Robin Jenkins

What they witnessed is beyond most people’s comprehension. During the search, they could hear the sounds of those who had been washed out to sea, screaming and crying from amongst the freezing cold debris. Knowing there was nothing they could do for them, the rescuers remained on the beach listening to the cries fade.”

Robin, who has been a volunteer for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution since he was a student at UWC Atlantic in 1992, knew the RNLI’s power, not only to save lives but as a focal point for coastal communities. Japan has a national coastguard, but no equivalent to its local, rapid response. Robin returned home and, with the help of students from UWC Atlantic and Chelsea College of Arts, where Robin was a Senior Lecturer in Interior Spatial Design, set about changing that.

Their solution was the Lifeboat in a Box – a 12 metre (40ft) shipping container kitted out with a 4 metre, rigid-hulled inflatable boat, a maintenance workshop and changing room – which could be delivered to coastlines where no adequate lifeboat service existed. Atlantic Pacific was officially inaugurated in early 2016 and the first Lifeboat in a Box was delivered to Kamaishi that August. Robin and our students spent two weeks training locals to use their new equipment.

The original Lifeboat in a Box cost around £120,000, but Robin is sure that can be significantly reduced when the project is scaled up. For the past three years, Atlantic Pacific has also organised a summer school here at UWC ATlantic teaching boat handling and basic search and rescue. The programme has trained 118 crew and more than a third have gone on to work with NGOs in the Mediterranean tackling the refugee crisis. 

“We’re not a political organisation, we’re not standing on a soapbox, preaching about whether we think a situation is right or wrong,” says Robin. “Our strapline is ‘providing lifeboats where there are none’. Where we put lifeboats and crew is based on statistics of drowning and in the world currently the highest drowning rates are in the Mediterranean.”

The charity aims to ship its second Lifeboat in a Box to Mozambique by 2020. The African nation has a huge coastline and almost half of its population earns a living on, in or beside the water. 

“Based on Japan, we’ll face lots of issues,” predicts Robin, “but we are hellbent on speeding this process up.”

Listening to these stories, Robin, who has been a member of the RNLI crew since 1992, considered that if Japan had had such a service, hundreds of lives could have been saved that night. “This story unsettled me so much that I began to wonder how to stop it from ever happening again.” He explains. “Unfortunately there is no one solution. However, taking from my experience as a voluntary lifeboat man with the RNLI and as an alumni of UWC Atlantic, I could imagine one way of helping.”

“Coastal security in Japan is mainly provided by the national Coastguard, who offer ships and helicopters. So I proposed to construct a prototype lifeboat and ship a part of British coastal tradition to Japan. We built the boat, and in resolving how to transport it and where will it stay when it arrives: Lifeboat in a Box was born."

This clear vision of how AP could utilise its boat building expertise to help with potential disaster relief in the future and at the same time re-ignite the pioneering spirit that has defined and directed UWC Atlantic since the 1960s.

A not-for-profit, entirely volunteer-staffed NGO was prompted by a question: “Where’s your lifeboat service?” Robin Jenkins, then a senior lecturer of interior and spatial design at Chelsea College of Arts, was in Kamaishi, on the north-east coast of Japan. The city had been one of the first places hit by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and was still devastated. Jenkins, a guest of a local charity, had been invited to suggest how the area might regenerate.

“One woman told me how, when the tsunami happened, she and her friends could hear the screams out at sea, but it was dark and they couldn’t do anything,” says Jenkins, now full-time CEO of Atlantic Pacific. “So they just stood on the beach listening to these cries get quieter and quieter until these people eventually perished. When I asked about the lifeboat service, she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Jenkins, 45, has been a volunteer for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution since he was a student at Atlantic College in south Wales. He knew the RNLI’s power, not only to save lives but as a focal point for coastal communities. Japan has a national coastguard, but no equivalent to its local, rapid response. Jenkins returned home and, with the help of students from Atlantic College and Chelsea College of Arts, set about changing that.

Their solution was the Lifeboat in a Box – a 12 metre (40ft) shipping container kitted out with a 4 metre, rigid-hulled inflatable boat, a maintenance workshop and changing room – which could be delivered to coastlines where no adequate lifeboat service existed. Atlantic Pacific was officially inaugurated in early 2016 and the first Lifeboat in a Box was delivered to Kamaishi that August. Jenkins and students from Atlantic College spent two weeks training locals to use their new equipment.

The original Lifeboat in a Box cost around £120,000, but Jenkins is sure that can be significantly reduced when the project is scaled up. For the past three years, Atlantic Pacific has also organised a summer school in south Wales teaching boat handling and basic search and rescue. The programme has trained 118 crew and more than a third have gone on to work with NGOs in the Mediterranean tackling the refugee crisis. “We’re not a political organisation, we’re not standing on a soapbox, preaching about whether we think a situation is right or wrong,” says Jenkins.

"Our strapline is ‘providing lifeboats where there are none’. Where we put lifeboats and crew is based on statistics of drowning and in the world currently the highest drowning rates are in the Mediterranean."