Jim Roberts on Saving Lives at Sea

When I first started, I was what was called a ’Watcher’ which meant that I went down and did supplementary watches to the Coastguards’ regular watches which is something we discussed earlier.

After a period of time I was then also into the say, lifesaving apparatus team, later known as the CRE Team actually, Coastguard Rescue Equipment Team and in that, everybody used to have a particular job to do and you were all numbered off, from number 1 to number 11 and each person had a job.

My job was number 6 and number 6’s job was actually to attach the breeches buoy to all the lines. So I had to go through a succession of various nautical knots on this and no two … none of the knots were the same so there were, I think, about six attachments you had to make and every one was a different knot and then actually attach the breeches buoy via a block up onto the hawser or the other ‘whip’ pending on which method you were using.

And then you had half the team on, ‘cos the breeches buoy was hauled out on one line and hauled in on the other.

So, you had to help do the hauling.