Graham Hall on Saving Lives at Sea

If you average it out over the year, about once a week. You used to get about 52, 53 shouts a year some years. It varied widely. Some years you’d have hardly any, others you’d have four in a week. Three in a day we had on one occasion, you know.

It just depends, you can’t predict when people are going to be in trouble and need you.

It was on average about 50 a year but in the winter months you might not go out for three or four months at a time.

Now as I say, in the summer we used to go out the Wednesday, the Thursday and three times on the Saturday.

It was very unpredictable, but you had to be ready all the time regardless of everything else and I had great admiration for the crews who kept themselves in readiness for weeks on end sometimes and those gentlemen couldn’t leave their village, couldn’t do this, had to keep themselves ready to go.

It’s a big commitment for a Lifeboat man to have to do that because they’re all volunteers, you know, except the Coxswains who get a retainer, you know, they had to keep themselves in readiness and it was one of the big unseen things that Lifeboat men did, besides going out in rotten weather and the rescuing people. Keeping themselves available to be able to go out was a big, big commitment they all made, and I was very conscious of that, I thought they did extremely well in doing that.