‘Putting lives at risk’: UK coastal towns revolt against smaller lifeboats

Locals are unhappy that Aldeburgh’s Mersey-class lifeboat may be replaced by a smaller, inshore vessel. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Lifeboats have been in Aldeburgh for centuries, even before the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded 199 years ago. On the stony beach of the Suffolk town sit two venerable lifeboat huts, a legacy of a time when two rival crews would row into the North Sea in a race to save lives – and get first salvage rights.

“They never spoke to each other. They drank in separate pubs and had separate lives,” says Derek Wyatt, the former Labour MP who, until recently, was chair of the Aldeburgh Lifeboat Guild, which fundraises for the RNLI.