A year in the life of the KNLI… The RNLH's anniversary year annual meetings were held at the Barbican on 1j May 1999.

As well as 'Pfiviunt'pf a review of another hii' successful year Chairman David Acland was also able to announce a major step forward for SEA Check, part of the RNLlt's Sea Safety campaign.

Opening his morning report to the Institution's Governors the Chairman began by looking at some of the landmarks in the RNLI's 175-year history.

Appropriately enough the famous meeting on 4 March 1824 which marked the birth of the organisation had taken place in the City Tavern at Bishopsgate - not so very far from where today's meeting was being held 175 years later.

Could Sir William Hillary ever have ever believed, he asked, that 130,000 people would now owe their lives to the lifeboat service? Would he have envisaged an all-weather lifeboat venturing 20 miles off the wild southern Irish coast in darkness and 30ft seas to reach a stricken yacht barely an hour later? The Bronze medal service by Courtmacsherry's Trent class which was to be recognised that afternoon was nonetheless his legacy.

So too was the other Bronze medal to be presented, a daring rescue of two fishermen from the surf off Mablethorpe in a near gale. Perhaps these inshore circumstances would be more familiar to Sir William, mused the Chairman, although it was anyone's guess as to what he would have made of the lifeboat that was used, consisting substantially of air and rubber! Sir William's faith in volunteers and voluntary funding had also been entirely vindicated. The RNLI has weathered every national political and economic upheaval by remaining a voluntary organisation. In the past two decades, it has not only ridden out every storm, but has thrived to the extent that it provides, and can sustain, a lifeboat service responsive to all modern needs and which is the envy of the world.

Its supporters have not only been meeting the annual cost of such a task - £69m last year - but they have given the RNLI financial security to chart its course with confidence for the next 175 years.

Looking to the future David Acland then announced the RNLI's latest initiative to save lives at sea - SEA Check.

'From today,' he said, 'the RNLI will operate a new nationwide service called SEA Check, which we hope will significantly reduce the number of emergencies at sea among recreational boat users.

'Ever since the RNLI began its Sea Safety initiative four years ago, we have been in dialogue with sea-users, reminding them how to take better care before and after setting out on the water. In that time we have gathered much information about the most common causes for calling out a lifeboat and also about sea-users' own behaviour and attitudes on minimising risks.' A pilot scheme on the south coast last year, similar to one operated very successfully by the Canadian Coast Guard offering free safety equipment advice to boat owners just before they put to sea had been extremely encouraging and showed a clear case for extending the scheme.

Major venture SEA Check is a major new venture for the RNLI, involving 10 new full-time staff to co-ordinate the scheme and some 2,000 volunteers to operate it.

175 years of experience had shown that it was impossible to anticipate every accident at sea but if, for the carrying of a chart, an extra spark plug or even a pair of oars, a lifeboat's services are spared, then SEA Check will be working for lifeboat crews as well as for those they are there to save.

Lifeboats were called out 6,727 times during 1998, and saved 1,386 lives - a compelling reminder that the RNLI's future still lays as much in responding to as in preventing accidents. There were still places where more lifeboat cover is required, and Clovelly in north Devon and to Sligo Bay in the Republic of Ireland had both recently opened as Atlantic class stations.

Even with these additional inshore stations the RNLI had already reached the target it had set for the year 2000 - which was to equip half the Atlantic class stations with the 32-knot Atlantic 75. Ten of this class were completed in 1998.

Also on target was the building of Severns and Trents and 45 of these 25-knot, all-weather boats will be on station by the end of next year.

The effect of an ever-faster fleet could be measured by the growing proportion of casualties reached within 30 minutes - which now stood at an unprecedented 91 per cent.

A new electronic paging system for all RNLI stations will be introduced this year which will improve call-out procedures and speed up further the launch of the lifeboat.

The experimental prototype of the 25-knot slipway-launched lifeboat is under construction in Plymouth and should be launched for trials early next year.

Already some stations with slipways are being prepared for this new design; Cromer, which required major refurbishment, now has a new slipway and boathouse able to take a 14m replacement for the current Tyne, and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria is undergoing similar work. Each of these projects costs around £3m - a sobering reminder that there is much more to operational capital expenditure than simply building new lifeboats.

However, thanks to the current healthy financial situation the Committee of Management feels that the RNLI should forge even further ahead in the development of rescue craft, and it has begun detailed assessment of a Swedish lifeboat design which has characteristics close to matching the specification drawn up for an all-weather, fastresponse boat capable of 35 knots.

Co-operation When the Swedes bring their design to the International Lifeboat Conference in Poole they will leave her in the UK and return to Sweden with a relief Trent for their own evaluation. This arrangement reflects the spirit of shared technology between members of the International Lifeboat Federation, and the RNLI has been given invaluable co-operation by a number of foreign sea rescue services in its quest for a new generation of fast all-weather and inshore lifeboats. This time next year the picture should be much clearer on the shape of the future fleet as we invest an increasing amount of resource in developing designs which meet the demand for greater power and speed.

Higher performance lifeboats are only justified if adequate resources are put into training the men and women who take them to sea. A tremendous amount is being done in this field already and the new post of Training Inspector has been created in each operational division.

There is a very good case for a centralised RNLI Search and Rescue College in Poole, built to handle our future training requirement, not only for crews but also for other skills needed to run one of the world's largest voluntary emergency services.

Other search and rescue organisations from the UK, Ireland and abroad might also benefit from this centre of excellence with the cause of saving life at sea served even more widely than at present. The feasibility of such a college will be investigated over the next few months.

The RNLI may well be able to offer its expertise in other areas where lives are at risk. For example it is now looking to see if there is a need to extend lifeboat cover further inland. Tidal river estuaries have always posed launching problems for lifeboats but perhaps another way could be found to guarantee a 24-hour rescue service, even across mud-flats, if some type of hovercraft were employed.

Challenges The Committee of Management does not intend to allow the RNLI to rest on the laurels of its first 175 years, there are some very important questions to answer about how the challenges which lie ahead are met. as well as continuing to provide a state-of-the-art lifeboat service.

This is was made possible by the continuing generosity of the RNLI's supporters, who met the entire £69m cost of the lifeboat service in 1998 and provided an additional £25m to invest for the challenges ahead.

Another higher than expected legacies income helped this excellent result, but because this is an unpredictable source it was reassuring that income from direct fundraising and investments matched the plan so closely.

One of the most reliable sources of funding is the annual subscriptions from members and Governors, which it had been agreed should be raised little and often rather than less frequently and by less palatable amounts.

Little and often That was four years ago, so the Institution had strayed a bit from the 'often', although the Chairman hoped that the increase of £8 to a new annual rate of £58 still qualified as reasonably 'little'. The increase, from 1 January 2000, would compensate for what inflation has added to the cost of recruiting and servicing Governors over the period. The rate for a new Life Governor would rise from £1,000 to £1,200.

In closing the Chairman added that since the retirement of Brian Miles at the end of last year, the RNLI now had a new Director, Andrew Fremantle, to lead those who provide the back-up for the volunteers.

Having spent eight years as head of the Scottish Ambulance Service, he came with a wealth of experience of running a modern emergency service.

'I know,' remarked Mr Acland, 'that he is as keen as I am to foster all the qualities that have sustained the lifeboat service so handsomely over the years while keeping a sharp eye on the way ahead. On behalf of all the Governors, welcome; I can assure you there is a crew here which will not let you down.' A short question-and-answer session followed the Chairman's report, with questions from the floor dealt with by members of the Committee of Management and senior RNLI staff.

See following page for a report of the Annual Presentation of Awards m The Annual Presentation of Awards The afternoon's events began with the showing of a short film which had been specially compiled for the event and which illustrated the RNLI's work as it is today. Chairman David Acland remarked on the remarkable legacy which Sir William Hillary had left, in which his small organisation had grown into the one we see today which answered 6,727 calls for help in 1998 alone.

'I know,' he continued, 'that many of you here have been involved, one way or another, in celebrating our anniversary and in helping to bring the achievements of the RNLI to the attention of a wider audience. Ingenuity has. I know, run riot with concerts, sponsored events and big bashes organised in all corners of these Islands. Bashful would not, however, describe two of our lifeboat crews who have apparently been persuaded by their local branch to bare nearly all for a celebration calendar. Bravery medals are not on offer here - not even for those buying the calendar!' Awareness of the RNLI's work was crucial, continued the Chairman, if the public were not to take the service for granted and forget that only their support can guarantee its future.

It was equally important, though, that the RNLI did not allow itself merely to rest on the laurels of its first 175 years, said Mr Acland, moving on to outline the plans of the lifeboat service to move forward which he had announced to the Governors during the morning's AGM.

He then moved on to welcome the two guests at the Presentation, broadcaster, journalist and member of the RNLI's Public Relations Committee Libby Purves and the Institution's President HRH The Duke of Kent.

The President addressed the meeting, remarking that it did not seem so very long ago that he had attended the 150th anniversary celebrations at Plymouth - held at a time when the RNLI was operating non-self-righting lifeboats, and words like satellite navigation and VHP direction finding were hardly used in connection with lifeboats. At that gathering the Rother was still represented and the latest technology was in the form of an early wood-hull Arun. At that time, he remarked, RNLI lifeboats launched 7 times a day - now it was 18 times a day.

The fundraisers of that time were being asked to raise £4m a year, about one-twentieth of the 1999 figure! The Duke also remarked that when lifeboat crews looked younger these days, it was because they are! A third of all those who take lifeboats to sea are still in their 20s or late teens, and the rigours of manning a high speed lifeboat required a much younger retirement age than before. They also demand an unprecedented level of specialised training and he found it admirable that volunteer RNLI crews were prepared to give up so much of their own time to acquire the necessary skills.

There were two excellent examples in the medal citations which were to follow of how modern lifeboats handled with expertise can perform feats of lifesaving which would have been hard to imagine in earlier decades. But what had been constant throughout the 175- year history of the RNLI was the courage of its crews and the total dedication of its supporters.

The people of the United Kingdom and Ireland had reason to be enormously grateful to the volunteers of the lifeboat service who had saved more than 130,000 lives since its foundation.

Following the President's address the RNLI's Director Andrew Freemantle read the citations for the two Bronze Medal awards for Gallantry - to Mablethorpe's Tom Freeman and Courtmacsherry's Dan O'Dwyer - and to the more than sixty fundraisers, voluntary station workers and supporters who were to be awarded Honorary Life Governorships, Bars to the Gold Medal or Gold Medals. The awardees were called individually on to the stage to receive their awards from the President.

When the Duke had finished presenting the awards, guest speaker Libby Purves was invited to address the audience.

As a small boat sailor herself Libby remarked that when on her travels it was always a relief to see the lifeboat moored up in the harbour. She said that the nation was glad to have the RNLI, was not ungrateful for it's work, and did not treat it as a floating AA service adding, '...even miles inland Britain gives a smile when it sees the collection box.' Libby spoke of her admiration of the crews' bravery which she described as, '...a strategic, well equipped bravery'. She said that the lifeboat men and women did not do their work for any reason other than to simply , '...go out and save strangers' lives' adding that, '...the people are the chief supporters of this work.' Libby also told an amusing story of when she was houseto- house collecting some years ago in Kensington where one gentleman answered the door in his towel and looked terrified when he was invited to make a donation in return for a flag pin. Libby put him at ease by telling him, 'Don't worry - it's a sticky one!' Finishing up, Libby spoke of her appreciation of the crews and supporters and said that it was nice to know that, '...patience and ingenuity have not perished and goodwill and co-operation have not perished.' Following Libby's entertaining tales she was presented with a basket of flowers as a token of thanks and the Chairman, in closing the day's proceedings, announced the special 175th anniversary cake which was brought on stage for all to admire.

A full list of those receiving awards at the Annual Presentation of Awards can be found on page 33 of this issue of The Lifeboat..