Exhibition celebrates 200 years of lifeboats

A museum in Suffolk is celebrating 200 years of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

The charity was founded in a pub in Bishopsgate in the City of London in 1824.

An RNLI team was set up in Aldeburgh two years later.

The museum in the Suffolk town has put on an exhibition that will run until Thursday.

The past 12 months have been bittersweet for the Aldeburgh volunteers, after the charity decided to remove its long-serving all-weather lifeboat from service.

David Gillingwater recently retired from working on the lifeboat at Aldeburgh after 27 years.

He said working on lifeboats was a "dangerous lifestyle", adding: "[The] sea is unpredictable and people lose their lives very quickly, so there's got to be people to go out and help when needed."

He recalled how he saw the Aldeburgh crew going out one Sunday morning and went to ask if he could help: "Within six months I was on the boat and doing rescues which was absolutely amazing to do."

He said "27 years later I can look back on this exhibition and see my part of a timeline of the Aldeburgh lifeboat".

One of his most memorable rescues was helping a cow stuck in river mud, adding: "We ended up having to tow it across the river and it happily swam, but when we got there it went for us, so you would have seen people clad in yellow outfits running away from a cow."

Tony Bone is the chairman of the museum and curated the exhibition, and he said he wanted to mark the 200th anniversary and the year that Aldeburgh lost its all-weather lifeboat.

When the RNLI first set up in Aldeburgh in 1826, the lifeboat was actually based in nearby Sizewell, but it was relocated to the town in 1851.

Mr Bone said: "The museum has got lots of pictures over the years of the lifeboat and we thought, what an excellent opportunity to put together an exhibition."

The museum is open daily between 10:30 and 15:30.

Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.