Exhibition runs until 16 November

For 200 years, the RNLI has been saving lives at sea. From wooden lifeboats with oars and sails to today’s motor-powered all-weather lifeboats, crews across the country have been making our waters a safer place.

RNLI: 200 Years of Saving Lives at Sea atm the Royal Cornwall Museum includes historic photographs, crew kit and equipment, shipwreck stories and artefacts from the museum collection and a decommissioned D-Class inshore lifeboat in the Main Gallery. Also on display are paintings from Kurt Jackson’s RNLI Cornwall series of work, and artwork by Henry Scott Tuke from the museum collection.

Together with the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall has more than 250 miles of coastline, and lies in a strategic seafaring position. As a result, Cornish people have relied on the sea for food, work and world connection for thousands of years.

An estimated 6,000 shipwrecks have taken place on Cornwall’s coastline and records from the 1300s show that rescues were carried out by fishers and pilots in small boats like gigs and cutters. Since its beginning in 1824, the RNLI’s lifeboat crews have continued to be populated by these brave seafaring folks hundreds of years later.

Find out more about the Royal Cornwall Museum here.