Dan Snow's History Hit - The History of the RNLI

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

In the tempestuous waters of the 18th century, a revolutionary idea emerged from the depths of despair and necessity: the lifeboat. Born from the genius of Lionel Lukin in 1785, the invention redefined maritime rescue. Amidst the roaring seas, innovations flourished and a new institution was set up. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) which has been saving lives for 200 years, is funded entirely by donations.Hayley Whiting, Heritage Archive and Research Manager for the RNLI joins Dan to tell the tales of dramatic rescues past, including Grace Darling who braved heavy seas and treacherous winds to rescue the passengers of a steamship that suffered a catastrophic engine failure and wrecked off the Northumberland coast of England in 1838.You can find out more and donate at www.rnli.org/200Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has been saving lives at sea since it started 200 years ago.

It is a non-governmental authority. It receives no public money at all. It is funded by donations from the likes of me and you. And this month, it's celebrating its bicentenary. It's 200 years old. It's one of the oldest continually operating institutions on the planet, which still exists in its original form. It's older than the republics of China, Germany, and France. It's done pretty well. And joining me on the podcast is Hayley Whiting. She's the Heritage Archive and Research Manager for the RNLI.

And she's joining me for this special bicentennial commemoration. We'll be talking about its beginnings, and we're going to be talking about how men and women have taken to the sea in the most appalling conditions that nature can throw at us to risk their own lives to save the lives of their fellow mariners. It's an incredibly inspiring story.

It's an example of something that is good in the world. If you want to donate to the RNLI after listening to this episode, you can do so. We've included a link in the world. If you want to donate to the RNLI after listening to this episode, you can do so. We've included a link in the show notes, so please go do that. But in the meantime,

here's Hayley and I talking about the history of this remarkable institution. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Hayley, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. You're very welcome. Have there always been lifeboats? Did communities of people by the seat sort of row out, swim out, and help rescue people when they crash into the sandbar

and they're hopping overboard? Yeah, I think there's always been people who've been willing to put their lives at risk to save others at sea. But I think the sort of idea of a lifeboat is a bit more of a modern thing. So I think the earliest lifeboat, the inventor of lifeboats is given as Lionel Lucan, who in 1785 invented the unemergeable boat. So he was a coach builder and he had an idea to see if he could make a boat that wouldn't sink, that would turn back over. I always say that the RNI didn't invent lifeboats and we didn't invent lifeboat stations. These things both existed before we did. And Lionel was really that first person to have that idea of a more purpose-built lifeboat. How cool. I had no idea. Because when I was a kid, that's all we talked about with lifeboats,

is when they capsize, they can turn themselves back over again. And that seemed to be the kind of absolutely mind-blowing technology. But that's actually from the 18th century. That's right. So often people think that's a more modern invention that the RNI started doing that with its lifeboats in the 1950s, 1960s. But the earliest lifeboats we had in the 1820s could self-write. And so why did Lionel Lucan do this? I mean, obviously, we live on an island here in the UK. No one's more than 70 miles away from the sea. The sea carried all our trade and food and commerce. And so we were a maritime nation. Presumably, it was talked about. People wanted to find ways of losing less of our fellow mariners and passengers at sea. Yes, definitely. I mean, in the 1820s, when the RMI was formed, there was something like

1800 shipwrecks a year. So I think people would have realised just how dangerous the sea was. And people like Lionel Lucan were looking at that problem and seeing if they could find a solution. And people like Lionel Lucan were looking at that problem and seeing if they could find a solution. And he was followed by a man called Henry Greathead and he built what people think is the first purpose-built lifeboat, so actually to rescue people. So Lionel Lucan was looking at the design of a boat and making it self-writing, but Greathead was looking at it as actually for the purposes of saving lives at sea. So he built a sort of, like George Stevenson with the railways, he didn't just build the boat, he actually kind of built the system around it and the shore facilities, all that kind of stuff. He didn't really invent the lifeboat station. So there were lifeboat stations from the 1770s, but he was really looking at that problem of a boat that could be used by those services to save lives. So that would be self-writing. And it was called the original. And that was the design that a lot of early RNLI lifeboat stations

were using. The OG. Kids these days, they think they came up with everything. And here we are, 1790, they invented the OG lifeboat. I love that. That's in South Shields, right? So that is on a very difficult stretch of coast for mariners off the northeast of England. Yes, that's right. It is a really dangerous part of the coast. And in the 1790s, we'd have seen a high level of shipping as well. So what about the RNLI itself? How does this lead to a sort of national institution? Yeah, so like I said, lifeboat stations have been around since the 1770s, but they were locally run and they were quite sporadic. So there would be lifeboat stations in some communities and then there would be

none in others. And really the founder of the RMI was a man called Sir William Hillary, and he was living on Douglas on the Isle of Man. And he was actually actively involved in rescues himself. So he had been a witness and actually gone out and helped rescue people in the 1820s. And he was really moved by a few things when he was doing this. So firstly, he knew how incredibly dangerous it was for lifeboats to go out and rescue people. He knew how important it was that there was a rescue service on the coast to meet them. So what he really thought about was creating a national service. So what he was doing was really nationalising the idea of the lifeboat so that wherever you were and whoever you were off the coast of the UK and Ireland,

there would be a lifeboat service to rescue you. That's a big undertaking, isn't it? I mean, how did he go about doing that? Sir William Hillary is quite a force. He's quite an imaginative man. He was also quite a well connected person. So what he did in 1823 was write a small pamphlet called The Appeal to the Nation, and we have a copy of that in the RMI archives. And in that, he sets out what he wants this organisation to be. So he's saying about the nationalisation of it, that there's this national service, but he wants there to be medals for those who have been brave and rescued people. He wants there to be payments for widows and dependents if the worst should happen to the crew because it was incredibly dangerous. He wrote this appeal and he sent it out to the great and

the good, to whoever he could think of. And he also sent it out to the great and the good, to whoever he could think of. And he also sent it out to the British Navy to try and get them to take it on. And I should ask, you mentioned medals, because previously these people rowing out to save shipwrecks, are these astonishingly brave and altruistic? Or did you potentially stand to gain anything from salvage? Or do people pay you rewards for rescuing them? What was the motivation for these early lifeboat people yeah i think you're right there's multiple motivations firstly i think it is that saving lives and going out and rescuing people people would have witnessed

shipwrecks they also would have been involved themselves perhaps in shipping and a lot of early lifeboat crew in particular were fishermen so they would have known just how dangerous their part of the coast was. There was salvage. The RMI did do that in its early period, but the appeal that Hillary sets out, he makes it very clear that that is not the primary function of this new organisation, but really the key tenant of the charity would be to save lives at sea. I guess if you did dwell on the coast, you knew that it was worth going out and rescuing someone because next time it might be you. Exactly. Britain has the world's biggest navy at the time. I've always been sort of curious about this. You mentioned the approach to the navy. The navy just didn't pick it up. They weren't interested. No, they didn't seem willing

to take on this idea, whether they weren't sure that it was possible. So he decided to change tack. And like I said, he was quite well connected. And he went for more politicians, people involved in the shipping industry, people in business who he thought this would appeal to. And there were a number of politicians, particularly who took on this idea. And they were the people who were able to kind of get his idea off the ground. And so from its beginnings is not a naval thing. It isn't then a government thing either. So you say politicians, they helped him build an institution

that was separate from the state. Yes, the RMI has always been an independent charity and remains to this day. So I think those early founders were moved from a kind of philanthropic point of view that they could see how important this organisation was. They could see that the government weren't able or willing to take it on themselves. So they helped Sir William Hillary to get enough backing and enough people involved to get the movement off the ground. And initially, was it about sort of standardising, did people willingly submit, where they sort of, we'll subsume ourselves within this new body,

or were there a few different independent lifeboat setups? Yes, there were independent lifeboats. So when the RNI was founded in 1824, what it started to do was supply lifeboats to existing lifeboat stations, independent stations. There were already lifeboat stations in existence, and what the charity started to do was establish its own stations but also supply lifeboats to those independently run stations. And really the RNRI and these independent stations ran side by side and it really wasn't

until the 1850s that the RNRI had a kind of boom period, expanded much more and that's where a lot of our current lifeboat stations were either taken over or established by the RMI in that period. And is that also when Queen Victoria granted them the royal prefix, the R? She did grant us a royal charter, but we've always had royal in our title. Our first patron was George IV. I mentioned that Sir William Henry was quite well connected. So in his earlier career, he travelled the world with Prince Augustus Frederick, who was one of George III's younger sons. So he had that royal connection. And so we've always had the reigning monarch as our patron up until Queen Elizabeth II. So straight away after it's established, quite early in the 19th

century, the Aranallite, it takes its place really at the heart of British affections, doesn't it? And is that because of some of these rescues and a media, the press that wants to talk about them and disseminate stories about the RNLI? Yeah, I think people could see how important it was. And there are real feats of bravery right from the very beginning. Hilary was really keen on introducing medals and the first medal was awarded a couple of months after we were founded in 1824. So William Hillary himself received four gold medals, three for rescues and one for founding the institution. But yeah, I think in the public imagination, these feats of bravery, these volunteers that are going out to save lives at sea is really appealing. And tell me about one of the most famous ones of all time, one right at the beginning. Tell me about Grace Darling.

tell me about one of the most famous ones of all time, one right at the beginning. Tell me about Grace Darling. Yeah, so Grace Darling, she was the first female to ever receive a gallantry medal from the RMI. And she's really interesting because actually she's a lighthouse keeper's daughter. She was born in 1815. And in September 1838, she's in the lighthouse with her father. She wakes up in the middle of the night. She looks out to sea and she can see on some rocks about a mile away that there are some people clinging with a shipwreck in the background, which is the Forfashore. And she and her father realised that the lifeboat nearby isn't going to be able to reach these people in time. So they decide to go out in their own little cobalt rowing boat and they row out to these people on

the rocks and rescue them, take them off and bring them back to the lighthouse. It's an incredibly brave thing to do. It must have been very difficult, stormy conditions, night time. And Grace really captures the Victorian imagination and she becomes this instant heroine and celebrity and like I say she and her father are rewarded with silver medals from the RMLI. She's also sent gifts and money from all sorts of people. The Duke of Northumberland, he basically looks after her and her family. We have a museum that's dedicated to Grace Darling in Bamburgh in Northumberland. And you can see some of these gifts that she was given. So on display is her original kind of earthenware teapot that the family used in the White House.

And then there's the silver tea service that was given by the Duke of Northumberland in recognition of her bravery. And she really seemed to capture something in the public's imagination. I've been to that museum. It's an extraordinary thing. You cannot emphasise enough to any landlubbers listening to this podcast just how difficult and dangerous those waters around the Farn Islands are. Was she in the RNLI at the

time? No, not at all. So the connection is that she was given a medal for her bravery. She wasn't connected to the RNLI in any other way. And we're not aware of any other rescues that she did. Very sadly, she died just a few years after the rescue in her mid-twenties from what we think was TB. So no, she didn't have any other further rescues. She helped to sort of mobilise or just focus attention on this new institution and, well, the rescuing of people from the ocean. Definitely. I think people thought she was incredibly brave and really inspirational. And I'm sure she inspired others and, yeah, certainly helped to raise attention for the record service. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the RNLI. There's

more coming. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

Talk to me about some of the other classics that you as an institution remember. What about the Whitby disaster? Yeah, well, over 200 years, we've had so many incredible feats of bravery by our crews. But the Whitby lifeboat disaster of 1861 is a really key part of our history. So Whitby, 1861, Henry Freeman is a young man on the crew and the crew actually go out on a rescue. And it's his first ever rescue, the first time he's been out with the lifeboat. And he diligently puts on a cork life jacket. And this is a new design by an RNI inspector. So he puts it on because that's what he's told to do as a new member of the crew. The rest of the crew don't put these on. I should say that Whitby lifeboat at this point is independent of the RNI, but we had supplied them with these life jackets.

And unfortunately, on this rescue, the lifeboat is capsized. And all of the crew are sadly lost apart from Henry Freeman. And in the inquest after the rescue, after this disaster, they say that the reason that he'd survived was because he was wearing this new design of life jacket. And the RMI had introduced this life jacket about six years earlier and the crews hadn't really been very keen to wear them. six years earlier and the crews hadn't really been very keen to wear them. They're quite big and bulky, made of cork, quite heavy and the crews didn't really want to wear them when they were going out on their open row boats in these rescues. But Henry Freeman really helped to change people's perception of the life jacket and was a really important rescue. Interesting, you can imagine all the old lags, absolutely refusing to wear it and then sadly in their case paying the case, paying the ultimate price. We should mention that, I mean, they weren't alone

in losing their lives. I mean, what's astonishing about the RNLI is the number of their volunteers, and it remains pretty dangerous, but it was extraordinarily dangerous in the 19th century. Would they even then always go out with an ethos of saying yes, or sometimes they went, sorry, mate, it's just too bad out there tonight? Yeah, so in the early period in particular, it was incredibly dangerous. Even launching a rowing boat out into the breaking waves to go out and rescue other people would have been phenomenally difficult. But our crews then and now, they're there to answer the call and they would go out and save lives at sea whenever they could. If you haven't ever done it, go online and just try and Google beach launch rowing boat in Big Surf and you will see how impossible it is. The boats get tossed

around like a cork. And also they are all powered, we should say as well. So these people are rowing out. And so most of these wrecks would have been visible from the shore. So they're kind of inshore wrecks. They're wrecks on headlands, on sandbars, things like that. They didn't tend to be over the horizon, obviously, I guess. Yeah didn't tend to be over the horizon, obviously, I guess. Yeah, so in that early period, again, we wouldn't have the communications that our crews have today. The only way to know that a wreck is in trouble was either from them letting off a rocket so that you could see it from the shore, or people just being able to see the ship on the horizon. So yes, they wouldn't have been too far out. Tell me about a couple of other rescues. I can't get enough of these that you think are worthy of, well, being remembered. I mean, they all are, of course, but I guess that either because they're

so dramatic or because they change something. Yeah, I think that's right. A lot of the rescues that we talk about in our history are ones that have gone on to affect a change, whether that's a technological change or a sort of safety change. So there's a couple that spring to mind. One is the 1886 disaster at Southport and St Anne's in Lancashire. And this stands as the most crew that the Army might have lost in one single rescue, where 27 lifeboat crew sadly lost their lives going out to rescue the Mexico. And one lifeboat was capsized and the other as well. And there were only two survivors from those two lifeboats. So it was an incredibly sad event, an incredibly difficult thing for that community. Most of the

crews were related to each other, fathers, sons, uncles, brothers. But we talk about that disaster not only because it's the most lives that we've lost, but because it led to a really important change in fundraising for the RMI. So there was a man called Charles Makara, who was involved with the St Anne's Lifeboat. And he was instrumental in raising funds for the widows' independence of those who were lost in that disaster. And he took a little look at the RNI's finances at the time as well. And he saw that the RNI really would get a boost in income when we had a really brave rescue, where perhaps medals were awarded, or perhaps a bump in

income when we had a sad loss of crew that people wanted to support the lifeboat to make sure that we were providing the best kit possible and he thought really that it was crazy to wait for either of those things to happen that there should be a regular stream of income so that the RNI could run properly. So what he did was he set up something called Lifeboat Saturday and this was a fundraising event in Manchester and I think that's another reason we love this story is because you might expect it to be held by the sea where people might actually be near a lifeboat.

But he held this in Manchester and it was the world's first charity street collection. So the first time that people had kind of gone out onto the streets and organised an event in this way. It was hugely successful. He arranged for lifeboats to be pulled through the streets of Manchester. There was music and dancing and parades and the lifeboats actually launched onto a lake in Manchester so people could see what a lifeboat

looked like on the water. And really that was the birth of this type of fundraising for the RNL and for other charities too. So yeah, it's a really key part of our history. Extraordinary. And people living abroad will be surprised to learn that the Lifeboat is sort of one of the most recognisable charities and causes in the UK, even in places quite far from the sea. It's kind of ubiquitous. And that's obviously a tribute to your institution's marketing and fundraising and everything as well. But it's always been quite close to the centre of our national life. Yes definitely and I think it's a tribute to the inland volunteers as well all the branches that raise funds for the

Aran Lake and no matter where they are whether they're near the coast or not and although lifeboats are mainly on the coast although we have lifeboats inland say London on the Thames as well a lot of the people that are rescued are not people from the coast. He may find themselves in difficulty in the water, maybe never even expecting to be in the water at all. And also now with lifeguards for the RNI as well, that a lot of the people that are using the water are actually from inland themselves. That's true.

During lockdown, we had a lot of paddleboarder people. But paddleboards the first time didn't quite understand about tides and they went whizzing away down the river estuary having a lovely old time turned around real as they couldn't get back and me and the kids used to pluck them out of the water and take them to the beach we had great fun and well and remind us today still astonishingly no national funding at all for the rnli no we are an independent charity that's, reliant on the funds of people who kindly donate to us. And how many lives have you saved since 1824?

The figure is just over 144,000 lives saved, which is phenomenal and, yeah, testament to the thousands of volunteers that we've had since 1824. And evolving times now, it's probably not the merchant marine commercial ships, it's probably leisure craft, small boats, inshore. Presumably it's changed. It has changed over time. And in the 1960s, the RNLI introduced inshore lifeboats, which are the small inflatable boats that really could get into the shallower water

where people were perhaps using the sea for more leisure activities. So you had the rise of the use of the beach, the rise of things like paddleboards and canoes, and the way that people use the water. That really changed. And that led to a kind of technological development where the RMI decided to look at a different kind of craft to be able to do that. So 1963, we introduced those inshore lifeboats. And they're really the sort of workhorse of the RMI. They do a huge amount of our rescues. But these days, it's a real mix, especially depending where you are on the coast of the UK and Ireland. The water use can be quite different, but we have the craft

that are available to meet the needs of the rescue. So weirdly, slightly going back to the original model, which are smaller open boats operating fairly close inshore. Yes, that's right, being able to get to those rescues. Hayley Whiting, thank you very much for coming on the podcast on this, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the RNLI. Tell us, how can people support, learn more about what you do? So yes, I'm the archivist for the RNLI. So you can find out all about our history on the RNNI's website rni.org you can also see how to support us whether you'd like to volunteer as a fundraiser volunteer as crew get involved with

the charity in whatever way you would like to check out the website brilliant well thank you very much indeed and congratulations for everything you and your extraordinary organization have achieved over the last 200 years. Thank you for having me. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.