Jim Roberts on Saving Lives at Sea
From then on, beginning of the 70s when they started to reorganise things the Headquarters Station was, on the Island, at the Needles, actually out by the Needles Lighthouse.
That’s quite a scary place as well because there was somebody on there for 24 hour watches and over the years I did do a few out there. But the most interesting thing about that is the Coastguard Station stands right on the cliff edge. When I say right on the cliff edge, the cliff edge comes straight up and the building’s right on the edge of it to the point of view that the Guards on duty out there always said that they knew when the weather got up to gale force 8 they didn’t need any weather forecast to tell them that because that force 8, the wind coming up the English Channel would hit the side of the cliff face at the Needles and inevitably it broke off little bits of pieces of chalk and plinth and that and they would get blown up the cliff fact and then the wind, as it came over the top, would take them … some of them would actually splash against the glass window and you know, it’s like lumps of shrapnel type of thing coming in.
So, they always used to know when they’d got to force 8 because there was some debris kicking in, flung against the side of the window up there.