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Photograph of Sandy Kinghorn playing his concertina

Sandy Kinghorn

Sandy belongs to: Cullercoats RNLI & The Coble and Keelboat Society

Sandy was born in North Shields. At the age of 16 he began his maritime training and went to sea at 18. He is Lifeboat Visits Officer for Cullercoats RNLI and a member of the Coble and Keelboat Society.

Sandy was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 9 December 2005. The interview took place at Discovery Museum People's Gallery and lasted 46 minutes and 7 seconds.

Photograph of Sandy Kinghorn playing his concertina
Photograph of Sandy Kinghorn playing his concertina

Adjusting to life at sea

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"Well, of course, everybody’s a bit homesick at first"

Well, of course, everybody’s a bit homesick at first, because I had led a sheltered life (laughs), and a loving family and nice relatives, but you very soon get used to it, and it was very exciting. That was the good part about it- it was exciting and different, and it was what I wanted to do, I wanted to go to sea, so this was working towards that and it was great. I enjoyed it. Very much. They were two of the best years of my life, really.

Well, it was a seafaring town, a lot of lads went to sea. In our class at the high school, there was about 30 and half of them were girls so they didn’t go to sea in those days, but there were five of us lads all determined to go to sea. One was an engineer, one went to the Royal Navy and the rest of us went on deck. You couldn’t go on deck if you didn’t have good eyesight, you see, so if you wanted to go to sea and hadn’t good eyesight, good enough to pass the test, you hadn’t to be colour-blind, for a start, so you either went as an engineer or a radio officer where eyesight wasn’t quite so important. So a lot of people went to see and my family had been seafarers and connected with ships for years and years.

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Lifestyles | Travel

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