Rescue

A lifeboat under a somewhat enhanced super moon over the Irish Sea, returns to it’s base in Clogher Head, a fishing village on the County Louth coast in Ireland.

The featured Mersey class lifeboat was replaced a couple of years ago by a 2.5 million Shannon class lifeboat based in RNLI lifeboat station; RNLI by the way is the acronym for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Royal – in a republic ?

When the RNLI was founded back in 1824, the whole island of Ireland was part of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ and over the next 100 years, lifeboat stations sprang up all round the island, crewed, as is still the case, by local volunteers. The pragmatic Irish, living on an island, realised that an organisation of volunteers who would risk their lives to rescue people in trouble at sea, was a useful and worthy enterprise, whatever the name.

The service is almost entirely voluntary, free from government control. They do a staggering job in all weathers, and with extraordinary courage. So whether the Lifeboat service has the word royal in its name or not, the poor guy who’s drowning still needs to be rescued.

Long may it continue…