200 Voices Podcast
Musical moments in lifesaving: Is your song on our playlist?
First gentle, then fierce. Rolling and rhythmic. It stirs our souls and soothes our spirits. We’re talking, of course, about the sea. But we could also be talking about music.
The sea has always inspired musicians, and those who go to sea have taken comfort and joy in hearing and performing the results. Music is a thread that runs through the RNLI’s 200-year history – always there for us, if we listen.
Warming the winter in Blackpool
In the dark and lonely winters of 19th-century Blackpool, the lifeboat crew had an idea. The Lifeboat magazine told the story in November 1926:
‘Blackpool was a very different place 42 years ago from the popular seaside resort of today, and the members of the lifeboat crew, finding that the winter evenings dragged heavily, approached the Coxswain – “Bob” Bickerstaffe – and suggested that they should form a brass band. The suggestion was not without its humorous side, for not one man knew a single note of music or possessed an instrument of any kind, neither had they the necessary money to purchase them, and the coxswain’s reply was that “to get music out of a fisherman would be harder than getting blood out of a stone”. But Bob Bickerstaffe’s heart was not of stone. He sought out his cousins John and Tom Bickerstaffe, a subscription list was started, and before long the Life-Boat Band became an accomplished fact.
‘Since that day the band has been much more than a hobby to the crew of the Blackpool lifeboat, and has enabled them to raise large sums of money for various charitable causes and good works. It was in 1895 that a terrible disaster befell the fishing community at the neighbouring port of Fleetwood. Seven fishing boats went down, and 33 children lost their fathers in one stormy night. The Life-boat Band acted at once. It paraded Blackpool’s streets and collected money with such success that a tour of the Lancashire towns was organised. It played morning, noon, and night outside the mills and workshops, in the market places, and wherever crowds assembled, until sufficient money was raised to meet all claims upon the fund which had meantime been opened.’
The Blackpool Life-boat Band played, raising money and spirits, until 1958.
By the 1950s, inventive RNLI supporters were using music to raise funds in all kinds of creative ways. The magazine reported in June 1954 on a party game that could still work today (though you may need a contactless payment method … ):
‘A variation of the old game of musical chairs was played at the 11th birthday party of the Hornchurch Sea Cadets early this year. A pot was passed round a circle of people. The pot had to be kept moving but when the music stopped the holder had to put in a coin. The game was organised by Lieutenant BW Durrant RNR (Retd), and it produced one guinea for the institution.’
A modern anthem
Three decades on, Irish music legend Phil Coulter got involved in the founding of Lough Swilly Lifeboat Station. Phil’s brother got into difficulty windsurfing in the area and drowned in 1984. Phil joined other locals to campaign for a lifeboat, and attended the station opening in 1988, finding himself very moved by one of the hymns. ‘When I heard For Those in Peril on the Sea,’ he recalls, ‘I got goosebumps. And still, to this day when I hear that piece of music, I get goosebumps.’
Phil was inspired to write a ballad, Home From the Sea, telling the story of a lifeboat shout. Celebrated folk singer Liam Clancy was brought onboard to perform lead vocals, and a chorus of crew members, one from each lifeboat station around Ireland, joined for the refrain ‘Carry us home, home, home from the sea’. The song was a huge hit in Ireland, and 40 years later it’s still heard all around the coast.
Phil told us in 2024: ‘Just the other day I was talking to a friend of mine in Waterford, and he was saying that a new lifeboat had been launched in Dunmore East, and as is the pattern, the choir and the audience in attendance will sing Home From the Sea. It’s been adopted as an anthem, and that makes me very proud.’
Phil Coulter told us in the interview above that he is ‘possibly the biggest fan of the RNLI in the music industry’. Phil, we’re pleased to say that you’ve got competition.
‘The risk brings excitement and danger’
Gavin Carr is one of the UK’s leading choral conductors, and at the time of writing was working with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Bath Minerva Choir on a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony, in aid of the RNLI.
‘The Sea Symphony is set to poetry by the American poet Walt Whitman, and it’s all about the sea and its many facets,’ Gavin says. ‘Magnificent and overpowering. And calm and mysterious. And dangerous and threatening. It’s about sailors. It’s about ships. It’s about all who go down to the sea in ships. And, as you’d expect with that subject matter, the music is incredibly vibrant. There’s a huge orchestra, and it’s full of dramatic passages, but also that particular sort of English beauty that Vaughan Williams is famous for. It’s really a world in itself.
‘In the musician’s world, flow is all-important, and the water of the sea is flow incarnate. So that’s one obvious way in which the sea is a brilliant archetype for musicians. But also, there’s the risk involved every time you go to sea, whether you’re a swimmer or a surfer, a kayaker or a fisherman. The risk brings excitement and danger, and those two things also feature in any good performance. As a conductor, you sometimes want to provoke danger in your forces to make things come alive. There are so many aspects of the sea that inspire – metaphorical aspects, archetypal aspects, spiritual aspects.’
The fundraising concert will also feature Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and a new choral setting of The Lifeboat Prayer by Paul Carr, a composer often heard on Classic FM, and Gavin’s brother.
‘People should come to the show because they’re going to have a rollicking good evening,’ Gavin says. ‘It’s music that will thrill even if you’re not familiar with classical music. The Sea Symphony will thrill anyone from a 5-year-old to a 105-year-old. But they should also come to show support for the RNLI, which does such a crucial and difficult job, to such an amazing level of skill and dedication. And to be part of a community that supports the RNLI and supports live music – two great things that are worth buying into.’
Get your tickets for A Sea Symphony in the Lighthouse, Poole.
Meanwhile, in Looe, a series of summer concerts in the boathouse features everything from male voice choirs to diva classics. See the Looe boathouse concerts.
Haul away – shanties going strong
One of the strongest musical traditions in fishing communities is the sea shanty. Shanties were first sung at sea to keep crews working together in time while rowing and hauling ropes. Nowadays, from drunken sailors to wellermen, tall tales of big characters ring out at concerts, ceremonies and events all around the coast.
The Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival is a huge event in the Cornish town, bringing in over 80 shanty bands from around the UK, Europe and beyond. Festival-goers have raised over £70,000 for their charity partner, the RNLI, over the years. The 2026 festival runs from 12-14 June, so if you’d like to go you’d better heave ho!
Meanwhile, in Portrush, local lads the Causeway Shantymen have been recruited to help share water safety advice in their performances. Portrush RNLI Volunteer Press Officer Judy Nelson says: ‘We need more help than ever to deliver our water safety messages. It’s such a natural fit for us at the station to team up with the Shantymen – we even got to make a guest appearance singing with them at Christmas!’
Dozens of groups raise their voices for the RNLI, but which of these is not a real shanty band?
a) The Dockyard Dogs
b) Buoys Own
c) Freddie’s Barnet
Answer is below the next photo …
The answer is b) Buoys Own. Though we’d love to see it, there is no Boyzone/shanty mashup band currently raising funds for the RNLI. Though a lifeboat called Boy’s Own served in Looe from 1882 to 1902.
The Dockyard Dogs are real, and here they are performing in Rye Harbour:
Freddie’s Barnet is also a real band, seen raising funds here at the Brancaster Staithe Sea Shanty Festival:
There are plenty of good old-fashioned bars with music around the Isle of Wight, home of indie pop stars Wet Leg. Their 2025 single Mangetout was nominated for a Grammy, and contains the line, delivered to a pleading would-be lover: ‘You say you’re lost at sea, call the RNLI.’
And talking of bangers, in this the 25th year of the RNLI’s lifeguard service, where would pop music be without the Beach Boys? Good Vibrations, California Girls, Surfin’ USA … our playlist is really getting quite long.
But not as long as that of Radio Caroline, the famous pirate radio station. The station’s crew and DJs (and canary) were rescued by Sheerness lifeboat crew when the boat sank in March 1980. DJ Stevie Gordon announced that the station was closing as the Caroline crew were about to board the lifeboat. Caroline by the Fortunes was played – and faded out.
If you’ve got an inner rock star and want to put on a show in aid of the RNLI, check out our Rock the Boat fundraising resources.
The songs and spirit of survival
We’ve heard stories throughout the RNLI’s history of crews singing together to keep spirits up in dire times. And those waiting to be rescued too. Benny Thomson and his friend Gavin were in real trouble when their jetski sank in 2012. Every time the waves separated them, one would sing ‘Love you lots’ and wait for the other to reply ‘like jelly tots’ – a song their kids would sing while at play, and just the thing for two dads fighting for their lives. Benny recalls: ‘We’re thinking maybe it’s our time, how do we make it easy? But we just kept thinking about the kids and our wives.’
After 6 hours, and with darkness falling, Arbroath lifeboat crew finally found Benny and Gavin clinging to each other and brought them home. Benny has since joined the lifeboat crew in Broughty Ferry, and been out on 100 rescue missions. He and Gavin will never forget the song that kept them going – their matching tattoos, got to commemorate the day they were saved, read: ‘Love you lots like jelly tots.’
We put our own shout out and asked RNLI volunteers for some of their favourite musical maritime moments.
Vinny Pedley from Lytham St Annes writes: ‘We had an evening singing in Riggers [the bar at the RNLI College] on a crew training course with guitars – a fantastic evening.’
Graham Burgess from Calshot adds: ‘Recently went on a Lifeboat Trainer and Assessor course at the college in Poole. One of the tasks was to run a 5-minute session on any subject. Turns out one of the crew on the course was a member of the 85ers shanty band and he had us singing Drunken Sailor in one of the meeting rooms. I’d love to know what the meeting next door thought!’
Emma Warren tells us about the 200th-anniversary concert at Burnham-on-Sea: ‘I remember when the band played as the pagers went off! They played the theme from Rocky as we headed out.’
But in honour of our courageous crews and lifeguards, who know and love the sea but always hold it in awe and respect, we’ll give the final words to the poet Walt Whitman, with the words that close the Sea Symphony:
O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
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