Lifeboat

A ship carrying full gas tanks is on fire - it is a floating bomb waiting to go off. This is every lifeboat man or woman’s nightmare and yet within minutes the lifeboat and its crew are on their way.

It's 1.30am on a stormy winter's night and a fully laden coaster has lost all power. The wind and tide are pushing the boat ever closer to the rocks. This is the story of a dangerous and exhausting rescue that earns the coxswain Frank Smith the RNLI medal for bravery.

Lucie Powlesland, the first female crew member in the history of the Salcombe lifeboat, joins the crew in a race against time. The race is to rescue four inexperienced divers who have been missing at sea for many hours and unlikely to survive a night in the water.

As the summer sun comes out so do the water sports enthusiasts the estuary is awash with pleasure boats - it's the start of a busy season for the crew of The Baltic Exchange II. The extra work load all adds to the strain of being on call 24 hours a day what will be the reaction of the crew, their families and friends.

August sees a record number of call outs for the lifeboat. A swimmer is stranded on the rocks, a diver is rescued by a fishing boat and to the crew's annoyance, there is an increasing number of false alarms. The crew have a friendly rivalry with the RAF Air Sea Rescue helicopter as to who will be first on the scene but all this is put aside when they are called out to a life or death rescue.

A yacht is in distress on Salcombe's notorious sand bar. It is a dangerous place - made worse by the weather. 76 years earlier in similar conditions the sand bar caused the capsize of Salcombe's lifeboat - all but two crew members lost their lives. The crew also find that life on dry land is not as smooth as they would like.