Dunbar RNLI says thank you to ‘unbelievable servant’ Rod Primrose
Dunbar RNLI would like to offer its sincere gratitude to Rod Primrose for his 25 years’ service as a member of the Lifeboat Management Group (LMG).
Described by LMG chairperson Mark Lees as an ‘unbelievable servant’ to Dunbar Lifeboat Station, Rod, 77, joined the LMG committee following a request from family friend and then president Captain Ronald Greenlees.
Rod said: ‘We had recently moved from Edinburgh to Haddington where I was working as a fund manager for McInroy and Wood and Ronald said I should get involved. I’m not sure I had a say in the matter but I thoroughly enjoyed my time. It became a big part of our lives.’
As well as serving on the LMG, which oversees the running of the station, Rod and his wife Christine became regulars at the Dunbar RNLI annual fete, helping out on the tombola stall for many years.
Coming from a family with a long-standing seafaring tradition, Rod has always appreciated the value of a volunteer lifeboat service. His great-grandfather Captain Robert Primrose was one of the founding members of the Royal Navy Reserve (RNVR), set up before the First World War. Born in Epsom, Surrey, Rod joined the Royal Navy after leaving school and was posted to the Gulf of Aden, Arabia and Indonesia, where tragically many of his fellow sailors died in the conflict there.
He met Christine in 1966, while his ship was docked at the former naval base at Port Edgar, South Queensferry, and they married a year later. After five years’ service, Rod left the Navy and worked for a trading company in London, before eventually moving to Edinburgh and then from Haddington to East Linton, where they still reside. Rod and Christine have two sons, Rory, 54, and Jamie, 51, and five grandchildren.
A keen sailor, who got his first taste of being out of the water aged three, Rod kept a boat at Granton, in Edinburgh, and Dunbar.
‘Thankfully I never needed to call out the lifeboat but it was important to me to have the association with the RNLI,’ he said.
Mark Lees, Dunbar LMG chairperson, said: ‘Rod has been an unbelievable servant to Dunbar Lifeboat Station over the last 25 years. He has been able to bring his seagoing knowledge from many years’ service in the navy, along with his incredible business experience, to help us run the station in the right way.
‘I have personally found him a massive support in my role as chairman and I know everyone at the station has a huge respect for the work Rod did. We owe him a huge debt of thanks and wish him and his wife Christine all the best for the future.’
Notes to editors
Established in 1808, 16 years before the formation of the RNLI, Dunbar Lifeboat Station is one of the oldest in Scotland and is located on the south side of the mouth of the Firth of Forth. Since its formation, its volunteer crews have been honoured with 12 awards for gallantry.
It operates two lifeboats – the Trent class all-weather lifeboat (ALB) John Neville Taylor, moored at Torness Power Station, and the D-class inshore lifeboat (ILB) David Lauder, which launches from Dunbar Harbour.
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The RNLI charity saves lives at sea. Its volunteers provide a 24-hour search and rescue service around the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland coasts. The RNLI operates 238 lifeboat stations in the UK and Ireland and more than 240 lifeguard units on beaches around the UK and Channel Islands. The RNLI is independent of Coastguard and government and depends on voluntary donations and legacies to maintain its rescue service. Since the RNLI was founded in 1824, its lifeboat crews and lifeguards have saved over 146,000 lives.
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