Volunteer crews from Portsmouth RNLI have been called out six times in the nine days between 26 June and 4 July 2026. The launches occurred on six separate dates, keeping the station busy across the start of the summer season.
The first call came at 9.17pm on 26 June. Crews were out again in the early hours of 27 June at 4.58am, then twice more before the month ended—at 4.53pm on 30 June and 11.22pm on 1 July. July continued the pattern with launches at 12.50pm on the 3rd and 6.07pm on the 4th. The station operates two inshore lifeboats from its base on Ferry Road in Southsea, tasked by HM Coastguard and Solent Coastguard to incidents across Portsmouth harbour and the eastern Solent.
The busy nine days add to an active spell for the station, which has covered this stretch of water since 1965. Just before this run, crews responded over Fathers’ Day weekend to a broken‑down motorboat taking on water near Langstone Harbour and to children drifting offshore on an inflatable. Volunteer D‑class Helm Ant Lewis said at the time: “Both incidents show how quickly a day on the water can change. In the first callout, a routine mechanical failure left a vessel vulnerable to flooding and being swept towards a busy shipping channel. In the second, what began as children playing in an inflatable quickly developed into a situation involving multiple people attempting a rescue.”
The station’s volunteers—who have been awarded four medals for gallantry over the years—are on call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Nationally, RNLI lifeboat crews launched 9,058 times in 2025 and saved 389 lives, with an average of 122 people aided each day across the UK and Ireland. A milestone for the Portsmouth team came in March 2026 when its first all‑female crew launched during a training exercise on International Women’s Day.
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