Summer is about to get underway, but Torbay Coastguard team members are ready for a busy holiday season. This ‘big band of brothers and sisters’ keep watch over 22 miles of English Riviera coastline, keeping a level head as the callouts roll in.
After hours spent stuck in holiday traffic or on packed train carriages, the sight of more than 22 miles of beautiful coastline is an instant reward for visitors to the English Riviera.
Torbay’s easy access to its 20-plus beaches and secluded coves is great for the thousands of holidaymakers who travel here every year to swim, sunbathe, paddleboard and more at this world-famous seaside destination.
However, all of this excited activity marks the start of a hectic season for Torbay HM Coastguard, the organisation responsible for preventing loss of life along the coast and at sea.
‘Don’t get me wrong, we love to see the Bay busy,’ says senior coastal operations officer Jon Kendray. He’s just sat down at the table in the training and meeting room at Torbay Coastal Operations Base in Paignton. ‘There’s so much to do here and we want people to enjoy it all – just in the safest way possible.’
HM Coastguard is an emergency service and part of the government’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
When someone’s in trouble, a 999 call will be directed to the relevant operations centre – often the geographically closest – where they speak to the caller and coordinate the rescue, dispatching teams to the scene. Sometimes lifeboats or helicopters will be drafted in, depending on the type of situation.
On average, Torbay’s coastguard teams – Torquay, Paignton and Brixham – will deal with around 200 shouts every year, often involving cliff rescues or getting to people who have been cut off by incoming tides.
The work is tough, varied and a huge commitment for the people who do it, many of whom are volunteers.
Jon started out as a volunteer before taking on a permanent role with the Torbay team eight years ago.
‘I’ve known I wanted to do this since I was 11 years old,’ he says. ‘My primary school teacher was a volunteer in the Brixham team. She sometimes used to leave the coastguard Land Rover outside and bring in the radio to do checks. I just thought - that looks really cool.’
The reality of the role, however, is about much more than good kit.
‘I remember the first shout I did was this huge three-day search for a missing person with all these different people involved, police, mountain rescue, everyone,’ says Jon, before adding the search didn’t have a positive outcome. ‘It had quite a big impact on me. I thought at the time, is this what every job is going to be like?’
More than a decade on and Jon has seen his fair share of, well, everything. The Torbay team helped to deal with a major incident in Torquay Harbour last year when a superyacht burst into flames. Then there was the cliff fire at Oddicombe Beach. In 2021, John and his colleagues were involved with assisting the evacuation of large areas surrounding Exeter after an unexploded Second World War bomb was found in the city.
And that’s on top of all the other shouts: the broken ankles on the coast path, the families stranded on rocks or ledges by the incoming tide and the searches for lost and vulnerable people on the coast and inland.
‘We meet people on their best days and on their very worst days,’ says Jon, explaining that some jobs still leave their mark. ‘As a team, we’re very good at looking after and supporting each other,’ he adds. ‘That’s really important.’
As if on cue, Drew Parkinson, coastal operations area commander, and volunteer John Bunce have just joined us in the training room.
‘We’re a big band of brothers and sisters, really,’ says Drew, pulling up a chair. ‘There are good times and difficult times but for every difficult thing that happens there will be three or four good things. You get to see some pretty awesome sunrises and sunsets and everything in between.
‘It’s a great job. In some ways, it’s absolutely manic,’ he adds, describing one particularly busy shift last year when the team dealt with eight callouts on one day. ‘But we’re a good group here and there’s also that sense that you’re also part of a national family.’
It’s already been a hectic few weeks for Torbay and we’re not even into peak season yet.
Volunteer John Bunce, a retired police officer, was recently involved in the rescue of a woman who had got into difficulty in the sea, 128 metres offshore.
Conditions were rough and the team decided the quickest way to get to the woman was to get John kitted out in his dry suit so he could swim out to her while they waited for the RNLI lifeboat to make its way to them. (Contrary to popular belief, HM Coastguard doesn’t have its own boats. Instead, the organisation works closely with the RNLI on most jobs).
‘Everybody worked extremely well and extremely quickly,’ says John, praising the team effort that went into the successful rescue. ‘We never see it as our rescue, though,’ adds John. ‘It’s always their - the person’s - rescue.’
Sometimes the teams hear back from the people they’ve helped, sometimes they don’t.
Often, the feedback is instant. John, Drew and Jon talk about the gleaming smiles they’re greeted with from stricken people, overcome with relief when they see the blue jumpsuits coming up or down to wherever they are.
Frequent callouts come from the steep and often unstable stretch of coast path between Brixham and Kingswear. Slips and broken ankles are common and although many of the injuries are not life-threatening, the location makes rescue challenging.
‘People are mainly very apologetic and feeling a bit embarrassed,’ says Jon, who has helped many a fallen walker. ‘We never mind though. This is what we’re trained to do. We often end up reassuring people.’
When they’re not responding to callouts, the Torbay teams are busy carrying out patrols of the coast and taking part in training.
They can often be seen practising rope rescue off the cliffs at Corbyn’s Head in Torquay or else chatting to beachgoers about safety by the sea and avoiding unnecessary risks.
The coastguard also works with police and other organisations, such as Dartmoor Search and Rescue on training exercises to deal with major incidents across the county.
‘You do this role because you want to give something back to the community, of course, but for me, the overriding reason is that you feel as though you’re part of something much bigger,’ says Jon Kendray. ‘Yes, it’s a full-time commitment but it’s also very rewarding. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.’
You can follow the Torbay Coastguard Rescue Team on Facebook.
