Specialist Police Vehicles. Two.

Radioactive, biological and Chemical.

We are living in the age of International terrorism and the growing threat of the use of a dirty bomb on the British mainland is ever nearing the day? The Police use many dedicated vehicles in their various lines of work, we are seeing an increase of their deployments on our TV's because of the more reported incidents?

Some seem to be traffic incidents, but may be more sinister that they seem, much training is underway by the emergency services in preparation for another mass casualty attack such as the terrible events of Manchester earlier this year!

The role of the Police is changing from Guardians of the peace and keeping the peace to that of dealing, if not eventually be armed because of religious inspired terror and enhanced criminal activity with acid and other toxic substances!

New vehicles will need to be developed alongside existing ones to deal with the excessive cuts and the rising situations?

Tugboats. Part-Two.

A different kind of Life.

It takes a certain kind of person to work on the tugboat, 'Hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of sheer terror.' It is not a job for the faint hearted, crews are expected to go out in all weathers and work on the outside of the boat with the chains even in very rough seas.

The tugboat is designed with a glass tower for the crew to see all around them at all times. In 1900 two classes of tugboats were introduced and improved paddle and a steamer and these were no real changes until 1950. In the war years 1939-45 there were some adaptions made to handle larger warships and older boats started to be withdrawn.

In 1950 boats went from steam to the diesel and so ended the 'days of the 'Puffing Billy.' With post war shipping and the introduction of the Super Tankers new designs had to made to handle these huge sea vessels. It has been a slow history for the tugboat, because there were no big changes in the shipping world until the late 1950s.