Today's Exmouth lifeboat crew is very much a family affair - six members of two families make up nearly a quarter of the entire crew.

Among the 25 strong crew is Coxswain Keith Graham with his two sons and the three Stott brothers, including identical twins! Keith joined the crew in 1980 and has been coxswain for 14 years. His youngest son Matthew, now 23, joined on his 17th birthday - Matthew's elder brother, Michael who is 28 has been on the crew for 18 months.

Karl Stott, aged 29, started off a family trend by joining the crew last August shortly after the Trent class lifeboat was allocated to Exmouth. The 20 year old twins, Andrew and Roy Stott are the station's newest recruits, following in Karl's footsteps earlier this year. The Stott brothers, being trainee crew members, spend most of their time aboard the station's new D class lifeboat, but all of them have already been out on active service.

Costs The cost of running the RNLI in 1997 was around £70m.

The approximate current cost of building a lifeboat is: 4.9m D class inflatable: £11,500 7.3m Atlantic rigid inflatable: £61,500 14m Trent: £1,175,000 17m Severn: £1,580,000 Facts and Figures Provisional figures for 1997 fas at September 1997) Launches: 3,047 Lives saved: 724 People landed: 441 People brought ashore: 1,978 Total people assisted: 3,143 Figures for 1996 Launches: 6,446 Lives saved: 1,300 People landed: 946 People brought ashore: 4,308 Total people assisted: 6,554 Since the RNLI was founded in 1824, its lifeboats haved saved over 130,000 lives..