Two hundred years of keeping our sailors safe and alive, rescuing thousands from rocks, sinking and / or possible drowning. The RNLI – Royal National Lifeboat Institution is there for us all who venture beyond the harbour or beaches and end up in some form of unforeseen trouble. We don’t hear a lot about the lifeboatmen or what they do, and that’s probably because we only tend to hear about when it all goes wrong. The tragedies and calamities, shipwrecks and loss of lives. And they, the volunteers who quietly, and at a moments notice just stop such events turning into dramas by saving lives at sea.
To celebrate this bicentenary on Saturday 8 June there will be a special concert of Seafaring Songs and Verse in St Peter’s Church with all funds raised going to keep the RNLI out at sea in what are normally the worst of conditions. The concert will be by local chamber choir, Dodecatus, directed by David Ripley.
The RNLI was formed in 1824 by the inspiration and determination of a Sir William Hilary of the Isle of Man, who saw many shipwrecks with ensuing loss of life and, following his witnessing of one attempted rescue – the HMS Racehorse that had foundered off Langness on the Island in 1822, he started to persuade others to create a National Institution ‘for the preservation of human life from the perils of the sea’. And so the RNLI was born.
Over the two hundred years the RNLI volunteers have saved 144,277 lives, or to put it another way – an average of two every day. This doesn’t include the Beach Lifeguards who, in their relatively short existence of twenty three years have saved around 2,000 lives as well.
Tickets are £10 and can be purchased from Eventbrite by clicking here
or from The White Horse bookshop at 136 High st in Marlborough