Open Day: Resue at Sea. March 24 2018 10am – 3pm

This was a popular well attended Open Day celebrating the bravery of the RNLI volunteers from the late 19th century through to the present day. Visitors from Mousehole also presented their own boards and an excellent exhibition. There was in addition a separate display concerning the Ocean Pride restoration project.

At 11am Krista Stringer, Tesco Community Champion, and Janice Phillips presented the Archive with a handsome cheque amounting to £1,140 worth of customer contributions. Janice is the community enabler for the ‘Bags of Help’ scheme groundwork team. David Tredinnick delivered a vote of thanks acknowledging the importance of the scheme’s help for a non-profit making organisation such as the Archive. The representatives spent the rest of the day with us and were able to see the importance of the work we do. They could also see the new grey display boards we were able to purchase thanks to such contributions and they were impressed. Thanks are due to Sue Newton for setting up this connection with Tesco.

George Bednar, who has provided the Archive with a great deal of material about local artists, attended the event and presented us with a framed print of Bramley’s ‘Hopeless Dawn’, a recent acquisition at Penlee House.

Brian Newton’s interesting archive films were enhanced by a recording of an interview with a survivor from the Titanic disaster, available on headphones, to the delight of some of the children enjoying the exhibition.

The day was a great success and very well received by the 152 visitors some of whom expressed their views in the comments book:

• Saskia Newport: ‘I found out a great deal of information I didn’t know before…’
• Graham Perry commented on the hard work done by the Archive team to mount the exhibition.
• Logan, aged 9 thought it was ‘cool’ and bought two books on shipwrecks.
• Mr and Mrs Colin and Audrey Hadfield wrote: ‘Awe inspiring. The courage. The bravery’.
• Elise Thomas, aged 5, was proud to discover the name of the pictured boat as the Elizabeth and Blanche from 1899.

Book sales amounted to £134 and thanks are due to Diane and David Tredinnick for this success.

Thanks are also due to Pam Lomax and Sue Newton for producing such first class boards and the whole Archive team who all gave up their time to ensure the open day was a success.

Sue Roach