Thread by @BritannicaPax

The @RNLI is in the news again, for doing what it's been doing for nearly two centuries - saving lives.

Here's a short thread on the founding of the #RNLI, and why it's truly a national treasure worth defending from angry keyboard warriors and callous politicians.

Sir William Hillary moved to the Isle of Man in 1808. The island is surrounded by treacherous waters, and in his time there Hillary saw many ships run aground on reefs or crash into cliffs, and he did his fair share of rescuing shipwrecked sailors.

There were around 2,000 shipwrecks on British and Irish coasts every year. There were already lifeboats in Britain, but they were usually small operations and they didn't cover everywhere. So in 1823 Hillary published a pamphlet which laid out his plan for a national service.

The new service would rely on volunteers willing 'to risk their own lives for the preservation of those whom they have never known or seen, perhaps of another nation, merely because they are fellow creatures in extreme peril.’

The Admiralty wasn't keen. But Hillary kept going.

This time he targeted MPs, starting with Thomas Wilson and George Hibbert, who both had ties to the West Indies and merchant shipping - preventing shipwrecks and minimising loss of life (and valuable cargo!) was in their interests.

Speaking of interests, Hibbert was the chairman of the Society of West India Merchants, and campaigned for the continuation of slavery in the British Empire.

Look at that smug, slave-trading face.

Anyway. The campaign gained momentum. Many members of Britain's elite got on board, and they even got King George IV to back them. The Prime Minister, Earl Liverpool, agreed to be the President of the institution. By March 1824 they were ready to launch.

4th March 1824, in the London Tavern, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, a meeting of more than 30 of the great and the good (and also Hibbert) put their names to the new 'Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.'

They also unanimously passed 12 resolutions, which are still part of the RNLI's charter today, which include:

That such immediate assistance be afforded to persons rescued as their necessities may require.

That the subjects of all nations be equally objects of the Institution.

It was only in 1854 that the Institution took on its current - and far less wordy - name: The Royal National Lifeboat Institution. That's why it's #RNLIheroes and not #RNIftPoLfSheroes.

To bring it back to Hillary (and the Isle of Man), Sir William led the lifeboat which rescued the crew of the St George after it foundered in the harbour of the Isle of Man's capital. He was washed overboard, but no one died - no volunteers, and no shipwrecked sailors.

It wasn't the first time a ship crashed on Conister Rock - the reef which had foundered the St George. But it was this rescue which prompted Hillary to begin another project - to build the Tower of Refuge on it.

Because if you can't see the reef, you won't miss a sodding castle.

The @RNLI has been saving lives ever since. I have friends who are only alive because of them. I've watched them launch from the lifeboat house in Douglas harbour. I grew up seeing the Tower of Refuge every day.

They risk their lives for strangers. They really are #RNLIheroes