Saving Lives at Sea

Every one of the RNLI's crew members brings their own unique skills to the station at which they volunteer. But they're all united by one key element: trust.

In Humber, the crew must work closely together to pull off the dangerous medivac of a fisherman with a spinal injury. On the south west coast of Ireland, the Castletownbere crew race to the rescue of a fishing trawler that's run aground at nearby Dursey Island and is in danger of breaking up on the rocks.

In the north Devon village of Clovelly, the crew launch in severe weather to assist a yacht that has lost all power. And the Ilfracombe lifeboat launches when cliff walkers spot a boat capsizing - and a man in the freezing water.

In the 200 years since the RNLI was founded, its crews have saved the lives of over 146,000 people. But even with all that experience behind them, shouts often balance on a knife edge. In Walmer, on the Kent coast, following reports of a major incident involving a small boat, the crew respond to another tasking; on arrival they are faced with mass casualties in the freezing water. In north Wales, the crew race to the rescue of a yacht that's lost all power and is drifting towards a wind farm, with a 75-year-old skipper at the helm - and his two young grandsons below deck. It's all hands on deck for the Plymouth crew as they wrestle with a small fishing boat drifting towards the rocks, with three casualties on board, two of them needing urgent medical attention. And the Aberystwyth crew must pull off the tricky extraction of a woman with a badly broken leg.

Whenever their pagers sound, the volunteers of the RNLI immediately find themselves under pressure.

In Port Isaac, on the north coast of Cornwall, the crew race to the rescue of a female casualty with a spinal injury; she's in a precarious position on a rockface, with the light fading. In Pembrokeshire, south west Wales, the Little & Broadhaven crew receive a mayday call about a capsized dinghy with three people in the water.

In Mudeford, on the Dorset coast, a search for a missing kayaker quickly escalates when it emerges that there are six more kayaks unaccounted for. And in Eyemouth, on the east coast of Scotland, the crew respond to an unusual rescue: a swan in the harbour that's become tangled in fishing line.