Cornish visit
A visit to Cornwall, UK by HRH The Duke of Kent focused on the countys marine industries and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the UK’s volunteer sea rescue charity.
His tour started at the Falmouth HQ of Cornwall Marine Network (CMN) a not-for-profit marine trade organisation that has assisted more the 350 businesses through marketing and training support, and helped to create 3,000 jobs in the maritime sector since 2005. CMN manages the government’s Regional Growth Fund which has invested £2.6 billion nationally.
A major beneficiary has been Keynvor MorLift (KML) who purchased the Falmouth Wharves site with financial support from CMN (see MJ August 2016). The Duke was taken on a guided tour of the wharves by KML’s MD Diccon Rogers. They discussed the company’s work in the Orkney Islands and in Falmouth from where heavy gradings of Cornish granite armour stone are being shipped to vulnerable sections of coastal railway line and cliff in Devon. He saw the Oceanus wave energy converter device and met marine apprentices working in boatbuilding and marine engineering, before unveiling a plaque to commemorate the opening of KML’s newly refurbished HQ,
After lunch the Duke, who is President of the RNLI, boarded the Falmouth Lifeboat for a visit to the Lifeboat Station to meet members of the crew and the Management Group and to unveil a plaque to commemorate 150 years of lifeboat operations at Falmouth. The Duke finished his tour at Mousehole, where he officially opened the Solomon Browne Memorial Hall, a refurbished pilchard store named after the Penlee lifeboat tragically lost in December 1981,
By Graeme Ewens
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