Most people saved at sea in one rescue

On 13 January 2012, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef near Isola del Giglio off the coast of Tuscany, Italy. The impact tore two huge strips of steel off the hull and water poured into the engine rooms. The ship took on a list as it limped along the coast and eventually settled in 20 metres (65 feet) of water. In the subsequent operation to remove everyone from the stricken vessel – a joint effort between the Italian Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force that lasted into the following day – 4,196 passengers and crew were saved using lifeboats, motorboats and helicopters; sadly, it's believed that a total of 33 people lost their lives (32 passengers and crew and one salvage worker).

The salvage of the Costa Concordia between September 2013 and July 2014, which involved building a metal platform on an artificial seabed and towing it to Genoa, was one of history’s largest salvage operations. The scrapping process was only completed in 2017.

In the history of the UK's Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the longest-running national lifeboat service, established in 1824, the largest-scale rescue took place on 17 March 1907, when the liner SS Suevic struck the Maenheere Reef, off Lizard Point, Cornwall, UK, in dense fog. Four wooden lifeboats from villages around the Lizard put to sea and, in the following 16 hours, 60 lifeboat men rescued all 456 passengers and crew without a single life lost. Given the lack of resources and fairly rudimentary equipment at this time, the success of this rescue is particularly impressive.