Be Prepared

Sunderland Scouts do ‘Boys Own’ stuff at their annual camp in Northumberland.

Always prepared, this fresh-faced bunch of Sunderland Scouts demonstrate semaphore skills, and pitch in to feed the camp fire pot with spuds at their summer campsite at Milfield, Northumberland. Lunch over, these future “defenders of the Empire” head off to practise their pioneering skills on the River Till with a clunky home-made canoe, under the watchful eyes of their Scout Masters.

Amateur filmmaker Ronald Torbet lived in Roker, Sunderland, attended Bede Grammar School for Boys, and was a draughtsman engineer all his life, working for A. Reyrolle & Company, a Tyneside engineering firm based in Hebburn. As a Scout Master for the Bedan Senior Scout Group, then based at the Bede Grammar School in Sunderland, he filmed many of the group’s trips to Northumberland and North Yorkshire camps from the late 1950s through to the 60s, in addition to shooting home movies and local events such as ship launches on the River Wear.