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Irish
Coast Guard Historic |
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Setting the Scene
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COASTGUARD WEAPONS. To understand the need for Coastguards to be issued with weapons we need to look back a couple of centuries. The 17th 18th and 19th centuries were boom years for international trade in Europe with the discovery of the riches in the "New world". Fortunes were made and lost in this new trade of goods to and from the developing continents.The value of the cargoes was so great that they needed to be protected from theives and robbers of which there were many at the time. Whenever a ship was wrecked there were always gangs ready to plunder the cargo who were not adverse to murdering the crew. There were also organised gorups of men who lured ships into danger by lighting beacons on the headlands giving the illusion that the light was guiding the ships to a safe passage. These were known as "Wreckers" and and never left anyone from the ship alive. Shipping companies and the merchants set up groups of men in vulnerable areas to protect their investments such as the cargo, the ship and lastly the crew, in that order, in those days life was cheap. in modern day terms they would be called "security companies".Things got so bad that the British Goverment set up The Board of Trade to regulate all form of transport to bring some order into the transport system, this included the safety of seamen, the old system of indivual groups was replaced by a new body and HM COASTGUARD came ito being. The primary objective was to Save life, secondly The Ship and lastly The cargo, when lives had been saved the Coastguards were required to guard the ship and cargo until the Military and law officers arrived on the scene to take over the duty. Until the the civil authorities arrived it was nessessary that the coastguards were in a position to defend themselves and the cargo from gangs of theives, hence the need for them to be armed The types of arms issued veried, the basic weapon was the Naval Cutlass as issued to the Royal Navy at the time, muzzel loading Pistols and Rifles were also available as were the standard Cavalry sabres. As the introduction of the individual bullet emerged and was perfected rifles were designed and replaced the old muzzel loading weapons, at this time the old percussion revolvers were replaced by the more modern bullet fed revolvers and by 1900 the British army and navy were issued with rifles like the Martini Enfield rifle and carbine and the Enfield revolver. In 1910 the Martini Enfield was replaced by the new Lee Enfield rifle which had a magazine that held 10 rounds of .303 ammunition, the Webley .38 and .45 was intruduced about the same time. During the Great war the Coastguard was put under the control of the Royal Navy and remained so until 1920 when it returned to the Board of Trade. At this time in Britain the arms were withdrawn, in Ireland they remained in service until 1922 when the Irish Free State was established and HM coastguard was withdrawn form Ireland. During the Second world war the coastguard was again put under the control of the Royal Navy and coastguard was rearmed, at the end of the war the Board of trade resumed control over the coastguard and all arms were withdrawn. In Ireland to my knowlege no arms were issued to the replacement Irish Coast Life Saving Service who are all volunteers. Photographs of the arms issued to Coastguards can be seen |