Look back: Firemen - and girls - in action at the docks

Convoys of fire engines raced along Southampton’s Western Esplanade – but there wasn’t a trace of smoke anywhere.

It was October 1953 and firefighters from all over the country converged on the New Docks, now better known as the city’s Western Docks, for Operation Gateway, Britain’s biggest ever brigade exercise.

One thousand personnel in a cavalcade of vehicles from ten counties swept along Southampton’s deserted streets early on the Sunday morning and for many of those involved it was a 13-year journey back in time.

A great many of those involved in the exercise had been part of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) during the Second World War and had been on duty in Southampton following the intensive enemy bombing raids of 1940.

“The early morning sun flashed on the engines, the air was fresh and firemen from far-off places remembered they had travelled the same road before on a Sunday morning,”

reported the Daily Echo.

“For many of the men, mostly members of the AFS, were veterans.

They recalled that almost 13 years earlier the sun could not be seen over the smoke which hung over the town after a Saturday night blitz.

“The air reeked with high explosives.”

A total of 200 engines, together with control vans and command vehicles, in three separate columns were pressed into action in response to a mythical scenario where Southampton had been heavily attacked and the fire situation was beyond the resources of the local brigade.

Firemen laid 15 miles of hose and engines drew 100,000 gallons of water every minute from the docks throughout the exercise.

However, it was not just the size of the exercise which attracted attention but the fact that 150 “firewomen” were taking part “who stole the show”.

The Daily Echo said: “Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office, who watched the exercise with Home Office experts and fire chiefs from all over the country, said he was surprised by the big part played by the firewomen.

“The fire girls drove control cars, shepherded convoys as motor-cycle escorts, manned the new five-channel radio telephony sets specially developed for mobile columns and served as walkie-talkie operators.”

Two London region columns, consisting of 500 AFS and including brigades from Surrey, West Ham, Kent, Middlesex, Essex and Croydon went into the New Docks.

A third column – southern region – comprising of Hampshire, Dorset, Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Reading, Buckinghamshire, Bournemouth and Portsmouth brigades worked in the Old Docks.

Pumps were deployed over miles of quayside at 23 incidents staged by the Southampton Brigade Control staff.

“Each column kept in touch with its fire companies by multi-channel radio,” said the Daily Echo.

“In turn 100 girls with walkietalkie aerials bobbing above their helmets linked each company with its two sections.

“A senior officer paid the girls the best tribute: ‘They were everywhere.

What would we do without them?’”

Mayor of Southampton Alderman Mrs Victoria King said the town, as it was then, had not forgotten what it had owed to the AFS.

“Those of us who are Sotonians watched you today with pride and sadness in our hearts for it brought back to us the days when your work in Southampton Docks was a reality.”