NCI - The Beginning
It seems like a good idea in this first post to describe how NCI itself started. To be brief, the first station opened in October 1994, but to set the scene you have to look back a few more years.
Up to 1991, the Coastguard operated and maintained a comprehensive network of manned lookout stations round the coast of the UK. By the end of 1992 however, following a period of rationalisation and modernisation, most of these had closed.
The seas round the UK can be capricious, dangerous, and take vessels and lives. In 1994 it took two more – two local fishermen who drowned near the recently-closed lookout at Bass Point.
One can only imagine how feelings – sadness, anger, resentment perhaps - ran in the local communities. But the people there did something remarkable; instead of making protests they made history, trying to ensure that this sort of tragedy would not happen again. Following well-supported public meetings they obtained funding from generous donors, found equipment, recruited volunteers and took over the now-disused lookout. In so doing they started a volunteer-led watch over the sea: this was the foundation of the organisation we now know as NCI - an organisation that I am personally proud to be a member of and who’s uniform I am privileged to wear.
NCI Bass Point started operational watch-keeping in October 1994. It is still going strong today. Oh, and like many other NCI stations, has received a Queens Award for Voluntary Service.
Since 1994 NCI has expanded, devised and implemented standards, developed training, and built a relationship with HM Coastguard. It has now grown to a current total of 58 stations with yet more in the pipeline; in the year 2021 total watchkeeper time amounted to 215,281 hours. But just like Bass Point in 1994, NCI Gosport, founded in 2008, is still manned entirely by volunteers, and reliant on the generosity of the public and local businesses for funding.
