Romantic fiction often portrays Victorian women as weak, passive creatures, but the list of RNLI Gallantry Medal awardees shows another side. Nineteen women have been awarded Medals for Gallantry in the RNLi's history.

The most recent of these, Aileen Jones, will receive hers in May this year at the Annual Presentation of Awards (see page 20). She will be the first woman in 116 years to join the roll of honour.

Unlike Aileen, Helmsman of the Porthcawl lifeboat, none of her Victorian predecessors was a member of a lifeboat crew. They were ordinary women who, in a moment, felt compelled to put their own lives at risk. In heavy skirts and boots they were lowered over cliffs, scrambled across treacherous rocks, waded into surf or set off in rowing boats in rough seas.

The most famous of these was the first, Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper's daughter who rowed into danger to save shipwrecked mariners from rocks, in September 1838. Grace's story turned her into a national media star, and today she continues to inspire children, thanks to the English National Curriculum and to the RNLI's Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh.

Grace and her family lived on the Fame Islands, off the Northumberland coast.

When the passenger steamer Forfarshire sank in a storm, she and her father set off in their rowing boat to rescue nine survivors clinging to a rock. She manoeuvred the boat while her father William leapt onto the rock to help a woman and four men aboard. Her father and two of the Forfarshire crew returned for the other four men.

In contrast, few people have heard of May Moar. When a fishing boat capsized off Burraness in the Shetland Islands, in September 1858, she, her husband and two other women went to their aid. May descended the cliff on a rope and, standing on a small shelf of rock, threw the survivors a rope attached to a lifebuoy. They were drawn through the surf to the shore, while the other women held the rape fast at the top of the cliff. Her husband rescued the other fishermen.

May's fame was short lived. She and her family were eventually evicted from their croft and, years later, her RNLI Silver Medal was found in a dry stone wall.

Today it is on display in the Shetland Museum.A third awardee was Jane Whyte, a farm worker's wife and mother of nine who saved at least six crewmen from the Dundee steamer William Hope when she was wrecked in Aberdour Bay, Fife, in October 1884. Men clung to the masts in the half sunken ship as one of them threw a rope in Jane's direction. She waded into the raging surf, tied it around her waist and returned to shore, where, feet planted firmly on the ground, she enabled everyone to reach safety.

Nora O'Shaughnessy and the Prideaux-Brune sisters - Ellen, Gertrude, Mary and Beatrice (seen in the main illustration) - hit the headlines in August 1879, when a boat capsized in a squall off Bray Hill, near Padstow. On hearing cries for help the five young ladies, who were in their rowing boat being towed behind a fishing smack, asked to be cast off. They rowed 'like tigers' through heavy surf to the scene where, after much difficulty, they pulled a drowning sailor into their boat, The Chough, and saved him.

Two others drowned, but the fisherman who had been towing the ladies, who happened to be Padstow lifeboat's assistant coxswain, saved a small boy.

The story of Nora and the Prideaux-Brune girls, who were part of the local gentry, was well reported at the time. Newspapers printed dramatic illustrations and headlines like the one quoted for the title of this article.

In today's climate of more equal opportunities, many of these women would have made ideal lifeboat crew members, but women were not admitted to RNLI crews until the 1960s. The first female helmsman was Elisabeth Hostvedt (see page 36).

It is now Aileen Jones, her 17-year-old daughter Frances, and the other 400 or so women who are RNLI crew members or lifeguards, who lead the way - and the Lifeboat looks forward to recounting their stories too. RNLI Gallantry Medals were also awarded to: the Misses Margaret and Martha Llewellyn, rescue at Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, October 1846 Mrs Georgia Fisher, rescue near the Faroe Islands, March 1847 Miss Alice Le Geyt, rescue at Lyme Regis, Dorset, August 1864 Miss Jane Campbell, rescue at Drogheda Bar, the River Boyne, September 1871 Misses Josephine and Maria Horsford, rescue at Courtmacsherry Bay, County Cork, August 1887 Mrs Eleanor Galbraith, rescue atWhitburn.Tyne and Weir, August 1855 Mrs William Wallace and Miss Ellen Blyth, rescue off Isle of Man, March 1888 Miss Ellen Petrie and Miss Grace Tail, rescue between the Shetland Islands of Unst and Yell, May 1856 To read more of these remarkable women, see Lifeboat Gallantry - RNLI Medals and how they were won, ISBN 0907605893 edited by Barry Cox, the RNLI's Honorary Librarian.

Newly discovered letters will be on show when the RNLI's Grace Darling Museum re-opens in Bamburgh, Northumberland next year after its extensive refurbishment.

Most of the letters are between members of the Darling family and Grace Darting offer a fascinating glimpse into the Painting: Henry p social history and daily hardships r faced by those who lived on the Northumberland coast in the 19th century.

Assisted by a grant from the They even reveal how Northem Rock Foundation concerned people were about 22-year-old Grace's welfare as she reluctantly became the centre of national attention.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded nearly £1M to the £1.4M project. A special appeal fund has been set up, entirely separate from the RNLI's central funds, to find the remainder. Locals aim to raise £150,000 by September this year for the education work of the museum, and five other trusts and individuals have donated amounts so far totalling £146,000, including the Northern Rock Foundation and the Foyle Foundation. See www.rnli.org.uk/gracedarling.

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.