Yachting-Live

Royal Mail Gives RNLI Lifeboats Stamp of Recognition
Pippa Wilson, Sarah Webb (centre) and Sarah Ayton pictured with RNLI volunteer lifeboat crew from Weymouth lifeboat station on board RNLI Severn class all-weather lifeboat ‘Ernest and Mabel’. Photo by Geoff Caddick/PA Wire

Olympic medal hopefuls and current world Yngling sailing champions - Team Mirabaud’s Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson - gave the new Royal Mail ‘Mayday - Rescue at Sea’ stamps their seal of approval aboard Weymouth’s RNLI all-weather Severn class lifeboat, as the stamps go on sale March 13.

The marine search and rescue work of the charity’s volunteer lifeboat crew is recognised in a special ‘Mayday - Rescue at Sea’ Royal Mail stamp issue, which commemorates the centenary of the adoption of S-O-S as the worldwide Morse code distress signal at sea. To mark the 100th anniversary, Royal Mail worked with printers to re-create the famous sequence of ‘dots’ and ‘dashes’ along the top and bottom edges of the stamps.

The six stamp Mayday - Rescue at Sea issue will run to over 30 million stamps. Each stamp features a striking photograph* that captures the testing weather conditions encountered by RNLI volunteer lifeboat crews and HM Coastguard rescue helicopters in saving lives at sea. Four of the set of six stamps feature RNLI lifeboats: Appledore in Devon (46 pence stamp), St Ives in Cornwall (54p stamp), Tenby in Pembrokeshire (78p stamp), and Barra in the Western Isles of Scotland (1st class stamp). The other two stamps in the Mayday - Rescue at Sea issue feature the work of HM Coastguard helicopters from Lee-on-Solent (69p stamp) and Portland (48p stamp).

The RNLI in-shore (St Ives) and all-weather (Appledore, Barra and Tenby) lifeboats featured in the stamps launched a total of 67 times in 2007, rescuing a combined total of 56 people.

For information on ordering special limited edition RNLI first day covers and stamp sheets visit: www.buckinghamcovers.com

www.rnli.org.uk

Michael Jackson Bad Shirt King of Pop 1980's New LARGE £6.74 (0 Bid) End Date: Sunday Nov-23-2008 4:05:56 GMT Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list

Popularity: 14% [?]

Listen to this podcast

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.