READY FOR LAUNCH
Meet brave RNLI volunteers prepared to drop everything to come to the aid of those in need
SAVING LIVES AT SEA BBC2, 8pm
LOOKING out for those in peril on the sea is a way of life for thousands of men and women across the country who are part of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
As this inspiring and uplifting series returns for another run, we meet many of those who give up their time for free to staff the lifeboats and help save lives – more than 142,000 since the RNLI was set up in 1824 – and learn more about the sacrifices they make, as well as the toll it can take when those rescues don’t work out the way everyone hopes.
These volunteers put their own lives on the line to save those of strangers who find themselves in trouble in the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, and they are on call 24/7. Meaning that you might – as Dave from Blackpool discovered – find yourself getting a call-out on your actual wedding day.
Barely had the register been signed when his colleagues’ pagers started going off and they had to swap morning suits for wetsuits and speed out to cover two local emergencies.
Theirs is just one of the 238 RNLI stations across the country, and we get to follow stories and meet the crews at many of them.
For some – like brothers Matt and Gavin in Swanage – it’s been a way of life for decades, and a family tradition that carries down the generations.
And it clearly creates an extremely strong community, meaning that when the worse happens it affects everyone deeply.