Since the RNLI was founded in 1824, lifeboat stations have been on constant alert to answer the call of the running tide. In this work, lifeboatmen, fishermen and their families are interviewed. From the Scottish stations of Lochinvar and Peterhead, past Captain Cook's port at Whitby, the Tart family of Dungeness, to Devon and Cornwall and onto the dramas of Ballycotton, County Cork and Galway Bay, this is a complex portrait of communities dependent on the sea.