Andy Butler on Saving Lives at Sea

Lisa: So can you tell me about the sorts of incidents that you went out to help with?

Um, yeah you’d have perhaps to go and pick up a body that had been found or somebody had fallen over a cliff or something like that. I remember once we all had to get out at the dead of night out to Rocken End. There was a fishing boat had come in ashore there. You had to lug all the search lights and all your rescue gear and rockets ‘cos in those days we had a big rescue rocket that fired a line across the ship and then you had a … what’s it called?

A Breeches Buoy, but we never actually had to do that. It was all phased out and the rocket launchers were all cut up so that they didn’t fall into the hands of the IRA, which was the reason, ‘cos this was back then.