3-021-327 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Rocket-line exercise of the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade, 1865. Engraving of a sketch by Mr. R. Watson, showing '...the members of the brigade exercising on the cliff near the Spanish Battery with a rope stretched across the water at Prior's Haven to the scaffolding erected for the building of the new breakwater, at the extreme promontory of the...Tyne. The lighthouse above and the ruins of the ancient priory are landmarks of the site...The Volunteer Life Brigade was inspected by Captain Robertson, R.N...There was a capital muster of all classes - clergymen, magistrates, aldermen, merchants, and workmen who are volunteers in the corps, and the rocket practice was splendid. Captain Robertson spoke highly of the progress that the brigade had made...[and] said that the Board of Trade was about to issue circulars to the authorities of all the seaport towns in the United Kingdom, with a view to having volunteer life brigades established on all parts of the coast...The institution of the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade [is] the first of its kind yet established for the special service of the rocket-and-line apparatus to rescue lives from...the perils of shipwreck on the rocks which fringe the north shore of the estuary of the Tyne'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.