History

CG19's are station logs, everything that goes on at a station is recorded in one. We have a quite a few at the station going back to the late 1980's which forms the history of the station.

Back in the 1990's, the Coastguard Service went through a period of time when stations had a clear out and records were thrown away or removed from the station on the orders of senior management.

Imagine throwing out you family photo albums? well that's like getting rid of your station logs!

Thankfully at the time certain team members kept the logs hidden or at home, hoping one day to be allowed to return them. The late Ian Surface was one of these and kept a lot of history which went right back to the start of the service in the town. We are very grateful to his family for passing them back to us for the benefit of town and help keep the history of the station together.

I'm pleased to say the modern Coastguard Service has a different view of Coastguard history and realises the importance of having these documents. Now things have slowed down a bit it has given me time to start looking at it all again.

Readers of our main web site might notice that there is a period of history from 1980 to 1985 missing from our records....."the great clear out covered this time" so I thought it was lost for ever, until i went to the town museum.

David Haysom, was at a local auction house one day and discovered a pile of Coastguard books which he purchased. I can only guess how they ended up there but the importance of these books is it covers the period 1982 to 1988 so by careful reading we should be able to reconstruct some of the history during this period.