TWO centuries on, Pembroke Dock’s Fleet Surgeon has returned to his old naval haunts and found willing ‘patients’ when he set out his operating theatre at the Front Street Gun Tower.

Surgeon Commander Roger Morgan - in real life a member of Cadw’s team based at Newport, Gwent - demonstrated medical tools and gruesome techniques to members of Pembrokeshire Youth Assembly, some of whom acted as injured ‘casualties’ resulting from a naval action early in the 19th Century.

The teenagers, from local secondary schools, included the Gun Tower visit into a packed programme arranged by Cadw.

Earlier the group had, courtesy of the Port of Milford Haven, visited the Fleet Surgeon’s House, part of the impressive Georgian terrace in the Royal Dockyard, and other dockyard buildings dating from the same period. They also visited the Chapel Bay Fort Museum, Angle, where they were hosted by George and Emma Geear (corr).

The Gun Tower visit was arranged with the Pembroke Dock Museum Trust which operated a museum there for several years. Due to severe water penetration problems the Tower was forced to close.

These problems have now been rectified and new heritage uses are being discussed for the building’s future. It is one of three ‘Cambridge Gun Towers’ in and around Pembroke Dock and the only one to which public access is possible.