The Coastguard Station

The Coastguard service seems to have started in Barton around the mid-1850s and by the late 1860s the coastguard service in Barton was hat its peak. At its conception, the station was run by six men and an officer but this soon rose to eight with the demands of the work. The workers would offer protection for sailors travelling along the river, where conditions were proven to be very dangerous due the amount of trading vessels. Their day-to-day duties often included marking the channels in the Humber with buoys and collecting harbour duties. In more dramatic times, the men would perform rescues from wrecked ships and capture smugglers.

Now known as The Boathouse, the Coastguard Station was opened by the then Duke of Edinburgh in 1880. From the early 1900s the Coastguard Service in Barton began to be run-down. In 1919 the Coastguard Station was in poor condition and the boat was not seaworthy and by the early 1920s the station had closed. During the Second World War it was used by an army unit