From triumphs to tragedies; from oar-powered vessels to today's boats packed with cutting-edge technology, from introducing the first lifeboats on the River Thames to rolling-out a UK beach lifeguard service and working with others to save lives overseas – the RNLI certainly has a remarkable 200-year story to tell, and for the next five months a major exhibition at Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust will do just that.
Visitors will of course hear about the RNLI's all-essential people: Victorian heroine Grace Darling, for instance, and Henry Blogg, who saved 873 lives with the help of his courageous Cromer crew. They can discover the story of HMS Racehorse, the fabled ship that wrecked on a reef off the Isle of Man in 1822, inspiring the beginnings of the charity.
Says Hayley Whiting, Heritage Archive and Research Manager at the RNLI, says, 'We are proud to share our important heritage, from the first annual report to commemorating the bravery of those who took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk during the Second World War, and looking at the advances in engineering made over our history.'
Says Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust’s Collections, Galleries and Interpretation Manager, Nick Ball, 'The exhibition is one of a kind and the first time that such a huge collection of stories and RNLI artefacts have been brought together in one space. Over the years, The Historic Dockyard Chatham has given safe harbour to the RNLI’s collection of historic lifeboats, so it’s particularly fitting that we have been chosen as the space to tell the RNLI’s 200 year story. We hope that, following the exhibition, visitors will walk to 4 Slip to see the collection of historic boats too. We can’t wait to throw open the doors and help the RNLI celebrate this milestone in their history.”
RNLI 200: The Exhibition opens Saturday March 23 2024 at The Historic Dockyard Chatham
A family connection
Georgina King, accountant and business director at Ashford’s Perception Accounting, has been involved in the RNLI for the last 10 years. She’s the fundraising chair of Dungeness RNLI and most recently became chair of the South East region panel for the 200th celebrations.
‘My husband and his family introduced me to the RNLI as they’ve always been a part of the crew in one form or another,’ she says. ‘His grandmother, Betty Paine, was one of the Lady Launchers at Dungeness in the 1960s and '70s and is a true inspiration to many.’ Reports the RNLI's Lifeboat magazine, Autumn 2015, 'For more than a century, the lifeboats of Dungeness were launched by a team of women known as the Lady Launchers, usually the wives and daughters of crew. The Lady Launchers had to drag heavy wooden ‘skids’ across the beach and position them under the keel of the lifeboat. In the very early years, wearing no more protective or thermal kit than their own coats and scarves, the launchers then had to piggy-back crew onto the boat. In 1979, a carriage-launched lifeboat came into service and the Lady Launchers were stood down. Betty [Paine] remembers: "It certainly kept us all fit! But it was rewarding. I remember one particular rescue in the 1970s, where two tankers crashed at sea. One was stranded on the sand for days, and the captain used my house as a base to make phone calls and so on – no mobile phones back then. The freezers on his boat started failing while he was waiting on repairs, so he let us have the contents rather than waste them – there were sacks of meat sitting on the beach for us!"'
