Hello

[James S Harvey]

Hello Thankyou for accepting my request

My name is James Harvey and I work for HM Coastguard based at Dover CG Operations centre.

My father was in the MN in the 70’s and early 80’s serving on tankers for BP and Shell he went to Vietnam during the war but was denied a medal as the uk were not officially involved, his best mate emigrated to Australia was given the Australian logistics medal

My grandfather was in the Royal Navy in ww2

I also collect and research medals and have several MN groups for ww2 and 1 for both wars

Regards

James

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi James.
Welcome to the site, I hope you enjoy all that there is to peruse on here. Some good articles and posts.
cheers Des

[James S Harvey]

Thanks Des

[j.sabourn]

Welcome James. Who issues the Australian Logistics Medal..? I thought all civilian medals re merchant service were issued through The Australian Merchant Service Awards Council in Hobart Tasmania. All awards to Australian seafarers from this council have to be Australian citizens. I have over the years received 3 Australian Merchant. service Crosses but had to be a citizen to receive. Your dads mate must have become a citizen as well. Would be interesting to find out what the duties and the qualifications are today for the HM coastguard , people like myself still have the old fashioned idea of an old man sitting on the top of a cliff with a telescope to his eye, know this is untrue in today’s modern world, but no doubt you could educate some of us. Best Regards JWS.

[Ivan Cloherty]

My father was in the MN in the 70’s and early 80’s serving on tankers for BP and Shell he went to Vietnam during the war but was denied a medal as the uk were not officially involved, his best mate emigrated to Australia was given the Australian logistics medal

Regards

James

Welcome aboard, the MN were (are) the poor relations as far as medals are concerned, it was only in 2000 those of us who served in war areas were recognised as veterans, and the ignorance of the three other services of the MN parts in conflicts is also appalling, even though were taken into conflict on MN vessels and had MN vessels sunk beneath them.

MN vessels ran the gauntlet of the Yangste river conflict twixt Communists and Nationalists (49/50) for years coming under fire from both sides for long periods, but their service was never recognised as being in a war area, the RN vessels who served there were considered as being on war service, what's good for the goose, isn't always good for the gander

[Keith at Tregenna]

Just a quick hello, hope to hear more from / of you.

Keith.

[Ron B Manderson]

Welcome to the site James.
Enjoy
Ron the batcave

[Doc Vernon]

Hello James
Welcome aboard hope that you will find lots to take your interest here.
Lots of good Lads aboard and always willing to help where and if the can.
Enjoy thanks for joining the Motley Crew! LOL

[James S Harvey]

Hi all

The modern coastguard is very different these days

We have youngsters from age 22 upwards

I myself am 43 and only recently joined after spending 20 years working at Royal Mail before being made redundant

My duties include listening watch on ch16
Routine calls via phone, ch67, or internally on ch0 if a lifeboat or crt.
Answering 999 calls

Preparing and broadcasting the msi and assisting the other members

Once qualified I’ll run emergencies and task assets to emergencies and in October subject to passing pre exams I will hopefully be trained on VTS and be responsible for Dover straits and the cnis and then harwich sunk.

[j.sabourn]

Thanks James, that is one of the worse bottlenecks in the world or at least used to be. Before the routing came into force it used to be even worse. In the first 20 years or so after the war you also had the North Sea minefields to contend with and had ships approaching the straits area at different angles. Now with the increased drafts on ships and the deep water routing may have lessened the load a bit ,I suppose you still get the occasional kamikaze loose among them all. You must have a large number of VHFs listening in on various channels as ships discuss amongst themselves their own answer to the problems. If you consider that most ships in the 60s and 70s didn’t even have VHF, and the only way of communicating was by lamp or flags, it just shows how dependent the today’s Mariner is reliant on such. Cheers JWS