Jim Roberts on Saving Lives at Sea

Lisa: Did you have a vehicle at that time?

Vehicles came along a little later, probably about the 1970’s. Prior to that, if you had to transport the life saving apparatus gear, breeches buoy gear, each Station had a local Contractor in Bembridge, it was people called Preston’s, Charlie Preston who ran the local Coal Merchant in the village and you used to phone up and say, “Bring your lorry down.”

Of course, if you go right back in time the same thing used to happen, but it was with horse and carts and the Coastguard used to have their cart, but they had to go and round-up a few local farmers horses to pull it along.

But, going back to the vehicles, yes, they came in and the first one we had at Bembridge was always … always sticks in my mind because it happened to be a Hillman Imp and it was just that you could put three or four staff in it and go somewhere, you didn’t have your rescue equipment or anything like that in it.

However, there was one disadvantage because at Bembridge none of the three full-time Coastguards had a driving licence and that was very similar on a lot of Stations around the coast so there was this sort of six and nine month period where we all had to learn to drive which was fine because all the Auxiliary Coastguards didn’t have a problem, we could all drive. But yes, there were one or two hair-raising incidents with the regulars actually learning to drive, but perhaps we won’t want to go into those.