Graham Hall on Saving Lives at Sea
When we got the new Lifeboat, or when we were told we were going to get one of these new Tamar class Lifeboats we had to obviously adapt our Boathouse, existing Boathouse to accommodate it because it’s a lot bigger and a lot heavier.
Our old Boathouse was … the concrete was crumbling, it was built of concrete and that has a finite life, the salt in the concrete, it was crumbling and that and the decision was made to rebuild, replace it as a most effective way of providing a new Boathouse, so we then had to go through the regime of planning permission which took a long time and quite a lot of discussion shall we say, about planning and eventually we got the plans passed and it was built largely from seaward by a jack up rig that came along and lay alongside the old Boathouse and knocked all that down and it was all taken away. Most of that was taken away in barges, removed and then we built the new Boathouse on the same site, extending the site, it was a lot bigger then, a lot of concrete there.
A lot of it was pumped down there and when that was built but we kept the old walkway to it for access.
When that Boathouse was getting fairly well established, what they did is then built this new walkway which is the one there today, which was different.
The old one was ‘A’ frames and it was quite a lot of concrete. This is just columns of steel, thick steel all full of grout inside so they should last a fair while and all the concrete works were made down in Cornwall by Cornish Concrete and they came up here on barges and were slotted into place, but it was a big, big undertaking.
It took, what, over two years to build it and eventually when it was all built, we had asked for and we got the Princess Royal to come and open it for us which was a good day.
It was a very proud day for Bembridge to have our new Boathouse, our new boat and it was officially opened by the Princess Royal and you know, it’s a fine boat, but imagine it, I mean Bembridge had been hiring crews for Lifeboats since 1857 and that is just a progression of it but, you know, the old boys would still recognise what goes on there.
More modern, you know, more technology but the ethos is just the same. They go out there to help people that need help.