The River Tay has been the port of departure for some of maritime history’s most extraordinary, often world-renowned, voyages. There were the explorers like Robert Falcon Scott whose Dundee-built Discovery took him to the Antarctic in 1901. There were adventurers like Captain David Rough, the eleventh son of Dundee glove maker, a seaborne adventurer in the heady days of empire who founded the New Zealand city of Auckland in 1840. And there were illustrious seamen like Dundee-born Captain Sir Charles Barrie who went to sea aged just 14 and, after various adventures that included trying his luck in the Australian gold rush, returned to Dundee a rich man in 1881 to found his own shipping line.

There were the shipbuilders who created everything from humble harbour tugs and work-a-day ferries to ocean-going cargo and passenger liners. And there were the men o’ war like Admiral Lord Viscount Duncan of Dundee who roundly defeated a numerically superior Dutch fleet at the Battle of Camperdown in 1798 and whose tactics influenced Nelson at Trafalgar seven years later. There was Dundee-born Sir Alfred Ewing who led the effort to break German naval ciphers during the First World War and there were the men of the Royal Navy’s multinational 9^th Submarine Flotilla based in the Tay during the Second World War.

The Tay has a long history of trading with the far corners of the world, and it is still one of Britain's busiest rivers with around 470 ships, sleek warships, mighty oil tankers, rust-streaked oil rigs, hard worked oil industry support vessels and elegant passenger liners, visiting the ports of Dundee and Perth annually. But it is also one of Britain’s most dangerous waterways and the rock-strewn coastlines of Angus and Fife, the fast-running tides, the treacherous, shifting sandbanks and the steep, breaking seas at the river's mouth have, since prehistory, exacted a terrible toll in ships and lives.

River Tay lifeboats have been going to the aid of shipwrecked and distressed seafarers in and around the river since 1830, their volunteer crews regularly facing extreme danger, some even paying for their dedication with their lives. And this remarkable lifesaving tradition continues with today’s Broughty Ferry lifeboat volunteers, men and women from all walks of life who are on call 24/7, often in the very worst weather, ever ready to answer the call for help.