Lifeboat Heroes

Ben Fogle looks at what it takes to be a lifeboat hero – one of the brave men and women volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Since being founded in 1874, its mostly unpaid volunteers have saved nearly 140,000 lives, sometimes at devastating personal cost.

Ben gets hands-on with the lifeboat crews, visiting the Poole Lifeboat College to experience sea-survival and capsize training, and to test the new Man Overboard Guardian system. Modern lifeboat heroes such as Mark Criddle, who won a Silver Medal for Gallantry in 2008, speak of what it means to be always waiting for the call. Ben also recounts the exploits of RNLI legends such as Henry Alexander Hamilton, Ireland’s most decorated lifesaver, and the incomparable Henry Blogg of Cromer, ‘the greatest lifeboatman of all time’.