Ken Harrison: RNLI

Today we heard from Ken Harrison, a volunteer with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (“RNLI”). He emphasised the fact that the RNLI relies mainly on unpaid volunteers and receives no government funding. It has lifeboats in both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

He gave us accounts of some of the incidents in which the RNLI has been involved in recent years, some serious and others humorous. Not all incidents they are called out to take place out to sea. Unfortunately people visiting the coast are often not sufficiently aware of the risks of being cut off by the incoming tide or the strength of the currents near the shore. Particularly tragic are those cases where dog owners go into the water to rescue their pets; dogs have an 80% chance of surviving but the chance for their owners is much less than that.

He also asked that people warn them if they are going to let off fireworks at the coast, as they can sometimes be mistaken for distress flares.

The opposite can happen. Ken recounted the time when an RNLI station warned local shopkeepers that some test maroons would be set off. One shopkeeper closed her shop for lunch and was walking across the road when the maroons went off. She heard a female visitor complain: “What do grown men think they are doing, setting off fireworks in the middle of the day when no one can see them!”

Among the tragic incidents Ken told us about was one where a wave swept a woman off a jetty. The inshore lifeboat was on an exercise at the time and got to the scene within two minutes. Sadly even in that short time another wave had lifted her up and smashed her against the jetty with sufficient force to kill her. The crew were understandably very upset.

There were also humorous incidents. One lifeboat was called out to rescue the engineer of a Russian ship, who had become seriously ill. The Russian crew first let down a covered stretcher which, to the lifeboat crew’s surprise, they did with some force. They then let the engineer down far more gently. It turned out that the first stretcher actually contained some bottles of vodka, presumably as a “thank you” to the lifeboat crew. The coxswain sent out a message asking everyone to assemble in the lifeboat house, where they opened the bottles. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before they were contacted by the local Customs Officers!

One suspects that one story Ken told may not have entirely true. It was about a lifeboat that was called out to rescue a cow spotted swimming towards the sea. The coxswain reported that he had rescued a Frisian cow. He was asked how, as someone who had no connection with farming, he knew it was a Frisian cow. “It must have been,” he replied. “It was trying to swim back to Holland.”