Hartlepool's RNLI team tots up its achievements as it says farewell to 2019

The RNLI crew based in Hartlepool say they have completed 51 shouts during the last months, which means they have spent 72 hours at sea on service.

Between them, the team have spent more than 360 hours afloat and 670 hours ashore supporting these services.

This is in addition to the hundreds of hours that are given to training each and every year.

Over those shouts the charity has been alerted to a mixture of vessels, missing persons, men overboard, medivacs, mechanical failures and recovered 16 people from the water.

The crew has assisted a further 30 people back to shore and a dog too.

On the crew front, two new crew passed out of their probation periods and four visited the fund’s college at Poole for training off station.

Two of the crew reached their 20-year anniversary with the charity.

A spokesperson for the team said: “As always we are overwhelmed by all of your kind messages, from those wishing us a safe return from a callout to the funny ones on some of our pictures that we post, and would like to say again that we couldn't do this without your support and donations to the RNLI.

“We would also like to say thanks to some of the other agencies we have worked alongside this year: RNLI Redcar, RNLI - Sunderland, Whitby RNLI, Humber Coastguard, Hartlepool Coastguard, Seaham Coastguard, Redcar Coastguard, Cleveland Police, Cleveland Fire Brigade, North East Ambulance, Great North Air Ambulance.

“It’s been another tough year for our lifeboat family and our thoughts are always with the ones that are no longer with us, so again we express our love and appreciation to our families and friends for your support through all the training, events and shouts, they are the ones that sit up after the pager sounds, not knowing where we are or what we are actually up to, and I am sure sometimes that they would rather not know.”