13 March 2008
Royal Mail marks the centenary of the adoption of SOS as the worldwide standard distress signal with a set of 6 stamps highlighting the actions of the crews of Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency (MCA) who regularly risk their own lives attempting to save those of others.

These stamps have a perforation never seen before on British stamps, the horizontal perfs being in the form of dots and dashes spelling SOS in Morse.

The stamps are on a Royal Mail first day cover cancelled with the Poole, Dorset first day postmark.