Maritime rescue around the coast of the South West Peninsula is co-ordinated from Coastguard Rescue Co-ordination Centres at Swansea, Brixham and Falmouth.

Falmouth district covers the coastline from the Devon Cornwall border on the north coast, around to the Dodman Point (which is a few miles west of St. Austell) on the south coast. This may be only a relatively short coastline, but to seaward our area covers a large proportion of the western half of the North Atlantic Ocean. Our long range communications facilities through Goonhilly allow us to co-ordinate incidents even farther afield in the South Atlantic, Eastern Pacific and Western Indian Ocean, and every day we are speaking with ships and other rescue centres all over the world. We like to claim that whether the incident is 100 yards off Perranporth or 100 miles off Peru, MRCC Falmouth is there to help.

In addition to our well equipped operations room, we have 22 Coast Rescue teams dotted around our coast, and during the winter months we have the "Far Sky", a powerful ocean going tug, stationed in Falmouth (from October 2001 she will be stationed here all year round).

Each year we handle approximately 1,000 search and rescue incidents of all types. The most common inshore casualties involve people trapped on a cliff face or cut off by the incoming tide, and the most common offshore casualties are the medical evacuation of injured crewmbers from vessels many miles out to sea. However, there is no such thing as the "typical" incident, and we have to be prepared to handle anything that may come our way, from the dog over the cliff to the kind of major disaster that occurs only once every decade, with hundreds of lives at risk in an incident that may run on for several days.

2000 was a relatively quiet year, but even then we co-ordinated 943 incidents and saved or assisted 969 people. On the down side, 24 people lost their lives.

HM Coastguard may be the only authority responsible for the co-ordination of civil maritime distress in the United Kingdom, but in addition to this the Marine Office side of the MCA is responsible for the statutory survey and inspection of UK registered ships, and of foreign flag ships within our territorial waters. The Surveyors from the Falmouth office spend a great deal of time and effort in an attempt to ensure that all commercial vessels in our waters are safe to go to sea; to a great extent they are successful, but as our casualty figures indicate, some vessels still manage to slip through the net.

There is a major campaign under way at the moment to improve the safety of small fishing vessels. Until recently, fishing vessels under 12 metres in length were not obliged to carry essential safety equipment nor be surveyed to ensure that they meet minimum criteria of seaworthiness; however, the unacceptably high injury rate and loss of life amongst fishermen could not be allowed to continue, and new legislation was introduced to take effect from 1st April 2001. This has given extra work to our surveyors and sector managers, but if (as is expected) it leads to a reduction in the casualty figures, it will be well worth it.