The Cliff Assault Wing (CAW) of the Royal Marines began life at Bickleigh Barracks, Devon, in 1949, a restructured team following on from various war time groups set up to spearhead Commando raids on coastal areas during World War Two.

Working on the basis that it’s best to attack the enemy from where it’s least expected the CAW would arrive by sea, scale the cliffs by whatever means, and set up ropes and haulage devices for others to follow and proceed to the target. To accomplish this a somewhat bizarre array of techniques could be deployed.

A strange spring-loaded extension ladder called a Swan was designed to be catapulted up a cliff for a gentle stroll to the top – not a success!

Steep earth climbing with shortened ice-axes and nailed boots was a little more sensible, rockets and mortars with ropes & grapnels attached was rather noisy and very scary. Founder of our collection, Mick Tighe, was a Cliff Leader (member of the CAW) in the 1970s and well remembers firing a mortar with a rope and grapnel attached, “the grapnel never went where you aimed it and invariably came down close to where it had been fired from – we all became good sprinters.”

So we have an original grapnel here in the collection, made for the CAW in the Royal Naval Dockyard (circa 1950) and kept as a souvenir by Mick Tighe when he left the Marines in 1977. Firing them from mortars had gone out of fashion by then, a better idea had come along called a helicopter!