Coastguard . . .

LT-CDR TIM FETHERSTON-DILKE, the new 'Chief, talks of the re-organisation taking place within Her Majesty's Coastguard, emphasising that its long-standing traditional relationship with the lifeboat service will go on into the future unchanged.

ON SEPTEMBER I, 1978. a reorganisation of HM Coastguard came into effect designed, by taking advantage of modern communications, to make the best possible use of available experienced coastguard officers in the co-ordination of marine search and rescue around the coasts of the United Kingdom. It also takes into account the increasing international co-operation with neighbouring countries.

Six regions, shown on the map below, are to replace the existing 11 divisions. In each region there will be a Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre supported by Maritime Rescue Sub- Centres, of which there will be 22 in all.

Thus, as at present, there will be 28 districts but greater concentration of experienced coastguards will progressively be built up at the regional and district centres while the necessary backing along the coast will be provided by auxiliary coastguards under the supervision of regular officers.

The re-organisation just started will necessarily be gradual and there will be consultation with local interests on the details and timing of changes. Inevitably it will take a long time for these changes to be fully implemented, possibly several years, and it is logical that they should be seen through by one man. So it was agreed that it would be sensible for Lt-Cdr John Douglas. OBE, who had been Chief Inspector of Coastguard since 1970 but who is nearing the age of 60. to make way for his successor now rather than at the expected time next year.

Lt-Cdr Tim Fetherston-Dilke. in the new post of Chief Coastguard, is taking over from a distinguished predecessor.

Lt-Cdr Douglas's period of office was one of intensive modernisation and expansion in the role of HM Coastguard including much improved radio communication and the establishment of the Channel Navigation Information Service and the Brixham Training School. The advances he encouraged in the spheres of both technical equipment and professional skill laid down a strong basis for future development.

He worked closely with the lifeboat service, and. happily, as he is taking up the new post of Regional Controller.

West Scotland, the benefit of his experience will still be available to the rescue services.

Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke. his successor, is already well known to lifeboat people along the coast from Kent to Lincolnshire because he has held the post of Inspector. Eastern Division, since he joined HM Coastguard in 1966.

Talking to the editor of THE LIFEBOAT he explained the coming changes a l i t t l e more fully: 'Perhaps I can summarise it by saying that lite relationship between the Coastguard and the RNLI at all levels—headquarters to headquarters, and lifeboat station to the coastguard on the coast—is not going to change in any way. We are going to maintain these direct links. The coastguard under reorganisation is not disappearing from the coast and going in behind high brick walls at headquarters, although the presence of regulars is going to be diminished at some, relatively few.

places while it is augmented elsewhere.

'The main object of the reorganisation is to make better n.se of our limited regular manpower and we are enabled to do that by the fact that we have now in progress the installation of a much more sophisticated communication system than we ever possessed he/ore. That in turn means we can coordinate operations, perhaps involving lifeboats and helicopters and our own resources, from fewer centres than we have done in the past. Individual lifeboat stations may find that there is no difference at all in the way they work, or there may be the difference that, initially, they are talking with someone further away: probably during the progress of the operation, however, they will still be talking with their same well-known local voice.

'The working arrangement in the past has been that each lifeboat station had a coastguard launching station which, if you like, it regarded as its own and with which it had a close relationship. Thai launching station's main function was to be the link in establishing the need for a lifeboat launch and thereafter to keep the lifeboat authority on shore informed.

Now, the initial alerting of lifeboat authorities and other rescue units is likely to come from one of the 28 rescue centres, which correspond basically with the 28 district headquarters alreadyestablished.

But. while initial communications during an operation will come from these centres, local coastguard resources can be alerted within minutes and both regular and auxiliary coastguards will be concerned in the coordination of inshore casualties as they are now. The local man will still he involved.

'With the centre forming the link, the local coastguard will be freed to he on the actual scene in his vehicle, working where necessary with. say. an inshore lifeboat or helicopter, and information to the lifeboat authority will be routed back through the centre.

'It is really no different from what other emergency services have had to do. Take ambulance control in a county.

People in need of an ambulance are used to dialling 999: they have been answered from the control centre and the ambulance has appeared and any other services necessary have all congregated on the scene. What we shall be doing is similar to that.

'No lookout point is being closed or abolished, but the coverage provided by some lookouts, where there is no longer a need for it to be maintained on a 24- hour basis, will be reduced. Our experience during the past eight or nine years has been that the way we first hear that someone is in trouble has changed. The general public is taking greater interest in what is happening off the coast. We have now got to the encouraging situation where something like 95 per cent of all initial information about people in trouble at sea tomes to us either from the general public, dialling 999, or byradio from craft already at sea. The information actually coming in from a coastguard's pair of eyes, whether he be regular or auxiliary, is under 5 per cent.

Well, we obviously cannot afford to use highly trained staff—and we only have 600 regulars around the coast—just as pairs of eyes. We can use auxiliaries where necessarv and we shall maintain Coastguard continued the same visual watch policy as we have done for the past fire years: that is, keeping watch when we think there is a need for it; when the weather is bad or when, for instance, there is a lot of small craft activity off a particular bit of the coast.

'The advantage in the new system is that we can in fact produce a quicker response to an incident by having stronger staffs gathered in fewer places.

It comes down to a question of howmany pairs of hands a man has. Twelve years ago, when 1 joined, a coastguard officer was on his own. He would receive some emergency information, a 999 call or the sighting of a distress flare. Then he had to do everything in the first five minutes: that means lifting the telephone to ring the honorary secretary, lifting the telephone, perhaps, to ring the RAF, acquainting his superior officer, notifying the ambulance service. There is a limit to what one man can do. He did get through what had to be done but it took that much longer. By augmenting the actual watchkeeping levels, so that two men are brought together at a centre instead of two men each being on their own, you get the actions going on simultaneously.

'At a higher level, for major incidents we have always been very thin on manpower because officers in charge of the districts and inspectors in charge of the division were scattered all the way round and no man can be available for 24 hours a day. By concentrating their efforts, if there is a major incident at any time which requires more expertise, a senior officer will be available.' Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke has behind him the experience of twelve years on the coast and he described the work of a coastguard inspector as 'a good, broad mix'. An inspector is in charge of the coastguard service for his particular stretch of the coast and, equally, is responsible for the efficiency of search and rescue co-ordination for the sea off that coast. With something like 60 regular officers and 500 to 600 auxiliaries in a typical division, much of an inspector's time is absorbed in sheer administration and in the supervision of training. He is concerned with the care of premises and equipment and also with public relations work and liaison with the representatives of a wide range of other bodies. The coastguard inspector works closely with the divisional inspector of lifeboats for his area; then there are other water safety organisations; the Post Office (a vital link of the search and rescue chain); and representatives of search and rescue authorities along the opposing European coast: 'Fairly recently,' said Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke, 'international cooperation has been increasing apace. In the past there was not much crossfertilisation of ideas between the two sides. We had dealings with each other, of course, but usually it was the coast radio stations which acted as the link and it did not have the direct touch. Now we have both Telex and direct telephone dialling links with our opposite number in virtually all the countries—certainly from Norway down to France. I have had the opportunity of meeting search and rescue officials in Denmark, Germany and Holland, and my colleagues on the south coast in their turn have their links with the French.

'The Coastguard is also associated with NATO for the military side of search and rescue, and that embraces other countries such as Iceland. Once a year we have been participating in NATO search and rescue exercises well out at sea—perhaps 150 miles out in the North Sea—and that again has enhanced our links with the continental countries. The North Sea isn't a/I that big, in fact. With the rescue resources stretched round it, even if you are 150 miles out a rescue helicopter from one of the bordering countries can reach you in really a very short time. We have, for instance, had numerous occasions when Norwegian helicopters have come over into what might be called the British side of the North Sea to take off sick men from fishing vessels and the like because they happened to he available at the time. There is a very close relationship developing.' Should there be an oil spillage such as occurred when Eleni V was wrecked off the coast of East Anglia, in Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke's area, the local coastguards will be acting as communicators and plotters for their colleagues in the Department of Trade who are responsible for anti-pollution measures. In fact, Eleni V occupied Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke for 30 days.

'That,' he commented, 'was the month of May written off!' He was also in close liaison with the French authorities at Cherbourg during the Amoco Cadiz operation.

On the operational side, the coastguard inspector has to ensure that the right steps are taken in every incident.

In a typical year that means studying perhaps 650 to 700 reports to check that all went well or to see if there are any lessons to be learnt. Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke has himself been involved in a number rescue services: 'Actually being present is very different from reading a report of an incident afterwards,' he said. 'No written report can convey the sense of urgency or a full appreciation of the problems. Perhaps you are trying to get hold of someone and he isn't in. Or you cannot get a response from a ship with which you were in communication five minutes ago. There is bound to he tension if somebody is in trouble at sea: you have got the resources going, whether it be a lifeboat or another ship or a helicopter, but you don't know for certain whether they are going to get there in time and there is nothing more at that particular moment that you can do about it. But that is the situation which is faced, not by inspectors, but by the average coastguard officer at any time.

'One thing I have learnt is that the casualty which starts off looking relatively simple is the one which can so easily turn into a difficult situation: while, very often, the one which looks a tough nut to crack miraculously solves itself with no difficulty at all.' Communications, Lt-Cdr Fetherston- Dilke, emphasised, is one field that can make or break the success of a rescue.

It was of the greatest importance that people should communicate correctly, speak the same radio language and thus get the information through, regardless of race—or even dialect! The Coastguard, he said, had gone to great pains to improve its RT practice and procedure and there had certainly been an equally matched improvement in RNLI crews.

Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke has found that coastguards are accepted throughout the community 'from the bishop to the bait digger' as helpful government officials who are there to give assistance rather than to be law enforcers, and he is convinced that the goodwill and friendship engendered by this image is of the greatest importance in their work among seafaring people.

'That does not mean,' he added, 'that we should not discourage unwise or ignorant people who put the rescue services and lifeboat crews themselves at risk. Nevertheless. I think a great deal would be lost were we to become a law enforcing organisation.' The new Chief Coastguard is going to miss the day-to-day contact he had as an inspector, both with coastguard auxiliaries and rescue companies and with lifeboat crew. 'They are,' he said, 'the salt of the earth.' Very often these volunteers would also be fishermen: 'Then one got the benefit of hearing the other person's point of view. I have had many a chat on the beach with an Aldeburgh fisherman, also a coastguard, who was more or less giving me two points of view at the same time!' Although he will see less of old friends in East Anglia, Lt-Cdr Fetherston-Dilke is looking forward to the time when, as present administrative demands slacken, he will have the opportunity of meeting coastguards and lifeboatmen in other parts of the country. In the meantime he can be sure that the good wishes of lifeboat people go with him as he embarks on his tasks..