Jim Roberts on Saving Lives at Sea

When I first started, the equipment that we had at Bembridge was know as ‘Life Saving Apparatus Equipment’, a quaint old title and this was used for rigging breeches buoys and that was responsible for rescuing people from grounded vessels to the shore line.

That included the ship’s crew, passengers whoever was on board, but one must remember that you are bringing people ashore in basically a life belt so you are only going to bring one at a time and if you had dozens of people to bring ashore, the crew were going to get very tired pulling people ashore maybe over several hundred yards by ropes in foul weather conditions.

However, the equipment was withdrawn as a role and was their role was taken over by the rescue helicopters, so the breeches buoy equipment disappeared, helicopters took over