My great grandfather, Richard Wills, joined the Poole lifeboat in 1871 – and it was a life fraught with danger. Throughout his career, Richard’s poor wife used to nervously pace the hallway at home whenever he was called out. And with good reason, too. Coastal sea travel in the 19th century was dangerous enough, let alone sea rescues. For the period 1867 to 1871, there were 7,062 shipping ‘casualties’ on the British coast – episodes where a ship was seriously damaged. In these incidents 2,598 vessels were completely lost and 8,807 people died. This equates to a rather shocking 34 deaths at sea every week.
In the earliest years of the 19th century, before the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) existed, a vessel in distress might be attended by the local coastguard. However, this service was widely derided in many parts of the country as inefficient. In other areas, local fishermen might elect to go out to a sinking ship, but often their vessels were ill-suited to the purpose. This was the era before lifejackets, and most people could not swim, so the rescuers exposed themselves to great danger.
Some communities where shipwrecks were especially common began to organise a local rescue service. One of the earliest designs of lifeboat to be adopted was built by Henry Greathead of South Shields. It needed 10 men to row it, and was steered by an oar at either end. There was cork packed into the sides of the boat to make it more buoyant and to stop it sinking.
By 1810, a ‘Greathead’ lifeboat was stationed in about 30 locations around the British coast. Some of these locally organised rescue teams were very successful, but their coverage of the danger areas was patchy.
However, William Hillary, a retired soldier, realised that a nationally coordinated provision of lifeboat services would be more efficient and safer. He lived on the Isle of Man, and in 1822 he had witnessed the wreck of HMS Racehorse on rocks just off the shore. Local fishermen had bravely gone out to rescue the crew, but six of the Racehorse’s men had perished along with three of the rescuers themselves.
Hillary wrote a pamphlet outlining how a national rescue service could be provided and appealed to the Admiralty to fund it. Their Lordships were unwilling to support the venture, but Hillary did convince some private investors to help him. Consequently, the National Institute for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded on 4 March 1824. In 1854, Queen Victoria bestowed royal patronage and the organisation changed its name to the more familiar Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
A number of local charities continued to fund individual lifeboats within their own communities despite the existence of a national organisation. The RNLI prided itself in commissioning and using the very latest designs of lifeboat so that, for example, if their boats capsized they would automatically turn the right way up again. They also used a valve system so that their lifeboats could not fill with water, and their buoyancy was such that they were impossible to sink. In 1866, a lifeboat disaster at Gorleston in Norfolk resulted in the deaths of 12 lifeboatmen whose non-RNLI lifeboat was not well-suited to the purpose. Their lifeboat turned over and wouldn’t right itself so its crew perished.
In 1861, the lifeboat at Whitby, also run by a local charity, had got into difficulties as well. On 9 February, the crew was called out repeatedly. On the last occasion the coxswain handed a new design of cork lifejacket to his youngest crewman, Henry Freeman, on his first day with the lifeboat. The lifejacket had been sent by the RNLI to illustrate the superior safety equipment that the Institution could supply. The most dramatic proof of this improved protection came when tragedy struck and the lifeboat turned over: Henry was the only one to survive. The other 12 lifeboatmen without the RNLI’s lifejackets drowned. Henry went on to become an RNLI coxswain, and Whitby’s most famous lifeboatman.
These and similar incidents encouraged many communities, including Whitby, to accept a lifeboat service managed by the RNLI rather than continue to operate their own separate local charity. The RNLI, however, had its own share of tragedies in the Victorian period. During a violent storm in 1871, a total of six crewmen of the Bridlington lifeboat were drowned when their lifeboat the Harbinger was thrown up into the air by a huge wave and badly damaged.
Since its inception in 1824, the RNLI has been responsible for rescuing more than 140,000 people at sea: a magnificent tribute to the brave lifeboatmen, past and present, who have volunteered to risk their lives to save others.