When the chief executive of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution stepped forward to say that volunteers are facing “unacceptable” abuse, the words carried the weight of more than two centuries of maritime rescue history. The RNLI, after all, is not some faceless government agency or corporate machine. It is a patchwork of ordinary people—fishermen, shopkeepers, retired teachers, office workers, students—who leave their warm beds at 3 a.m. when the pager goes off, pull on waterproof overalls, and race across rain-slicked roads to launch a lifeboat into a violent sea. For generations, these volunteers have been treated as quiet heroes, the…

Just as it was in New York, it was a sunny, end-of-summer day in London, one of those pale golden afternoons that seem to hold the last warmth of the season before everything turns. I was heavily pregnant, my body heavy and unfamiliar, and the heat had drained every last ounce of energy from me. I lay down on the sofa in front of the television, letting the low hum of daytime programming wash over me, and within minutes I had slipped into one of those thick, dreamless naps that pregnancy seems to demand. I cannot say what woke me.…