Coleman Insurance Brokers 150th Birthday Presentation to Poole Life Boat Station

Coleman Insurance Brokers have presented Poole Life Boat Station with a very unique collection of RNLI commemorative envelopes as a way to help them celebrate and mark their 150th anniversary.

The leather bound book, inscribed on the cover with the RNLI name and housed in a bespoke box made especially for the anniversary celebrations, holds numerous pages of original commemorative envelopes. The earliest of these date back to the 1970’s, recognising special station anniversaries, lifeboat naming ceremonies and even one which commemorates the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Poole Life Boat Station, which started out on 19th January 1865, is currently celebrating its 150th anniversary of saving lives at sea and has spent the last few months marking the anniversary with a diverse number of events and occasions. The year kicked off with a birthday party, followed by a celebration church service at St James’ Church in Poole. A yellow welly competition was launched and a pedal boat in Poole Park was painted up for the summer months in RNLI colours, advertising the much anticipated anniversary.

The presentation of the collection was made by Steven Risk, Joint Managing Director of Coleman to Rod Brown, Poole Life Boat Operations Manager and Director of Poole based Quay Sails.

Rod, who has been an active member of the Life Boat station for 22 years enthused, “We are delighted to receive this special book and collection of envelopes. It’s incredible looking back at the different RNLI first day covers. It has been a particularly special year for us all at Poole Life Boat Station and we have enjoyed celebrating in so many ways. We are hoping to get this very special collection valued in the future and may consider entering it into auction at our celebratory dinner in January which marks the end of our 150th year and at which we will be fundraising for the Poole Life Boat Station.”

Steven Risk added, “At Coleman we were delighted to make this gesture and gift to Poole Life Boat Station. They offer such a great and important service to the local community and we felt that it was important to make a contribution to their 150th anniversary celebrations.”