Old Map of the British Isles in 1935 by RNLI - Dover, Plymouth, The Lizard

This chart was produced in 1935 to record the lifeboat stations of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution around the coasts of the British Isles. The RNLI itself had been founded in 1824 and by the 1930s had already been credited with saving more than 140,000 lives, and this chart was drawn up as a thematic, pictorial record of that work rather than a conventional topographical map. Each lifeboat station is marked with its own small boat icon set against a blue background representing the sea, with station names picked out in red and black text for clarity, and the whole sheet is bordered by a decorative rope-and-life-preserver motif that signals its maritime subject at a glance. Operational phrases such as In Distress and Cannot Save Ship, Take People Off appear on the chart too, giving a direct sense of the signalling codes lifeboat crews and coastguards worked with at the time.

The chart covers the coastlines of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, together with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, and takes in the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Irish Sea and the Celtic Sea. Along the south coast it marks stations at Dover, Eastbourne, Brighton, Worthing, Bognor Regis, Selsey Bill, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, Poole, Swanage and Weymouth, continuing west to Exmouth, Teignmouth, Brixham, Dartmouth and Plymouth. Further round the coast the chart records Looe, Fowey, Mevagissey, Falmouth, Port Isaac, Padstow and Newquay, before reaching St Mary's in the Scilly Isles and the Lizard peninsula stations of Penlee, Porthleven, Porthoustock, Coverack and Cadgwith. Across the Irish Sea, the chart also marks Baltimore on the coast of Ireland, giving a genuinely comprehensive picture of lifeboat coverage around the British Isles in the mid-1930s.

A chart like this makes a fitting gift for a serving or retired RNLI volunteer, a coastguard, or anyone whose family has a connection to one of the stations named here, from Plymouth and Falmouth to Dover, Newquay or The Lizard. It would also suit someone marking a retirement from sea-going work, a fundraising milestone for a local lifeboat station, or a collector interested in maritime safety history who wants something a little different from a conventional coastal chart. It is available unframed and in a full range of sizes, so it can be scaled to fit anywhere from a coastal cottage hallway to a larger sitting-room wall.