For years, students and teachers at Atlantic College have volunteered for a lifeboat crew ready to launch off the south Wales coast. But now the College has a new lifesaving focus. While the lifeboat station has now closed, students have been developing their RNLI lifeguarding techniques and volunteered to help keep beaches safe over the Summer.

It’s a new chapter in the historic relationship between the RNLI and the College, where the rigid inflatable boat (RIB) was first conceived and designed – a craft that has become the most commonly-used inshore rescue boat in the world. Atlantic College was also the RNLI’s first station with a female crew member: Elizabeth Hostvedt (pictured above). See page 24 for more on the women at the core of our lifesaving operations today.