The baker, the photographer and the painter…sounds like the beginning of a nursery rhyme. However, this group of people are just some of the volunteers that give up their time to save lives on the Suffolk coastline as part of the Aldeburgh lifeboat crew. Julie Orford met with Coxswain Lee Firman and 2nd Cox/Mechanic Steven Saint to find out more.

The Aldeburgh Lifeboat service has been around in one form or another since 1826, first based in Sizewell, the boat moved to Aldeburgh in 1851 when the RNLI built a wooden boathouse on the coastline. The RNLI is the charity that saves lives at sea, since its foundation in 1824, over 137,000 lives have been saved around the UK coastline.

There are currently around 4,800 lifeboat crew members in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, 8% of whom are women. They are mostly volunteers who come from many walks of life within their local communities and will readily exchange leisure, comfort and sleep for cold, wet and fatigue.

Lee Firman, joined the Aldeburgh crew in 1994 and has been full time coxswain since 2003 following his father who was the previous coxswain.

“It was inevitable that one day I would work for the RNLI as I’d been involved with lifeboats since birth. My father was the previous coxswain and both my grandfather and great grandfather worked on the lifeboats too, it has always been a big part of my life.”

2nd coxswain and mechanic, Steven Saint, added, “It was the same for me, my father was the full time mechanic for over 30 years in Aldeburgh, if you grow up with the lifeboats, it becomes your way of life.”

Steven joined the Aldeburgh crew in 1989 and has been full time station mechanic since Sept 2003. Both Lee and Steve are employed full-time at the station. They have a crew of around 20 volunteers, along with another 20 volunteer helpers who take on other duties such as working in the shop. Crews spend many hours of their own time training to become highly skilled and efficient.

So what is a typical day in the station like? “Well there isn’t really a typical day”, says Lee, “It very much depends on the time of year and whether we get a ‘shout’.”

“When we’re in the station, our work mainly centres around maintenance, cleaning the boat and training exercises. We exercise with the all-weather boat every 10-14 days, which involves a degree of planning to ensure the training needs of our volunteers are being met. Our busy time, strangely enough, is the summer season, people tend to think that we’ll be busiest during the winter months, when the weather is bad and the sea is rough, but the majority of our shouts come during the summer. Leisure sailors who have got into trouble or broken down and need a tow. Most of the 33 calls we received last year were for breakdowns, we used the inshore boat for 16 of those calls and 17 used the all-Weather lifeboat.”

The Aldeburgh lifeboat covers the area of coast between Southwold and Bawdsey going out to around 50 miles off shore. When the coastguard hears of someone in distress or need of help, the crew in Aldeburgh are paged direct. Both Lee and Steve have to be able to get to the station within 3 minutes of their pagers going off, night or day, 365 days a year.

So, do they ever get a day off? Lee laughs, “On an average week we can work around 60-70 hours but during busy times that can go up to around 100 hours a week. Of course we can book time off if we need to, but essentially we are here to save lives, we can be called out at anytime of the day or night, so it just becomes your life. When the pager goes off in the middle of the night, the adrenaline kicks in and you just get on with the job in hand.”

Steve adds, “It becomes second nature, you develop a kind of sixth sense, sometimes I can lay in bed and listen to the wind and rain and just get a feeling that we will be going out later that night, sure enough, it usually happens.”

“From the time the pager goes off, it takes us eight minutes to get the boat into the water. The average is around ten minutes, but we usually do it in eight”. Steve explains. “That’s pretty good going when you consider that the boats have to be towed down to the waters edge too”.

The crew in Aldeburgh is made up of a variety of professions, between them, they say they could design, build, decorate and furnish a house! Due to the physical nature of the work, the RNLI has an upper age limit of 60 for volunteers, although the majority of the crew in Aldeburgh are under 45 years of age. The station gets around 1-2 new volunteers every year but most people tend to volunteer long term. Volunteers undertake a probationary one year of seamanship and can then specialise if they want to, such as in navigation or mechanics.

All crew are first aid trained to a high level. The boats carry gas and air on board as well as a GTN spray for those suffering angina attacks. To become a crew member, you need to be physically fit and pass both medical and eyesight tests as well as live or work close to the station. Remember, the boat is in the water within eight minutes of the pager going off!

As a charity, fundraising for the RNLI is an essential part of the volunteers work. The Aldeburgh station has 20 volunteers dedicated to raising funds. The national running costs for the RNLI, average around £335,000 a day. Six out of ten launches are only possible thanks to people who remembered the RNLI in their Will.

Lee explains, “Around 60% of our money comes from legacies, in fact both our boats were purchased using money bequeathed to us. Our new inshore lifeboat, ‘Christine’ was donated by Mrs Florence Kemp. It is in memory of her daughter, Christine, who tragically died at the age of 12. We are having an official naming ceremony at the station on Saturday 19th April at 2pm, then following her naming, ‘Christine’ will launch for a short demonstration.”

“We’re quite lucky in Aldeburgh to have a well visited station and the shop too. The shop alone raised £90k for us last year, our Christmas cards are always very popular with both visitors and locals.”

Friday 25th January is the annual RNLI SOS Fundraising Day, although there will be no special events on the day at Aldeburgh Station, it is hoped that the day will not only raise funds but also raise awareness of the difficult and essential lifesaving work carried out by lifeboat crews right across the UK.

When asked if they ever get scared, the response is, “No, not really!”.

Dragged out of a warm, cosy bed to be tossed around in the open sea, wet, cold and trying to find someone in distress doesn’t sound like much fun, but after speaking with Lee and Steve, their dedication and passion for the job is clearly evident. They have a very committed crew and there is a real sense of team spirit within the station, like one big happy family. Many people living today owe their lives to these brave volunteers, and many more will be saved in the future…

Useful Weblinks

• Aldeburgh Lifeboat
• RNLI National
• RNLI SOS Fundraising Day
• Becoming a Crew Member

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