1932 and the brigade’s first dedicated breakdown lorry pictured at the Southwark headquarters station.
Unlike the canteen van, there was only ever one breakdown lorry in the brigade fleet at any one time. They remained at the headquarters stations, firstly Southwark and then Lambeth, until the opening of the new Clapham fire station in 1960, when Lambeth’s breakdown lorry was transferred to the D Divisional HQ-D60.
The originals of the breakdown lorry can be traced back to Arthur Dyer, the Chief Officer of the LCC-LFB. (1918-1933). The advent, and progress, of the motorised fire engine brought both improvements and challenges to Dyer. Quicker and more efficient than their horse drawn counterparts Dyer realised he had too many fire stations and in the 1920s he closed 20 of them. The petrol driven appliances were also subject to the occasional mechanical failure and Dyer authorised the adaption of a Brigade lorry to act as the first breakdown lorry which could return the vehicles to the Southwark mechanical and vehicle workshops. However, the lorry also carried other lifting equipment, most notably a large lifting tripod, which could be deployed at the increasing number of special-service calls the Brigade was expected to deal with.
1936. The Morris designed Brigade breakdown lorry undergoing trials at the Southwark headquarters station yard.
His immediate successor (Major Cyril Morris. MC.) was largely responsible for the reorganisation and re-equipping his Brigade during his tenure (1933-1938). Among his many innovative designs (and introductions) was a purpose-built breakdown lorry-BYV 317. With a crew of two and based at Southwark, in addition to its vehicle recovery role, it also attended major accidents and supplemented the emergency tender crews with its heavy hot-cutting equipment.
The London Blitz and the breakdown is used to moved heavy debris following enemy bombing in south London.1948 and Lambeth’s breakdown lorry is a major feature in the Brigade’s involvement in the Lord Mayor’s Parade in the City of London.1955. The breakdown lorry captured in its operational role at a north London road traffic accident.
Transferred to the new Lambeth headquarters in 1937 the breakdown provided valuable service during the Blitz, assisting at the scenes of enemy bombings, and lifting/moving heavy debris. Not adverse to public outings it was a regular feature in the Lord Mayor’s Parades in the City of London.
Chief Officer Frederick Delve had guided the Brigade through the latter WWII years and was now overseeing the Brigade’s return to local authority control (London County Council). Delve gave a contract to Dennis of Guildford to provide the brigade with a new breakdown lorry-SLD 661. It became an important tool in the Brigade’s ability to deal with the aftermath of road traffic accidents, especially those involving heavy vehicles.
The breakdown lorry in its new home at Clapham fire station. Old Town,1962. A regular call for the breakdown lorry was the recovery of crashed vehicles following road accidents.
Transferred to Clapham fire station on its opening (D60) it never made it to the creation of the Greater London Council. In 1964 it broke its back when the jib failed to go under an RSJ when on towing duties. It fell to Dennis to supply the Brigade’s last breakdown lorry-314 FLM. It maintained the five-ton capacity crane and a two-ton hydraulic winch.
Clapham’s new breakdown lorry (314 FLM) getting to work in the Old Kent Road. South London.
The breakdown lorry was not the busiest of appliances but they carried a talented crew. Trained in hot cutting and the limits of their equipment’s capabilities they were frequently a great asset to any officer in charge with the knowledge and skills they brought to the scene.
The London Fire Brigade breakdown lorry never made into the 1980s. It was withdrawn from service at the end of the 1970s and not replaced.
Certainly, within the City of London and that of adjoining Westminster fire cover had, since the early 1700s, been the prerogative of the private independent insurance companies. It remained that way until 1832. In that year the majority of insurance companies combined their forces, forming the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE), a single fire brigade made up of those previously independent.
The amalgamation of the Insurance brigades helped to remove some of the chaos, reportedly, frequently occurring at fires. Whilst the LFEE remained a private body, it was nevertheless recognised as the public fire service for the London area. An advert running on 1 January 1833 announced its goal was to provide better fire protection to the inhabitants of the Metropolis. But in 1862, when John Drummond, Esq., Managing Director of the Sun, and Chairman of the Committee for Managing Fire Extinctions, was questioned on the ‘principles on which the LFEE had been formed’ he replied ‘solely for the protection of the offices; it is an association of nearly all the offices in London’ (House of Commons, 1862).
James Braidwood, a Scot, led a force that consisted of 80 watermen and had 17 land and two river stations. The now Superintendent Braidwood, who had previously run the Edinburg brigade, brought with him formal training programs for his new firemen. He also required that they have working knowledge of the district to which they were appointed. However small the LFEE was considered to be a very efficient organisation at the time. But, according to the Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, the large insurance offices did not consider the protection the Brigade provided adequate for the City of London. They preferred fire protection to be publicly provided. London was expanding rapidly. The cost of protecting the metropolis from fire in 1833 was £7,988. By 1865 the cost had risen to ₤26,005.
James Braidwood-appointed the Superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment. 1833.
The Insurance companies were becoming acutely aware of the financial strain of fire protection. They sought opportunities to rid themselves of this burden. The insurance companies, involved in the LFEE, expressed their concerns over shouldering the duty of fire protection, therefore relieving the government of this duty. In a letter to the acting Prime Minister, and following the fire in which the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) was almost totally lost, they cited concerns were the failing conditions of the parochial engines and possibility of an insured property and an uninsured property catching fire at the same time.
Although the Insurance companies were willing to provide services to all in need, they were responsible only to their employers and through them to those purchasing insurance. Therefore, Insurance companies were not required to provide assistance to uninsured property, including public buildings. The insurance companies explained ‘….if during the late conflagration at Westminster, any insured property in danger, or any simultaneous fire or fires in other parts of the town, had imperatively called upon the Superintendent to devote the service of the engines elsewhere, Westminster Hall and the public property adjoining must have shared the fate of the two Houses of Parliament’.
The acting Prime Minister replied indicating ‘…the interference of Government would be productive of little benefit, while it might and probably would relax those private and parochial exertions which have hitherto been made with so much effect and so much satisfaction to the public’. The LFEE continued to supply fire protection to London for the next 30 years.
Braidwood wrote to the Commissioner of Public Works in 1854, to highlight his concerns with the safety of a particular warehouse being built on Tooley Street, which was too large and did not have the necessary fireproof measures in place. He wrote: “The whole Building, if once fairly on fire in one floor, will become such a mass of Fire, that there is no power in London capable of extinguishing it, or even of restraining its ravages on every side and on three sides it is surrounded with property of immense value.” Time would sadly prove the accuracy of James Braidwood’s warnings.
With London expanding, and the cost of fire-fighting growing, insurance companies struggled to continue to provide the service. It was clearly not a profitable endeavour for them. They were paid to provide insurance not to fight fires. The cost of offering fire protection now outweighed the benefit to them. Furthermore, because insurance companies were paid to provide insurance, an incentive existed for the offices to protect insured homes. An issue could certainly arise if both an uninsured property and insured property caught fire at the same time. The insurance companies would focus on the insured property and the uninsured would follow after.
A manual pump is being worked by volunteers whilst firefighters from the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE) direct their efforts and fight the fire.
There was no incentive for insurance companies to correct this problem because they were not paid to fight fires. The government however felt the services provided were adequate and turned its attention elsewhere. In 1836 The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire was formed. It followed in the footsteps of the Fire Escape Society (1828), an organisation set up by philanthropists in reaction to the high death rate in domestic property fires. The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire provided escape ladders at fires, working alongside the LFEE to protect the citizens of London from fire.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire provided escape ladders at fires, working alongside the LFEE to protect the citizens of London from fire.
Pre the LFEE London parish pumps, volunteer firemen and individuals owning and operating firefighting equipment continued to exist. Parishes while, perhaps, providing some assistance at fires had not improved the condition of their equipment. Volunteers continued to supplement the private brigades’ coverage, providing a great assistance to Braidwood and his force that were responsible only for the insured property located primarily in the centre of London. Despite having concerns about the fire service brought to its attention, the government declined to become involved.
Braidwood was killed in 1861 at a fire in Tooley Street. His death was said to have created confusion and disorganisation at the fire since there was no one appointed to lead in his absence. Further, the economic implications of the fire were profound. It cost the insurance companies over £2,000,000. The Insurance companies attempted to raise premiums, some by as much as 300 per cent. This created a loud response from both merchants and other business men who believed the size of increase was unjustified.
The insurance companies tried yet again to relinquish their fire-fighting duties. In a letter to the government, insurance companies note that ‘without any public authority whatever it [the LFEE] has for nearly 30 years extinguished the fires which have occurred in the metropolis and surrounding districts without inquiry and without charge’. The insurance companies pleaded for reconsideration of the state of the fire service: ‘In the opinion of the Committee such an increase in the number of fires and in the expenditure incurred, rendered a reconsideration of the whole subject imperatively necessary, more particularly as they were satisfied that a system for the extinction of fires which might formerly have been adequate for the metropolis, has now become very insufficient for its present greatly extended limits’ (House of Commons, 1862).
In response to the post Tooley Street uproar, a Select Committee was established to evaluate the system of fire protection in London. The Committee interviewed many witnesses to prepare its report discovering among other things that the insurance companies had been operating at a loss for some time. When John Drummond, Esq., Managing Director of the Sun was questioned regarding premiums he indicated that competition was such a factor that he doubted an increase could be carried into effect. Drummond was also asked why the insurance brigade (LFEE) would pay for fire extinction at all houses, to which he replied: ‘There is no reason why we should do so; we do so on the principle that it is our interest to put out every fire; that this house may not be insured, but that the next may, and that the one not insured may set fire to the other’ (House of Commons, 1862).
The report produced from the Committee noted that the insurance companies had agreed to supply fire suppression ‘so long as the expense was moderate’; however, the cost of the duty had now grown to a ‘magnitude’ which the insurance companies believed ‘they cannot continue to bear’. The report noted that of the £900,000,000 of insurable property only about £300,000,000 was actually insured. The final report also noted that the LFEE ‘as far as their means would enable them, have performed most ably and most efficiently. It has, however, been equally admitted by every witness that the present scale of their staff, engines, and stations is totally inadequate for the general protection of London and its immediate vicinity from the dangers of fire. This detail was admitted by the new Superintendent of the brigade, one Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw. (Appointed after Braidwood’s death.)
However, the Committee concluded that they consider the LFEE efficient for the protection of that part of London where the largest amount of insured property is located. They had no desire, or intention, to add to their expense by placing additional fire stations in situations where, if a fire occurs, it is not likely to cause such comparative injury to the offices as if it occurred in the water-side warehouse near the City. The final report from the Select Committee, and the details leading up to it, shed more light on why the insurance companies fought so hard to relinquish the duty of fire protection. The recurring argument that the cost of firefighting was rising significantly and the Insurance companies were not getting paid to fight fires.
There was a severe free-rider problem because of the difficulty of excluding uninsured properties. Premiums on the one-third of property in London that was insured were covering the cost of fire protection for the remaining uninsured two thirds. Even if competition had not impeded the implementation of increased premiums, it would have only affected those individuals already paying for the service. To operate profitably the insurance companies would have needed to find a way to charge individual home owners for fire protection, separate from the charge associated with insurance.
Watling Street. Location of the headquarters station of the London Fire Engine Establishment. 1833-1866. (It also remained the headquarters station of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade until a new headquarters was built for Capt. Shaw. It was opened in 1878 in Southwark Bridge Road. SE1.)The Watling Street headquarters and fire station. City of London. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
Alternatively, insurance companies needed to find another body to assume the duty of fire protection. Following the Report an Act was passed in 1865 to transfer fire protection into the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), a public authority. Public provision of fire protection began in London on 1 January 1866. The new Metropolitan Fire Brigade was created. With it a new post too, that of Chief Officer, the first being Capt. Shaw. The Insurance companies and parishes were officially relieved of their fire-fighting duties. Both were required, however, to contribute monetarily to the new public brigade. Insurance companies were mandated to pay at a rate of ₤35 per million gross insured (House of Commons, 1862). Those previously providing brigades were now required to pay for the service. In addition, insurance companies remained actively, and voluntarily, involved in monitoring the efficiency of the new institution. They served up recommendations for improvement of the fire service, including the development of several smaller stations versus fewer larger stations. Still with insurance cost concern the Insurance companies also formed the London Salvage Corps and in doing so deprived the new brigade of some its former firemen!
In addition to assuming the firefighting duty, the MBW through the MFB, also took on the services previously provided by the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire. This transfer was driven by the Society which had experienced a drop in income. Additionally, the parishes which were now paying for fire protection believed protection of life should be included as part of their payment. The MBW eventually succumbed and took over the duty.
The transfer of firefighting from the private to public sector was not without difficulties. The financial situation was dire. The budget set for the brigade was tight and borrowing power of the MBW was restricted. The MBW received funds from the parishes and the insurance companies, as well as the government. Yet, financial troubles ensued. The new brigade had difficulty taking over mortgages of existing stations from the insurance companies, not to mention the need to build new stations where no coverage had been in place.
1866-Firemen of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Camden station.
The working conditions for the firemen worsened under the MBW Firemen were forced to work longer hours, and in uncomfortable settings. Pay and funds provided in the event of a loss were slashed: the LFEE had paid families of those lost ₤10 to cover funeral expenses, but the Board paid only £5. The MBW faced a serious manpower issue, fuelled by the small budget and the growing metropolis.
The early years for the new Chief, Capt. Shaw, were challenging to say the least. On its very first day the MFB faced its first major blaze at St Katherine’s Dock. In truth it was still the old brigade with just a new name. But in the years that followed Shaw moulded a brigade that became the leading fire brigade in the civilised world.
Until 1937, the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade had been located in Southwark Bridge Road. In July of that year His Majesty King George VI, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, formally opened the new headquarters at 8 Albert Embankment.
His Majesty King George VI inspecting men of the London brigade at the official opening in 1937. The Chief Officer, Major Morris. MC. accompanies his Majesty. Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.
The new headquarters was state of the art. It comprised the fire station, with accommodation for the firemen there, residential accommodation for the Chief Officer, Deputy Chief, and other senior officers. The complex included a Brigade training school, repair and maintenance workshops, drill tower and spacious drill yard for both drills and displays. From the imposing seven wooden appliance room doors Lambeth’s appliances could drive directly onto the Embankment. Directly opposite the headquarters was the new Lambeth river fire station pontoon. Located on the second floor of the headquarters was the brigade control room, which supported the six superintendent stations who responded to emergency calls requiring a fire brigade presence.
1937 and the headquarters 2nf floor control room showing a map of the brigade’s area and the location of its fire stations. Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.
With the prospect of war imminent the Brigade’s Chief Officer, Cmdr. Firebrace, was seconded to the Home Office and his deputy, Major Frank. W. Jackson, commanded the renamed London Fire Service, which covered of boroughs and brigades surrounding the London Council County boundary. Part of the Brigade’s war planning response was to relocate the Brigade Control room into the basement of the headquarters. Thankfully, the period of the ‘phoney war,’ where the anticipated enemy attacks on London and the UK failed to materialise allowed the construction to proceed uninterrupted. The control room was completed in record time and in April 1940 Lambeth opened its new underground fire brigade control room. It was constructed to withstand a direct hit from a high explosive bomb and also to render ineffective a poison gas attack. The control room, which had its own reserve generator of lighting and forced ventilation, was also sealed by water tight doors. Above ground the ‘snorkel’ tower (which also provided an emergency escape route) was built in the shape of an obelisk and designed to pierce any debris from any building that might fall upon it.
1940. Part of the layout of the new basement, headquarters, control room. Picture credit. London Fire Brigade.1940. December; and officers of the brigade co-ordinating the disposition of London’s fire applances, and the fire situation, during a ‘Blitz’ attack on the Capital. Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.
The Blitz on London commenced on the 7th September 1940. In the underground control room, Major Jackson, with a small band of senior officers, watched the deployment on the big wall maps. Around London local control rooms had been established to deploy the vastly increased resources of the London regular brigade with the introduction of the Auxiliary fire service (AFS) prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The LFB brigade control room personnel were greatly supplemented by women of the AFS.
During the war many schools were left empty due to children being evacuated to the country. The Old Palace LCC School in St. Leonards Street, Poplar, was but one. It was commandeered for use as a sub fire station, for the men and women of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). On the night of Sunday April 20th 1941, fire crews were standing by in anticipation of a heavy raid on the Capital. At 1.53am, a land mine, dropped from a Luftwaffe bomber, landed directly on the school. It hit the roof of the school and dropped down a stairwell and into the watchroom where two women were killed outright. The firemen waiting outside were caught by the blast, which demolished two thirds of the school building, and they were buried by falling masonry.
Rescue services, already hard-pressed, arrived too late for any lives to be saved. Thirty-two firemen and two firewomen died at The Old Palace School, the largest number of Fire Brigade lives lost in a single incident, in peacetime or war. Winifred Alexandra Peters was one of the two firewomen killed
With the establishment of the National Fire Service (NFS) in August 1941 the London area comprised of five fire forces (reduced to four in 1943) and the area resembled the Greater London area the Greater London Council became in 1965. Lambeth’s basement control room retained its central co-ordination role. From 1945 to March 1948 the NFS was occupied in maintaining a peacetime service. The Fire Service Act of 1947 imposed duties on all UK fire brigades.
(1) It shall be the duty of every fire authority in Great Britain to make provision for fire-fighting purposes, and in particular every fire authority shall secure—
(c) efficient arrangements for dealing with calls for the assistance of the fire brigade in case of fire and for summoning members of the fire brigade;
Big improvements had been made by which London’s fire brigade handled calls. The system of calls being directed to ‘superintendent’ stations around London ceased in 1948. During the war years two-way radio had been increasingly, and successfully, used to send radio information to and from fires and other incidents. Because the radio had to be operated from a central point the birth of the modern control room came into being in the basement of the Lambeth headquarters. Significant alterations were made to the former control, in fact it was totally revamped.
The ‘new’ underground Brigade control room. Picture credit; London Fire Brigade.The control worked a card index system which recorded every thoroughfare in the London area. When a 999 call was received the control operator would locate the address and card gave details of the station ground, the six nearest stations, locations of the nearest special appliances and a route card No (eg NA46) which would tell the station crew attending which route card map would lead them to the address on their call slip. Picture credit; London Fire Brigade.Typical route card for the Greater London Council-London Fire Brigade. The numbers and abrviations told the control operators the local station names and where the nearest special appliances were located. This system remained unaltered from that used by the London County Council Lambeth control.
The ’new’ control was opened in 1948. It was where all ‘999’ calls were received in the LCC area and station appliances could be ordered to incidents. (In 1949 the LCC also decided to abolish street fire alarms-which had caused increasing numbers of false and malicious calls.) The call sign of the Brigade control radio scheme was M2FH. The control room would remain unchanged until 1966 when it once again underwent a major revamp. The LCC had authorised the adoption of a new mobilising system in 1963, the teleprinter involved the transmission of calls to fire stations by teleprinter, with phone lines used as a fail-safe back up system. However, due to delays in the supply of automated telephone equipment the system did not come into operation until the Greater London Council was created in 1965.
With the help of both the Home Office and the Post Office (GPO) the now Chief Officer, Mr L. W. Leete, the Lambeth control had the advantage of both the teleprinter and automated telephone system when it went live in 1965. (It was formally opened in 1966 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by His Majesty Prince Phillip, made a visit to the Brigade’s centenary celebrations at the Lambeth headquarters.)
11th November 1966. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth unveils a plaque to mark her visit to the Lambeth headquarters and the Brigade Control room. Photo credit: London Fire BrigadeA london fire station teleprinter installed in the stations covered by the Lambeth Control room.
In 1965, the amalgamation of the various brigades onto the new London Fire Brigade provided an impressive array of new (and some not so new!) equipment. This included three additional control rooms at Stratford, Wembley, and Croydon, each with a designated area on control. However, Lambeth maintained jurisdiction over its former LCC area and took on a co-ordination role of major incidents.
The Lambeth basement control room layout.
The shutters finally came down on Lambeth’s M2FH control room in 1974 after twenty-six years of continuous mobilising. Its control staff were dispersed to the three remaining control rooms, with Lambeth control’s mobilising area being absorbed by them. mobilised by the control staff at the Croydon control room, who were responsible for mobilising all stations south of the River Thames. The other two control rooms were located at Wembley, the old Middlesex Fire Brigade control room, and Stratford, the former West Ham Fire Brigade control. Wembley covered the west of London whilst Stratford mobilised the east.
A central mobilising control would eventually return to Lambeth and, once again but for now it was an end of an era as the other three controls mobilise their additional new charges.
This blog is dedicated to all LFB control room personnel, past and present. A vital ingredient to a successful team.
If there is one event that unites firemen, regardless of whether they are a retired fireman or one of today’s firefighters (perhaps something we would much prefer didn’t unite us) then at the top of a very short list would be that first fatal fire. You would have to be someone very special if the sad details of that happening were not permanently etched in your brain. I know mine are, some fifty-seven years after that particular ‘shout’.
I was a mere probationer on Lambeth’s Red Watch. I got an occasional ride on the pump but most duties I’m riding the back of the PE and slowly gaining in confidence as the ‘shouts’ mount up. Our Station Officer, Don Brown, had returned from extended sick leave after he was hit over the head with a beer bottle at a shout on Brixton’s ground on New Year’s Eve. Its 1967 and I’m eighteen. The guvnor’s return sparks a noticeable rise in our working jobs, much to the dismay of some who think he should go off sick again.
Tools of the trade for a London fireman. A belt and axe; belt line; a bicycle lamp(worn on the belt); and PVC protective gloves. Image: copyright of Pete Weight (reproduced with his permission).
What I would later call ‘bread and butter’ jobs, the numerious fires in surrounding LCC built council flats and derelict buildings were a probationers dream. Those tasked to keep me under their wing cared about the ‘job’ and were bloody good role models. Their language might have been ripe at times but I was learning on the job and although you hoped you were doing the right thing at the right time their supervision ensured, 98% of the time, it was. The everyday hosereel jobs, the noxious stink of smoke, red and sore eyes whilst coughing up soot, and with snot down the front of your tunic, were all part of the everyday mix. If you were lucky enough, a wink or a nod indicated ‘well done boy’. The Red Watch names I can recall with clarity. A couple of the jobs, in those first six months, stand out but (just after I past my six-monthly probation) the events of that day remain crystal clear.
It’s a day duty. A couple of the White Watch had already come onto the station and given the nod to the on-duty guys so that they can shoot off at five p.m with a mutual exchange. But there would be no mutual exchanges that day. The call was to a fire in a flat in Kennington Road. SE1. Lambeth’s pump-escape (PE); pump(P); and turntable ladder(TL) turn out and Southwark’s P makes up the initial attendance. Eric Burns, now out of his probation, and I are in the back of the PE. Both wearing the hook belts, Eric grabs the hydrant location book and shouts out the location to Dick Richardson our Sub Officer in charge of the PE. As we head down Black Prince Road we hear Lambeth control summoning our pump telling them additional calls have been received. They are send on Southwark’s PE additionally.
London firemen’s boots and leggings in readyness. Image: copyright of Pete Weight (reproduced with his permission).
Even as a sprog I was beginning to tell the difference from the smell of one smoke from another. Turning into Kennington Road we could smell the smoke from the fire. Dick Richardson remained as a cool as ever, without turning around he told us we have a ‘job’. As we drew closer to Wedgewood House, a series of former London County Council 5 storey flats, opposite the Imperial War Museum gardens, there was a distinct smell of burning mattresses. The smell got to you every time. Smoke you could almost taste. A smell was just a prelude for what was awaiting for us. A scene of utter despair.
The desperate screaming of the young mother coming from the second floor flat balcony echo around the enclosed courtyard. They were sights and sounds that generations of London firemen had confronted before me, different settings, different locations, but the anguished heartache sounding exactly the same. For me this was all new. A situation where that poor woman put her total faith in us to save her children. Dick Richardson had already seen the oily brown smoke forcing its way around the window frames facing Kennington Road. As Lambeth’s machines drove into the courtyard, Dick jumped down from the engine before it stopped and was gone.
Lambeth’s pump-escape. Circa 1967. Image-London Fire Brigade.
As we jumped down from the PE we saw the woman being held back by a neighbour, her screams still filling our ears near the open flat door. Even before the guvnor got down he sent the message “make pumps four-persons reported.” Dick, meanwhile, had raced to the second floor. Teddy Walsh was the Leading Hand on the TL and one of pump crew grabbed Proto breathing apparatus sets, slung them over their heads and turning them on as they ran. Their mouthpieces were put their mouths unsecured. They were not the only ones running. The three drivers were feeding out hose, putting the pump’s tank of water into the PE’s whilst Charlie Watson, the long standing TL driver and senior hand, was heading to the hydrant with a standpipe, key and bar. Despite his years of experience Dick was unable to force himself into the hallway without BA. He shouted down to the guvnor; “need two more up here in BA, the kids are at the back of the flat.” There was furious and intense activity all around me. Activity I would become all too familiar with whenever lives were involved in a fire.
George Newton was Southwark’s guvnor. He arrived as we had got the hose pulled up, by line, to the flat. He heard Dick’s call and had his BA crew heading in as he grabbed Eric and I. “Get an extension ladder around the back quick.” With someone from Southwark’s crew we did just that. The pitch was not hard and the brittle glazing smashed as soon as the top of the ladder touched the blackened window. The pent up heat and smoke rose up the side of the flats.
As we climbed, with Eric leading and a hosereel jet with us, the windows of an adjoining room were opened by a BA fireman and more heat and smoke escaped from the flat. At the window Eric cleared away the broken glazing but our entry into the room was momentarily halted because of the hot gases and smoke still forcing its way out. But the needs of the children proved too much for Eric and he forced himself through the window. I followed not knowing what to expect!
For a few seconds we were both disorientated. We had half stepped, half fallen onto the room across a bed. The room was a charred shell. The BA crew had hit the ceiling with jet at some point and plaster covered every surface, including the bed. Nothing in that had not been severely burned. The heat was still radiating from the walls, the steam mixing with the smoke. We managed to kneel and then stand. As our eyes adjusted to obscured scene we noticed the strange, inter-twinned, shape under fallen plaster on the bed we had just crawled over. Moving closer we looked on in dismay before fully realising what we had just discovered. The charred remains of the siblings, locked together in an embrace of death.
We were mere make-weights now as the two guvnors conferred with Mr Samler-the B Division Red Watch Assistant Divisional Officer (ADO) who had arrived from the Clapham HQ. Dick was old school and the escape was got away and we were headed back to the station. We drove back in silence. Dick Richardson said, when we arrived, we would talk about the shout on the next shift. (I can’t recall if we ever did?)
We got back to the station well after 1800 and into the evening shift. The White Watch were usually subdued, none of their normal banter, as we hung our kit up in the gear room. The only words spoken were to book out in the watchroom. I caught my train home from Waterloo. That night, in the privacy of my bedroom, the emotion came out as tears flowed for those two little innocents.
Whilst the old grey cells continue to function Southwark will always hold a special place in my memory banks. It was the place that introduced me to the LFB; it was also the location of my very last day in the Brigade too. In the intervening years I served at Southwark fire station twice, was privilege to run the recruits’ section and play a part in the revamp 0f Southwark STC and orchestrated the fight to save Southwark from closure. (We won that time…) A tale that will resonate with many-the first introduction with that scruffy, run-down place simply referred to as Southwark.
Southwark fire station. 94 Southwark Bridge Road. SE1. An extension to the original Metropolitan Fire Brigade headquarters, opened in 1878 and location of the London Fire Brigade training school.
Fifty-nine years ago, my adventure with the LFB started. My junior fireman’s application form, having been completed in my best joined up writing, was sent off. What it lacked in school exam results (or academic prowess) was made up for by selling my Sub Aqua skills for all they were worth. If this made any difference I never discovered. But just after my sixteenth birthday, in January 1965, I was invited to attend the junior firemen selection tests with the LCC/LFB at Southwark. The place showed none of its former glory days and was largely now hidden behind its semi-derelict, four-storey, frontage facing on Southwark Bridge Road. It was behind this frontage that our futures would be determined.
The LCC recruitment hut, for that is all it was, a shabby wooden hut, was located on the northern side of the training school. It stood at the end of a long narrow cobbled yard. The civilian staff welcomed us and ticked off our names of that day’s candidates. We were a collection of hopefuls, but nervous, adolescent lads. We were in stark contrast to the other firemen recruits there. They all looked at least ten years older, much stronger, and far more self-assured than us kids!
There were around twenty prospective ‘cadets’ in that day’s selection intake. We were required to take the educational test; undertake physical exercises; and undergo a medical examination at County Hall. Finally, and if any got that far, attend an interview at the Lambeth Headquarters. Directed into a room in the hut we each sat at single desks where the ‘civvy’ took us through the English, maths, and dictation examinations. (I would discover that they used the same tests more than once because written on my wooden desk, and on the ruler, were answers to some of the sums and a couple the more difficult spellings. So, thanks to the aid of the desk and ruler I completed the tests. (But maybe we just had to prove we could actually read and write?)
Junior London fireman Geoff Kennett, one of the first to join the London scheme.
The two strength tests can next. These were conducted in the narrow-cobbled courtyard by someone wearing a fire brigade uniform. He introduced himself as a Sub Officer. Squat in stature he looked extremely powerful. In a surly voice he explained what was expected of us boys whilst trying to put us at our ease. We had to pass these two separate strength tests to go on to the next stage of the selection process.
The Sub Officer divided into pairs. Each pair being approximately the same height and weight. We were required to perform the fireman’s lift and carry our new found companion one hundred yards in less than one minute. By way of a demonstration, and without a pause for breath, the Sub Officer hoisted the largest of our group onto his shoulder and trotted off down the drill yard. At the end he about turned, fifty yards away, and effortlessly paced his way back. He had not the faintest hint exertion and walking as though he was not carrying anyone. It was our turn and the first ten moved towards their partners who they were to carry. Three either fell off those lifting or slid down their backs. One poor soul was lifted with such gusto that he was thrown completely over the shoulder of this youthful powerlifter; landing in an undignified heap on the ground. The Sub Officer sudden outburst of expletives, and its tone, made us quake in our boots. He told the powerlifter, in no uncertain terms, that he was meant to hold onto his partner and he was not “tossing an effing caber!” The poor lad, on the ground, was left feeling the lump on his forehead. He got little sympathy from the still berating Sub Officer. A man who seemed totally unimpressed by the antics of his juvenile charges.
Junior firemen training on an escape ladder at the Southwark training school.
He encouraged us to get our act together and dispatched the first pairs off down the yard. Some were clearly staggering under the weight on their backs. All made it, except for one. One rather rotund youth was clearly having trouble. As we were heading back up the yard he was still going down. Huffing and puffing and clearly struggling. The Sub Officer was not as hard as he made out. He let the sweating, and heavily breathing, lad catch his breath and try again. Sadly, he fared no better the second time. He went back to the hut and we did not see him again.
One down we moved onto the second test. This involved winding the handle on the side of a metal A-frame that was firmly secured to the ground. It had a wire running from a central drum, over a pulley and connected to a large weight that stood on the ground. You lifted the weight by turning the handle. This was, apparently, geared to make the test the equivalent of winding up a fifty-foot wheeled escape ladder, something we had seen the recruits using in the main drill yard. Again, the Sub Officer again demonstrated what was expected. Something he did with ease and we watched as the weight rose smoothly and rapidly to the top of the frame.
“That’s it my lovelies, just do that in one minute”.
He had done it in well under the time allowed. The powerlifter opted to go first. We looked on in horror as he struggled to raise the weight in the time. Red faced he was obviously relieved that he made it. Sadly, another of our number, even after a second attempt, didn’t. He was on his way home too. The rest of us managed it but not without a struggle.
Technical studies for the junior firemen at the Southwark Training school.
Just before lunch those remaining were given the results of the educational tests. Fire brigade fashion that is as two names were called out and told to go to the hut. We did not see them again either. The rest of us were sent off to training school canteen for lunch. This was our first glimpse of real junior firemen, the LCC’s first two squads. But they seemed rather puny against the other adult recruits. Our small group of potential cadets felt very conspicuous in our civilian clothes. Everyone else was wearing various types of firemen’s uniform and kit, so we huddled at a large corner table at the back of the canteen. We kept our heads down, ate our lunch, and said very little.
After lunch we were driven to County Hall, on the South Bank, for the medical examinations. County Hall was the headquarters of the then LCC and would soon become the new home of the enlarged GLC. We were driven there in a green box van. A van that had no side windows and we sat in the rear on the two rows of hard wooden bench seats. The driver, a grey-haired middle-aged stout, fireman was wearing old blue overalls. His trousers held up by a wide black leather belt that tried, in vain, to contain an enormous beer gut. He clearly enjoyed the short journey and derived great pleasure by throwing us out of our seats by turning corners too fast or braking hard, which seemed all too frequently.
London junior firemen visiting the scene of a major fire in Bermonsey, south London. 1964.
We arrived shaken and dishevelled at the steps of County Hall only to be directed by our grinning driver to its main entrance and told to ask for the medical department. Eventually, we found the medical department on one of the upper floors. We were immediately greeted by a nurse who handed out strange flute shaped glass containers that we were told to pee in. The medical continued with the doctor poking in our ears; sticking wooden sticks in our mouths; before reading from eyesight charts and having our hearing checked.
The doctor looked incredibly old with pale wrinkly skin. He had sunken eyes and narrow unsmiling mouth. He was also small and his white coat came down almost to his shoes. Whilst he listened to our breathing he wheezed noisily. His brown stained fingers giving a clue as to the cause! It was here the medical took a very different direction from our school medicals. I felt distinctly uncomfortable. We were told to drop our trousers and remove our underpants. With our private parts exposed they were given his professional scrutiny. I was instructed to cough whilst his shaky hand cupped my testicles! After the medical was over.
Junior firemen squads at the Lambeth headquarters and a PT demonstration rehersal for the Centenury display to be attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. 1965.
(Note: The height requirement, then, for a man [only men] joining the London Fire Brigade was five feet eight inches. If you joined the Junior Firemen scheme you had to be at least five feet six inches and reach five feet eight inches by your eighteenth birthday. How was this potential growth determined? Well, apparently, it was all dependent on the sizes of your balls. Some clever individual had come up with a formula that the size of your balls at sixteen could determine your height by eighteen. A dubious “fact” that indicated which of those under five feet eight inches had the potential to grow taller. Sadly for a few height-impaired cadets it was discovered that this very doubtful measuring system was not infallible. By the time they reached their eighteenth birthday their balls had delusions of grandeur and their size proved to be no indication of their owner’s ability to reach the required height.)
The last round of the day were the selection interviews, conducted at the Brigade’s Lambeth Headquarters. Transported again in the box-van we were escorted to the second floor and told to wait in an office. We were called one by one for interview. Our numbers dwindled as individual candidates were called for and made their way home without returning to the office. Eventually my turn came. I was shown into a very imposing office overlooking the river Thames. Two uniformed senior officers were sat behind a wide wooden desk.
Whilst one introduced themselves the other picked up a file and asked me to confirm if the details, he read out were accurate? Clear recall of the interview has faded but the officers appeared more interested in my swimming and sub aqua ability than anything else. Having rehearsed some impressive reasons for wanting to join the London Fire Brigade I was never asked why I wanted to join! They did however mention my failure at the previous eyesight test with the Metropolitan Police cadet scheme and pointed out that this is something they would have to investigate with the Medical Officer. They said they would be in touch and let me know if I had been accepted or not. The “or not” sounded rather ominous. Their decision would be notified by letter, and it was. The letter duly arrived at my parent’s home in Kent. I had been accepted and my LFB adventure started.
Footnote:
The Junior Fireman scheme was started in 1964 by the London County Council, prior to the change over to the Greater London Council (GLC) in April 1965. In 1969, and in the final months of the then Chief Officer’s tenure, the plug was pulled on the Junior Firemen’s scheme and the Swanley Training College was closed. The GLC cited financial reasons and despite strenuous opposition from the Labour GLC councillors they was no reprieve. Almost 300 boys (16-17 years old) entered the London Fire Brigade via the Junior Firemen scheme. Like their adult counterparts, some rose to higher rank, two to Chief Officer rank. One tragically died. Temporary Leading Fireman Michael Lee was killed at Goswell Road in 1969. Two former Junior Fireman remain serving in the LFB after over fifty years continuous service.
An explosion at Dudgeons Wharf, on the Isle of Dogs in east London in 1969, killed one demolition worker and five London firemen. There was no information on what an apparently empty oil storage tank had contained.
Dudgeons wharf post explosion. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
The funerals of the firemen killed at the Dudgeons Wharf disaster. 1969. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
It was four years later (1973) that the then Department of the Environment started to formulate legislation to protect the public from accidents involving road tankers carrying hazardous substances. This followed a horrific accident in December 1972, when a tanker carrying fuming sulphuric acid ran into another tanker, in fog. The second vehicle gashed the side of the acid carrying tanker and 13 tons of the hazardous chemical started to pour out onto the motorway. A woman, following the tanker in her car, stopped and got out of her car. She walked towards tanker, with a view (it was assumed) of trying to assist, she did not notice the swirling fumes. Overcome she fell into the brown liquid. At the Inquest the pathologist stated the woman was unidentifiable and it was only a section of bone that there was any indication that it came from the body of human female.
The explosion at the Nypro (UK) chemical plant at Flixborough, near Scunthorpe, in 1974 left 28 dead and 36 seriously injured. In the previous six years there had been 25 major fires at chemical and petroleum plants in Britain. This led to the Fire Certificates (Special Premises) Regulations 1976 where the Health and Safety Executive took responsibility for fire safety. The development of OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) had been initiated in 1974. (The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires all employers to provide information and training to their employees about the hazardous chemicals to which they may be exposed at the time of their initial assignment and whenever a new hazard is introduced into their work area.)
Firemen at the scene of the NYPRO disaster, FLIXBOROUGH, June 1974.
Then in 1975 a train carrying a cargo of 16 tons of vinyl chloride overturned on the main London to Sheffield railway line. For 12 hours local firemen worked to save the load intact. After they succeeded the Chesterfield FB Chief Officer stated “the town was just a foot away from disaster.”
As a result of such instances, and the involvement of the London Fire Brigade, the Hazchem (hazardous chemicals) Code was subsequently introduced in 1975, on a voluntary basis. This identification scheme enabled emergency services to know how to proceed when faced with buildings, vehicles or storage areas containing hazardous chemicals. It was used that year in new regulations for the rear marking of vehicles. Its aim was always to assist the emergency services in the first few minutes of dealing with a hazardous goods distribution incident. (The Hazchem system was incorporated into UK law in 1981 with the first road tanker regulations.)
In an article published in the Sunday Times on 29th February 1976 Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Clisby, of the London Fire Brigade (LFB), when commenting on Hazchem hazards stated; “Some tankers are literally a Flixborough on wheels.”
However, the system which evolved into Hazchem was not a London idea. Its birth had its origins in the Middlesex brigade prior to 1965 but with the amalgamation, on the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965, it was filed under ‘pending’ and did not see the light of day for almost a decade.
Cap badge of the Middlesex Fire and Ambulance Brigade, pre 1965.
In London, Charles Clisby, had for some time been a campaigner and a vociferious advocate for a ‘hazard’ warning scheme for ‘his’ firemen. A northerner by birth, Clisby had first served in the army before joining the then Biringham and Coventry Brigade before transferring to the Middlesex Fire and Ambulance Service. He was transferred into the London Fire Brigade (LFB) in 1965 with the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC). In the GLC-LFB Clisby was first an Assistant Divisional Officer, based at Wembley, before being promoted to Divisional Officer and based at Shoreditch, the ‘C’ Divisional headquarters which covered the City of London within its divisional area.
Divisional Officer Charles Clisby (white helmet) leading the rescue attempts of temporary Leading Fireman Michael Lee, who was killed at a fire in Goswell Road, Shoreditch in 1969.
In 1972 the LFB Chief Officer, Joe Milner, had won approval from the GLC’s Fire Brigade Committee of his re-organisation of the Brigades operational management. It covered all aspects of operational efficiency and that included scientific information. Milner established three headquarter branches; Operations, a Mobile Group and a Technical, Planning and Development Branch. Clisby was transferred, and promoted, into the latter branch. In the ‘in-house’ press release he was described ‘as a man who will probably make his presence felt.’
Under Milner’s re-organised headquarters, a dedicated ‘Operations Room’ was established and among its various functions was the duty to relay information to crews who were having to deal with ever more chemical incidents (or incidents where chemicals became involved). It was estimated by the GLC that over 3 million chemical carrying journeys were being made across the GLC every year in the early 1970s. The Ops Room chemical information system, which pre-dated Hazchem, was reliant on Chemical Information cards, and which in those early days contained some 3,000 different listed chemicals. The aim was to eventually list some 10,000 different chemical substances, Requests for information resulted in first action measures being passed back to the incident. Additionally, the GLC Scientific was contactable for more detail guidance as well as various manufactures and even the Guy’s Hospital poison unit. As comprehensive as it was it remained labour intensive and first response measures were reliant on messages being sent and received, then acted upon. Hazchem it wasn’t.
The enhanced ‘Hazchem’ code is credited to have been developed by three London officers and championed by their then Divisional Officer, Charles Clisby, in the early 70’s. It was later that Clisby, with the support of the Brigade, who pushed for the Home Office to adopt the system as a nationwide means of marking bulk loads of hazardous chemicals for transportation in 1975.
The Hazchem system faced stiff competition from the European ADR Kemmler code, based system and requirements to include ever more detailed information, UN Numbers, Hazard Class, Tremcard number and proper shipping names. (Most of these are very familiar in this country now.)
The Hazchem concept was (and remains) remarkably simple and effective in providing an immediate emergency response statement to enable the risk from the hazardous substance to be managed at least in the first instance by the emergency services but especially the fire service.
Clisby remained resolute in defending, and promoting, the Hazchem scheme across the fire service and the chemical industry. In January 1976 Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Clisby was presented with a Commendation by the Association of Industrial Editors at the Communicator of the Year awards for his outstanding work on Hazchem. Such was the nature of Clisby’s appreciation of the team effort in moving the scheme forward that he requested that the Brigade’s Deputy Chief represent the award in the presence of his team, and who had made possible his success in achieving the introduction of the Hazchem scheme.
Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Charles Clisby being given his Commendation by the Brigade’s Deputy Chief, Don Burrell, in the presence of his Hazchem team.
The Hazchem Code signage provides vital information to the Fire Brigade, or other emergency services, on the immediate actions to take when dealing with that hazard in an emergency. The fire and police services use the specific characters and numbers to determine which actions may be necessary, during the first few minutes of an incident involving dangerous goods. These Emergency Action Codes (EACs), also known as Hazchem codes, are a three-character code that must be displayed on all GB registered road and rail vehicles that carry dangerous goods on domestic journeys within the UK.
Joe Milner resigned as the Chief Officer in 1976. He was replaced by Peter Darby, who would later become the Chief Inspector of Fire Services (UK). This was a time of industrial unrest across the UK and the fire service was no exception. In the days immediately before the first national firemen’s strike in November 1977 Peter Darby summoned all his principal officer to the Lambeth headquarters for a planning meeting. Charles Clisby, now holding the rank of a temporary Assistant Chief Officer, had been a long-standing member of the Fire Brigade Union (FBU). He believed in the values of the Union as much as he believed in the importance of Hazchem for the safety and protection of ‘his’ firemen. He, together with another Union principal officer, DACO Jim Curren, were ordered from the Chief’s meeting, effectively placing them on the outside of the HQ loop 4 days before the national strike started on the 7th November.
For Charles Clisby it was a heart-breaking moment. He was despondent. The service he had given most of his adult life to, and contributed so much through the successful introduction of the Hazchem scheme had, through Peter Darby, shunned and rejected him because of his FBU support. It was an action that he never recovered from. In December 1977 Charles Clisby had a heart attack and was medically discharged from the Brigade. In the 1978 New Year’s Honour list Charles Clisby was awarded the Queen’s Fire Service Medal for distinguished service.
He died, at his Wiltshire home, on the 11th June 1978. However, the FBU never forgot Charles Clisby nor did London’s firemen and its junior officers. His legacy remains through his poetry and, to this day, the widespread use of Hazchem by the UK’s first responders.
The funeral of the late Charles Clisby. QFSM. at St Barnabus Church, Easterton, Wiltshire with an honour guade and pall-bearer party of former London Fire Brigade friends and colleagues. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
It remains the London Fire Brigade’s worst peace-time disaster.
At about 3.44 a.m. that a call was received by ‘stranger, to a private house alight on the Albert Embankment near Lambeth Bridge. The motor-escape and pump from No.94 station Vauxhall, located near Vauxhall Bridge, together with 10 men and the motor-pump from No.87 station Kennington, which stood in Renfrew Road off Kennington Lane, with 6 men responded.
Firemen at theVauxhall fire station-located on the Albert Embankment.
The LFB then operated on three levels of ‘make-ups’, a home call; a district call and a Brigade call. At 3.55 a.m., a “home call” message was sent to the superintendent station (No 80- Clapham) with a message stating that “a building of three floors about 40 x 40 ft. used as Pepper Mills alight, one hydrant in use.” In response the motor pump from No.3 station Westminster, in Greycoat Place with 6 men was ordered and Superintendent J Barrows-Hall attended with No.80s motor car, Sub Officer Cornfield and a driver.
The Kennington fire station-Renfrew Road. The second station to attend the call on the Albert Embankment.Clapham – the Superintendent station of the local district.
On Superintendent’s Barrows-Hall arrival he found the upper floors of a building, which was used as cattle food manufacturers, well alight and that part of roof and upper floor had fallen in. With the fire practically extinguished he sent the ‘stop’ message and returned one motor pump’s crew. By 5.34 a.m., owing to a considerable amount of turning over to be done, a further message was dispatched stating that the remaining appliances would be detained for a time. A short while later he sent another message asking for a Sub-Officer and four men to be sent on (as relief) with a view to the initial appliances and himself returning home.
At around 5.45 a.m. Barrows-Hall was on the ground floor when he heard a cracking noise. He immediately cleared everyone out of the building. However, owing to the fog and the still present smoke, the front of the building was hardly discernible. A jet from a hydrant was still being used up the wheeled escape ladder. He went to the front of the building with the firemen with a view of making up and removing the escape ladder when suddenly he heard Sub-Officer Cornford call out, “Look out Sir” before he saw the front of building collapsing.
The London Fire Brigade funeral procession makes it way to the Kennington church.St Mark’s Church-Kennington.
The wall extended some 45 ft. along the road fronting the river, up to the corner of Broad Street (later Black Prince Road). Barrows-Hall, in his statement, “Called out, drop everything and run”. On the escape were four of the victims. These and three others were buried beneath a mass of debris. The escape was reduced to matchwood.
A survivor sent a message to the effect that the building had collapsed and that several firemen were buried and ambulances were required. Injured, Barrows-Hall gave instructions for the debris to be searched for the bodies. Divisional Officer ‘South’, Messrs. S.G. Gamble, who later became the Deputy Chief Officer, attended and oversaw the recovery operations. On hearing of the nature of the Superintendents injuries ordered him home. He was later examined by the District Medical Officer placed on the sick list. His nature of illness was recorded as “Injury to Legs”.
Superintendent J.Barrows-Hall. “E” District HQ. Clapham.
Station-Officer E.Partner. No.87. Kennington.
At the subsequent funeral procession and service, held at St Mark’s Church, Kennington conducted by the Bishop of Southwark, the following week the procession was led by the Band of the London Volunteer Rifles together with a detachment of men from that regiment. The flag draped coffins, carried on motor pumps, and were led by the Chief Fire Officer and Divisional Officer’s North and South. Messrs Dyer (appointed Chief Officer later that year) and Gamble. Attending the service was Lord Crewe, Chairman of the London County Council, representatives of Government and Civic dignitaries and Lieutenant-Colonel C.J. Fox of the London Salvage Corps. There was an outpouring of public support as the procession later proceeded to the Highgate Cemetery were the burials took place in the ‘Firemen’s Corner.’
Footnotes:
The building stood on the exact site that later became the Headquarters on the London Fire Brigade after the HQ was moved from the former Metropolitan Fire Brigade HQ in Southwark Bridge Road. The fire occurred in a cattle food manufactures owned by J.H. Branton and Company, which stored spices and ingredients in the production of cattle feed.
Although the men’s names were recorded on the Roll Of Honour in the Headquarters main entrance Memorial Hall, there was never a plaque erecting on the building to record the men’s names and the greatest loss of a life by London firefighters at one incident in peacetime. In a tragic coincidence an eighth fireman (Henry Berbidge Summers) died the same day in a fire station related accident.
Its1968 and the end of London’s ‘junior fire-bucket’ scheme.
In March 1968 the Conservative controlled Greater London Council (GLC) cancelled the scheduled April intake of Junior Firemen because, as a result a review of its financial commitments, it had decided that an immediate increase in the numbers of junior firemen under training could not be justified. Two months later the Council decided to close the Junior Firemen’s Residential College at Swanley, and in June, they decided to end the junior firemen training scheme and not even attempt to continue it on a non-residential basis.
In taking this action London has shown just how quickly a fire authority can block or indeed reverse progress in order to effect, in the short term, a financial saving. This retrograde decision was opposed in the Council chamber by the Labour opposition and before the (Fire Brigade) Union.
The new Swanley Junior Firemen College and new arrivals in 1966. (Photo credit-London Fire Brigade.)
The FBU’s General Secretary led a deputation from the London Brigade Committee and put an excellent and hard-hitting case to the Fire Brigade Committee against the closure of the Swanley college. It was only at this stage that that the Union learned, that in addition to the financial considerations, it was being claimed that the educational standard of junior firemen entry was so disappointingly low, that even after training there was little, if any, difference between junior firemen standards, and because of recent improvements, that of young recruit firemen.
1966. The formal opening of the Swanley Junior Firemen College by the then Home Secretary-the Rt Hon Roy Jenkins.
The background and short-sighted nature of the GLC’s decision to close Swanley College and now to abandon completely junior firemen entry can be gauged by the following brief facts.
College costs £200,000
Although London started its junior firemen scheme in 1964 the Swanley College has only been operating since early 1966. The initial costs of the college and adapted for junior firemen training was in the region of £200,000. It can accommodate 150 boys and since it opened between 70 and 90 boys have been under training at any one time. To date about 140 ex junior firemen are serving operationally and some 45 are still under training.
Apart from the general acceptance in the service that junior firemen entry was essential it seems logical to state that as the college has only been operating for two years it is far too early to draw conclusions as to its value.
Even the College building was a make-shift training facility for the junior firemen learing their operational craft. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
If there is any weight in the claim that junior firemen entrants were not of a sufficiently high educational standard, how much consideration was given to the fact that a new educational curriculum was introduced in the autumn of 1967. This curriculum was aimed at bringing junior firemen up to graduate of Fire Engineer level at the age of 18 and was already, according to instructional staff, showing results.
The chapel of the former Parkwood (Westminster Hospital) convalesence home was adapted to provide a gym for the junior firemen’s fitness training. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
The London Fire Brigade is at least 500 men under strength in the first six months of this year (1968). Recruitment into the Brigade was almost completely cancelled out by normal wastage through retirement, etc. It follows that if there have been no junior firemen scheme, the manpower deficiency would have been much greater and one is entitled to ask if London is serious about its manpower problem when it closes this avenue of recruitment.
Parents Day at Swanley College, when friends and family were allowed to see the College and facilities. Here the Junior Firemen are inspected by a principal officer of the Brigade. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
Group photograph of the College principal, Major Anderson, instructional uniformed staff and the residential junior firemen under training. The last such photograph before the the Greater London Council abolished the Junior Firemen scheme. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)
In this connection would it not have been reasonable to weigh the saving of well over half a million pounds per year, which arises because of the manpower shortages against the cost of running junior firemen training at Swanley.
Note: Article credit- the FBU Firefighter issued in 1968.
Few national organisations have been stood down twice-but the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) holds such a dubious honour. The first time was in 1941, with creation of the National Fire Service (NFS). Then on the 31st March 1968 it was ordered to stand-down again after 20 years of peace time activity. This time it was final. The men and women of the AFS rode into fire service history.
Its origins came about in the 1930s when the likelihood of a Second World War was already being planned for in Britain. Although not widely publicised the then National Government, under Ramsey MacDonald, were considering what arrangements would be necessary to cope with enemy aerial attacks on its strategic population centres. The Home Office (then responsible for the Fire Service) held a series of seminars and secret planning meetings to deliver a strategy in the event of war and the subsequent fire attacks on the British mainland from the air. London was considered a particularly vulnerable target for such enemy action, not least because it was the nation’s seat of government and the City of London was crucial to the country’s financial and business interests.
London in the 1930s looked vastly different to the London of today. The river Thames provided easy access for shipping to its vast network of extensive docks and associated warehouses. The dockland warehouses, starting from Southwark on the south bank and Blackfriars on the north bank ran eastward to the Essex and Kent borders. It was recognised, at an early stage, that it would require a massive expansion of the existing fire brigade(s) to deal with fires involving London’s central maze of narrow streets, warehouses filled with combustible products such as oils and grains and its dockyards with acres of stacked imported timber. Failure to respond to such a challenge could leave London little more than a smoking ruin.
The AFS was formed on the 1st January 1938 and their numbers rapidly grew. A massive recruitment drive was launched. In London sixty London Fire Brigade (LFB) vehicles toured London’s streets alongside an AFS poster campaign and planes even flew the over capital trailing AFS recruitment banners. The Thames was also used to advertise this new fire force and the Brigade’s high-speed fireboat, the James Braidwood, flew similar banners seeking recruits to supplement the London Fire Brigade’s River service. The success of campaign attracted some 28,000 volunteers. Volunteers who would supplement the regular London Fire Brigade in event of war.
The City of London and the Lord Mayor’s annual parade is used to promote the national AFS recruitment campaign. 1938. Picture credit-Daily Sketch.
This was a major logistical exercise for both the London County Council (LCC) and the LFB. Not least of the problems was the area we now know as Greater London. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 it had at least 66 fire brigades! This included the London Fire Brigade, the largest, which covered the whole of the former LCC’s administrative area. Some of these other brigades were one fire engine outfits: those that only protected a small borough area. Others had four or five stations such as West Ham and the Croydon brigades. Quickly various buildings, and vehicles, were seconded into service to house and equip this basically trained corps of AFS firemen and women that had now greatly expanded London’s fire service.
The AFS sub-fire station in Cooks Road. Vauxhall. SE 11. A former shop it was seconded for the AFS. 1939.AFS firefighters salvage their bedding from the bombed-out Mansfield Road fire sub-station, a LCC school used a fire station. The picture shows it after it was seriously damaged in a bombing raid on 16 November 1940. One of some 2000 taxis converted for World War II fire brigade use by the Auxiliary firefighters in London and other major UK cities. Photograph is taken in Lambeth High Street, outside the London Fire Brigade HQ. circa 1939. Above three picture credits-London Fire Brigade.The London taxi, a vehicle that became synonymous with the London AFS throughout the Blitz. 1940-1941.
Garages, filling stations and schools, empty since the mass evacuation of children, were taken over and adapted as AFS fire stations. Some 2,000 London taxis were brought into service and used to tow trailer pumps. The London taxis were large enough to carry a small crew, hold a ladder on top and with the hose stored in the luggage compartment, plus pull a trailer pump. However, the accommodation was frequently poor at best. The new volunteer firefighters spent many hours making good their bases and even building their own wooden beds. In addition to this they erected brick walls over windows and sandbagged entrances to protect themselves from blast damage.
AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) women resting in their make-shift bunks at Southwark Fire Station (Station 60), Southwark Bridge Road, SE1. Date: circa 1940. Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.
Basic training was provided by LFB firemen. Detached from normal firefighting duties, they put the new AFS recruits through 60 hours of practical and theoretical lessons. Whilst some women chose to undertake dispatch rider (motorcycle) messenger duties and others opted for motor driving, most were trained in ‘watchroom’ duties and the necessary procedures for mobilising fire engines and pumping units. Everyone underwent basic firefighter training. They were, of course, civilians. They had volunteered from every trade and profession, from every walk of London life. Office workers, labourers, lawyers, tailors, cooks, and cleaners they had taken up the call to join the AFS.
The AFS recruits were divided into different categories. This was based on their physical capabilities, their age, gender, and skills. Men considered Class B performed general firefighting duties. B1s worked only on ground level, either pump operating or driving. Others, recruited from trades on the Thames, were classed for River Service work and whilst women would be in the thick of it none performed actual frontline firefighting duties. (Although falling bombs did not discriminate those women delivering petrol to the firemen and those fighting the fires.) The youngsters, under 18 years of age, became messengers equipped with either motorcycles or pedal cycles. Those auxiliaries who became full-time firefighters on the outbreak of war received a weekly wage. Firemen earned £3 per week; women got £2. Those aged 17–18 received £1-5 shillings and the 16–17-year-olds got £1 a week.
The AFS’s baptism of fire came on a 1940 September evening, the 7th. With basic training, and as yet untried, the auxiliaries were dispatched to the first big raids of the war. The official WWII publication Front Line 1940-41 recorded what happened that fateful night. “The auxiliaries, four-fifths of them with no prior experience of actual fire-fighting, faced the greatest incendiary attack ever launched…”
By midnight on the 7th there nine fires in London rating over 100 pumps. In the Surrey Docks were two of 300 pumps and the other 130 pumps. At Woolwich Arsenal the count was 200 pumps; at Bishopsgate Goods Yard another 100-pump fire. Such was the intensity of the enemy bombing that these fires all became conflagrations. The intensity of the radiated heat from the Surrey Docks blaze was such that the fire-float Massey Shaw, moored on the opposite bank (a distance of 300 yards) had her paint blistered! By the end of that first month 50 London fire-fighters had perished in action. 500 others were injured and many invalided out of the service. Almost overnight the previously lampooned and derided AFS were popular heroes. Many crews, returning from blazes, wet and exhausted were cheered by passers-by in the street.
As the raids intensified in the following months the number of fires were measured in the 10s of 1000s. In December of 1940 bombing reached a climax with the concentrated bombing of the City of London. With the Thames already at a low tide, water supplies were cut off for a while the men and women of the AFS got on with their job. Their courage helped to save St Paul’s by using all kinds of improvised fire engines and hauling heavy trailer-pumps to provide water supplies whilst AFS women delivered petrol supplies, acted as dispatch rider messengers, and staffed the control rooms and station watchroom’s, all under enemy fire. Then in the new year (1941) with a widening of the enemy bombing campaign AFS conveys travelled to far flung cities, such as Coventry, Portsmouth, and Southampton, to provide much needed fire-fighting reinforcements.
AFS wartime heros.
AFS fireman Harry Errington. GC.
Harry Errington was born in Soho. After attending Westminster free school, Harry won a trade scholarship to train as an engraver his mother, fearful, the craft would adversely affect his health, Harry went to work for his uncle’s tailoring business instead. Now a master tailor. He was also a volunteer Auxiliary London fireman working in his beloved West End. Just before midnight on the 17th September 1940, together with other AFS men, he was in the basement of a three-storey garage in Soho. It was used as a private air raid shelter and rest area for the fire service personnel. A bomb hit and all three floors collapsed. The resultant explosion killed some 20 people, including six London firemen.
In the Supplement to the London Gazette (issue No 35239, on the 8th August 1941, pg. 4545.) it was announced; The KING has been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to Auxiliary Fireman Harry ERRINGTON. He showed great bravery and endurance in effecting the rescues, at the risk of his own life.
Only three such awards were made to fireman during the Second World War; Harry was the only AFS London fireman so honoured. He received his GC from King George VI in October 1942.
AFS Firewoman Gillian Tanner. GM.
Gillian “Bobbie” Tanner delivered petrol to fire pumps in Bermondsey while the docks were being bombed during the Blitz in September 1940. On 3 September 1939, the day war broke out, 19-year-old Miss Tanner drove to London in her front-wheel drive BSA car from her home near Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, to see what she could do to help. The Women’s Voluntary Service directed her to the auxiliary fire service where she became a driver. This country girl, whose main past-time had been horse riding, was at first alarmed to hear she was being posted to Dockhead, Bermondsey, in south-east London. She recalled:
“There were two drivers allocated to Dockhead and I was the only one who had the heavy goods licence, so I had the canteen van and petrol lorry to drive,” she said. “You had the petrol in two-gallon tins and they were stacked on shelves around the lorry. I didn’t think about it at the time, luckily.”
“They took over a lot of schools and made them sub stations and they all had their own trailer pumps – I remember going to one not far from Tower Bridge and we were pouring petrol into the engine and it was red hot. I didn’t even think about the fact that one drop, and we would go up in smoke. You had a job to do and you got on and did it.”
Her citation read:
Awarded the GEORGE MEDAL. (L/G, 35058, 31st Jan 1941, pp. 610.)
Firewoman (Aux) Gillian Kluane TANNER. Six serious fires were in progress and for three hours Auxiliary Tanner drove a 30-cwt. lorry loaded with 150 gallons of petrol in cans from fire-to-fire replenishing petrol supplies.
By the spring of 1941 the war had shown that the UK fire service required a more co-ordinated response to deal with the conditions created by modern warfare. The government brought into being the National Fire Service (NFS), merging all of the former local brigades and the AFS under one umbrella. The NFS came into being on the 1st August 1941. This new body, the AFS with all 1,638 local authority fire brigades, totalled some 60,000 men and women. The NFS was organised around 40 Fire Forces, London Fire Brigade forming several of these.
During the Second World War 327 London firemen were killed. The vast majority of those killed were in the early years of the War, most notably during the Blitz and consisted of both men and women of the Auxiliary Fire Service. Many of the locations were they perished are remembered today by the erection of a memorial plaque. Their loss and their sacrific will not be forgotten.
The NFS operated until 1948 when, under the Fire Services Act 1947, fire brigades reverted to local authority control although with now far fewer brigades on a county or county borough council basis. The London Fire Brigade was returned to the London County Council, Middlesex was formed with its own fire brigade and counties like Kent had their own county wide brigade.
With the AFS absorbed into the NFS many continued regulars. Then in 1948 some even found a new career by staying within the Fire Service as peace time firemen.
After eight years in the wilderness, and one year after dissolving the NFS, the AFS was re-established in 1949. It became an integral part of the Civil Defence Corps (CDC)- a civilian volunteer organisation. The ‘Cold War’ and the threat of nuclear Armageddon had created the CDC which would mobilise and take local control of the affected area in the aftermath of a major national emergency; i.e., a nuclear attack.
In London the AFS vehicles, initially, were those that remained in government storage post WWII. From 1953 onwards, purpose bult AFS vehicles came on stream. They were issued painted ‘dark green’ and the era of the ‘green goddesses’ was born. They became a frequent sight on the streets of London. Selected London fire stations housed AFS engines and provided a training base for the crews. AFS crews were occasionally, when on the training nights, dispatched to large fires to gain first experience. The AFS staff trained to be available should they be needed in a national emergency. To this end several times a year they carried out large scale exercises especially in the relaying of large quantities of water over considerable distances. In 1966 AFS men and women came from far and wide to take part in a massive exercise staged in the Port of London. It marked the Tercentenary of the Great Fire of London. It would be their swan song!
Their second stand down came on the 16th January 1968. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, announced that the nation’s Civil Defense was to be placed on a care and maintenance mode. The AFS was disbanded on the 31st March 1968. It had survived on the perceived threat of ‘cold war’ fears of nuclear attack. Large scale exercises and mobile columns rehearsed for the probable dire effects of such a nuclear Armageddon or atomic holocaust! But the simple truth was that the radiation from a nuclear attack, the fallout, would have prevented AFS fire crews from getting within 50-100 miles of the scene and then being able to operate safely.
Firemen at Euston fire station having to use a ‘Green Goddess’ as a front line fire engine in 1968. The appliances were built for mobile column use and pumping water not so good as a rapid responce front line fire appliance! They were also extremely uncomfortable to ride in.The UK would see them in use again in the 1977-78 during the national fireman’s strike, when used by the military in lieu of regular striking firemen.Members of South West London’s AFS crews at their farwell reception at the Wimbledon base in the London Fire Brigade’s K Division.Some of the AFS members of the London Fire Brigade Eastern Command (Stratford) who attended the Greater London Council’s Chairman farewell reception to the Auxiliary Fire Service.
In London the Brigade hosted a farewell reception for the AFS at the Lambeth headquarters. The Chairman of the Greater London Council, Sir Percy Rugg, spoke of the people of the AFS who volunteered unselfishly and with no thought of themselves for the public good. London’s Chief Fire Officer, Lesley Leete (who started his career as a WWII AFS fireman) voiced his regrets at their passing.
Even from its earliest days London’s fire brigades have had its firemen rowing boats on the River Thames. In fact, the very first firemen, in James Braidwood’s time, recruited sailors and Thames Lightermen and Watermen into the London Fire Engine Establishment as his firemen. Besides the qualities that these men brought to his fire brigade Braidwood realised that virtually nearly every building on or near the River Thames was associated with ships and the various cargoes these craft brought into, or carried from, London and its many docks. In fact the Pool of London was given the title of ‘the larder of London.
London first fire-floats were powered by oars, so who better to man them than firemen who knew the ways of the river. For many years the fire brigade remained the predominant occupation of former sailors, as it was only these men who were accepted as recruits into Capt. Massey Shaw’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade, although this requirement was later dropped by the London County Council, and after the name of the brigade had been changed to the London Fire Brigade in 1904. However, firemen rowing boats, or skiffs, did not change for many years, although it was not seen in such a sporting sense back then. There function were mainly fire service related, such as firemen rowing hose ashore at a riverside blaze by skiff from the fire-float. This was required either because of the state of the tide or the lack of sufficient draught, which prevented the fire-float(s) getting anywhere near the river’s bank.
15th August 1930. London firemen rowers at Putney.
It is not certain exactly when the first Thames rowing competition involving firemen took place. However in 1906 the first LFB river race was recorded. It started when the firemen of the Alpha fire-float, moored at Blackfriars, challenged the Royal Naval ratings of HMS President, moored a short distance away on the Victoria Embankment, to a Whaler Race on the Thames. With the exception of the War years the Whaler Race was held every year after that. By 1911 a crew from the Metropolitan Police River Police joined in the annual race. By 1923 a team from the Royal Naval Reserve brought the competing crews to four.
The upper Thames and a London firemen rowing crew prepare to race. 1930s.
Prior to the start of the First World War in 1914, London’s firemen had held a regatta on the River Thames. Competition between station crews had been popular in the London fire brigade for years. Pathe` Newsreels records various forms of competitions taking place at the turn of the century at the London Fire Brigade’s headquarters in Southwark Bridge Road. These competitions, against the clock, included both Pump competitions, wheeled escape competitions. By 1918 Pathe` had even recorded footage of the London firemen’s Thames regatta.
August 1932. Batterseacrew from the fire-float Delta; winners of London Fire Brigade championship rowing fours for the third time in succession. Photo credit; Miller-Topical press agency.
Tragically 1918 was the same year in which Fireman Edward T Woolf, who was stationed at the Cannon Street fire station, drowned whilst practicing for a regatta off Chelsea Reach, near Pimlico in Westminster. His boat capsized and its crew of four fell into the Thames. Whilst three of the crew struggled to the nearby foreshore Edward Woolf never surfaced. His body was later recovered from the murky waters of the Thames.
From 1904, until the Second World War, the London Fire Brigade was divided into six districts, A to F. Firemen rowed representing for their respective districts. These districts later were reorganised into just four Divisions (A-D) after the War, and when the fire service returned to Local Authority control in 1947. The format of the Whaler races essentially remained unchanged for the next seventy years or so. Divisional competitions, followed by the Brigade inter-divisional competitons and the winners representing the Brigade in the Fishmongers Cup race. Teams of five, together with a coxswain, each rowing the one and half ton clinker-built naval whalers.
The Lambeth headquarters-circa 1937-showing the river station. Picture credit; London Fire Brigade.
With the opening of the new Lambeth, London Fire Brigade headquarters, located on the Albert Embankment, and its new river fire station a regular Thames whaler race course was established in 1937. The starting point was mid-stream and directly opposite Lambeth river station. The crews rowed the one mile six hundred yard course downstream to HMS President, the finish line. In the wake of the whalers a flotilla of spectator craft followed the crews. The sound of cheering and their yells of encouragement echoing across the river.
The London County Council had funded the impressive Royal George Trophy, to commemorate King George VI opening the new headquarters the same year. With the winners name inscribed on the trophy, it was kept on public display in the main entrance lobby and Memorial Hall in glass fronted cabinets. Cabinets which were filled with a striking collection of silverware that had been presented to the Brigade and the Brigade’s competition cups and various shields. The annual Brigade whaler race winners also each received an engraved pint sized tankard whilst the runners up took home a half-pint tankard.
The races traditionally took place on a Saturday afternoon, but training for the event on that stretch of water took place at any time the individuals could get together on the Thames. The winning Divisional crews were frequently granted special leave, when on duty, to get in extra training, especially if their Divisional Officer thought his team had a good chance of winning that year. The Brigade winners were certainly given some leeway to increase their performance. After all the Brigade’s reputation was at stake.
It was not unknown for furtive figures to be seen skulking along the riverside trying to see how the opposition were performing in training, especially the Metropolitan Police river service with whom the Brigade battled for supremacy.
Just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, one of the twelve great livery companies of the City of London, donated a magnificent challenge cup for the annual inter-service whaler race, hence the current name of the race being the Fishmonger’s Cup. The Fishmongers Cup become a popular highlight in friendly inter-service rivalry. After 1947 the London Fire Brigade had established itself in a dominant role, and became the first crew’s to achieve more than three consecutive victories.
1939. Rowing boats was an operational necessity too. Getting hose ashore from the Massey Shaw fire-float, as here at the major fire at Carron Wharf, Upper Thames Street.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the LFB won the Fishmongers Cup more times than it lost it. By the 1970s the Bridge’s winning crew were engaged in wider rowing competitions too. They held a commendable record in the Ports Jubilee Regatta Whaler Races.
1952. The winning crew of the Brigade whaler race, taken at the Lambeth river station. Photo credit; London Fire Brigade.
The naval whaler, the Brigade’s preferred racing boat with the 1964 winning crew, including Brian Peck (Brixton) and Cliff Lewis (Brigade headquarets) picture at Lambeth Reach by the Lambeth headquarters river station. Photo credit; London Fire Brigade.
Not satisfied with just whaler racing in the early 1970s the Brigade established the marathon skiff race. The skiff were slightly shorter and lighter than the whalers and made of fibre-glass, not timber. This was a thirty-one mile slog from the Lambeth headquarters to Eel Pie Island, Twickenham. And back. A good winning time was in the region of five and a half hours non-stop rowing, a time that eroded as the race progressed over the years. Eight to ten teams entered the annual event, some Divisions being less than enthusiastic about rowing on the Thames than others. However, for those that did they could all guarantee one thing; blisters on their hands and backsides, and very aching limbs by the end of the marathon pull. Competition was keen amongst the teams. It is a testament to the endurance, strength and stamina of the competitors that in a particular race that decade only sixteen minutes separated the winning crew, in a record time, and the tenth crew that brought up the rear.
Firemen in rowing boats did have a far more serious side too, no more so than at the Lambeth’s River fire station where its crew were occasionally required to pull for all that they were worth for a much different reason. When someone’s life depended on their combined skill and the speed in reaching them in time in the fireboat’s skiff. The skiff was normally attached to the fireboat, and was towed behind it whenever proceeding to a fire or special service call on the river. However, the practice with anyone reported to have jumped into the Thames in the vicinity of the river station was that some of the fireboat’s crew jumped immediately into the skiff and rowed to the person in the water, whilst the fireboat started up her engines, cast off and backed up the skiff crew. It was a system that worked and lives were saved because of it.
Firemen rowing on or along the River Thames had occasionally more to do with just racing each other. It actively involved raising money for charity. Very occasionally it involved more than just the River Thames. Three teams of south London firemen, mainly from Brixton fire station undertook such a challenge in August 1981. They rowed a naval whaler from Paris to London in relays and hopefully, in the process, row themselves into the record books in addition to raising thousands of pounds for two national well known charities.
Their efforts had to be independently adjudicated. Two sea-faring men had come forward to take on the task. One was a Master Mariner from the International Marine Organisation and the other was Lieutenant Commander Mike Bedwell of the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR), from HMS President (then still based in the heritage ship, moored alongside the Victoria Embankment. The RNR were the owners of the naval whaler used for the exploit.
Mike Bedwell published a report of his first contact with London Firemen in both his own in-house magazine and the award winning magazine of the London Fire Brigade. This is an abridged version of his original story.
“ ‘Your sleeping space is a bit primitive but it’s all been swept out.’ I had to take Station Officer Dave Pike’s word for the swept bit, for the primitiveness of the penthouse area of Brixton fire station extended to the wiring which makes a gallant, but vain, attempt to bring amps to dark places.
However it was only to be for one short night since at the crack of dawn we had to be on the 6.30 a.m. SEALINK Dover to Calais ferry. All this in preparation for the London Fire Brigade’s self-inflicted challenge of rowing one of the Royal Naval Reserve’s whaler’s back from Paris into the heart of London. I got in on the act as both an interpreter and, more importantly, as an adjudicator for the Guinness Book of Records, whose pages the firemen hoped to grace.
The following day started at 3.00 a.m. An hour only made possible by my first taste of firemen’s coffee and their style of banter, which I was to become all too familiar with in the succeeding days. I meet David Bruce, my fellow adjudicator who owned up to being a Master Mariner and was therefore a natural for taking charge of the Calais-Dover-London legs. I was also introduced to the delightful Henrietta, employed as a second interpreter and luscious leavener of this otherwise all male loaf.
The journey to Paris went like clockwork, thanks largely to the generosity of Sealink, the main sponsor. The co-operation of the French police and firemen. We benefitted from the French firemen’s hospitality when we stayed, as their guests, in the biggest ‘sapeur pompiers’ barracks in Paris. That evening we were treated to a meal that was light years away from my previous evenings foray to a Brixton chippy.
Crossing the English Channel-The London Fire Brigade rowing crew nears Dover on its epic event.
Memories of the rest of the week became increasingly blurred as the marathon row progressed. Raw details were of course recorded in the official log, maintained by David Bruce and myself: times under way, in and out of locks, changes of crew, (a maximum of fifteen rowers formed the three crews, rowing in relays).
The French waterways was usually interesting, never stupendous and sometimes monotonous. Most of the locks were large commercial affairs, only on the Canal de Calais did we encounter a do-it-yourself English style lock. Elsewhere the locks were somewhat inhuman monuments of hydraulic architecture watched over from Heathrovian control towers with whose countless steps we interpreters became all too familiar. Often we were required to sweet-talk the lock keeper into allowing us priority over other commercial craft, a task which was made easier with the French tolerance of ‘crazy English’ and by the thoroughness with which Dave Pike had done his homework on letter-writing and jacking up presentation plagues.
It was the people rather than the place that made the event so special. There can be no occupation that transcends nationality more than that of the fireman and the camaraderie that was so evident between the Londoners and their French opposite numbers was enough to melt the most chauvinistic heart. More than once I was in one of the escorting vans when we found ourselves outside a fire station. In fact by the end of the week I was beginning to believe it was no coincidence. Within minutes we would have our feet under the table with people we had never meet before. Helmets would be exchanged, equipment would be demonstrated, corks would be drawn and perhaps most welcome of all to a reluctant camper like myself, hot showers could be taken.
The small village near Noyon and an impromptu stop and Champagne reception with the local Mayor.
For those lucky enough to be in the whaler at the time, Messrs Dolezal, Bryant, Pryke, Pike and Rance plus yours truly, the most treasured memory must be our arrival at a small village near Noyon. It was towards evening and we were behind schedule but the local part-time ‘pompiers’ had turned out in their best bib and tucker to line the approach to the next lock. It would have been churlish to have refused the Champagne that, after the obligatory mayoral words, awaited us.
But my final words must be for the rowers themselves and here there is no need to exaggerate. Their unconventional technique and style might raise an eyebrow on the least anchor-like of naval faces, but for sheer guts, stamina and determination no praise is too high. One day they were struggling through the very disturbed waters of the Canal du Nord under an unkind sun, the next toiling through the Canal de Calais, who’s neglected, weed infested water had the consistency of undercooked packet minestrone. Finally, of course, came the biggest challenge of the Channel and the River Thames, which was accomplished under tug escort in something under 34 hours of non-stop relay rowing, a third of them plugging adverse currents which for one frustrating hour allowed less than half a mile to be covered.
All this was done not under the cloistered steak-for-breakfast regime with which Oxford crews prepare for their annual paddle but in expedition conditions where sleep was often short and the food, for all the valiant efforts of the chef, Bob Irwin, was notable more for its carbohydrate than its protein. Minor tension were inevitable but these were released in an unremitting earthy and stoical humour that was designed to sting but never to injure. It was both an honour and a privilege to see at close quarters the type of individuals that make London’s fire brigade.”
By the new millennium the rowing traditions between the emergency services were in serious, and terminal, decline. It was a combination of service cut-backs and the decline of the whaler rowing boats themselves. The London Fire Brigade no longer boasts any ‘heavy’ boat section and the Fishmongers Cup has not been competed for in over a decade or more. The last Fishmongers races were competed for using Thames Cutters as no one could find four matched Whalers. The last of the emergency services to maintain a whaler were the Metropolitan Police’s heavy boat club. Even that finished when their key people retired.
Firefighters rowing on the Thames in whalers is now nothing but a distant memory. It is yet another example of a fine Brigade tradition that has become little more than a hazy reminiscence in the minds of retired river firefighters. Sadly, it also something that probably won’t features very highly in the Brigade’s own recalling of its history.
A retired London Fireman 