI’s History pages?

Happy Birthday RNLI!

Footnotes

[1] Information from Historic England’s wreck database, 2024

[2] Widely reported in the press in these words, for example London Packet and Lloyd’s Evening Post, Friday January 27 to Monday January 30, 1809, No.6400, p2

[3] Newcastle Courant, 11 February 1797, No.6,297, p4

[4] Newcastle Advertiser, 21 March 1789, No.21, p2

[5] British Gazette and Berwick Advertiser, 12 March 1808, No.11, p3

[6] Information from Historic England’s wreck database, 2024

[7] British Gazette and Berwick Advertiser, 4 December 1824, No.884, p4