David Butler on Saving Lives at Sea

In the community, we tried … when I took over charge of the Ventnor Coast Guard team, we were a little bit disenfranchised from the rest of the community and so I took steps to try and remedy that.

The first thing I did was try and get us involved with the Ventnor Carnival, so our vehicle went at the front of the Ventnor Carnival, which was a good move. It shows a lot of people that we do exist, the Coast Guard did exist, ‘cos that’s part of the problem. When people call for an emergency service on the coast, they don’t actually know the Coast Guard exists.

They sort of automatically ask for the Fire or the Police, and there’s quite a delay or there used to be quite a delay in actually getting the Coast Guard to the job to get it sorted.

We also put in our own carnival float for a number of years which grew ever bigger and ever bigger which is a shame it’s not still done now, but that was a good little publicity thing as well, and we also used to do Remembrance Day maroon firing with the British Legion down in the High Street, which I believe the guys do now but they’re not allowed to use the maroons anymore.

So, over the years … and then we were trying to involve ourselves with the local pubs and things as well, not from a drinking point of view but just to be around and that and we had quite a good relationship with the Niton pubs and the Ventnor pubs etc. And if we had any events or things we were doing, we would try and use our local pubs so that they knew we were about.

We would do occasional Open Days where we would set all our gear up on the cliffs above Ventnor or out at St Catherine’s we did a big one out there, didn’t we and that attracted a lot of people to come and see what we do, which was good and more of that needs to be done really.