This is the evocative, skeletal sculpture unveiled yesterday in Poole as a memorial for all the people connected with the RNLI who have lost their lives over the last 200 years.

It commemorates a shocking and utterly humbling scale of self-sacrifice: 778 lives lost trying to save others at sea, all unpaid volunteers from every part of the UK and Ireland.

It stands outside the lifeboat college at the RNLI’s headquarters in Poole and is inscribed with the motto of the charity’s founder, Sir William Hillary: “With courage, nothing is impossible.”