Life-Boat and Life-Saving Service

The Crew.—All pulling and sailing life-boats are launched for an exercise once a quarter, and all motor life-boats once a month, for testing the machinery and once a quarter for drilling the crew. A crew varies in number from 6 and 8 in the case of motor life boats to 13 and 17 in the case of pulling and sailing life-boats. The Life-boats in the World War.—At the beginning of the World War there were already nineteen motor life-boats on the British coast. For four and a half years all construction was suspended. Boats already begun were left unfinished until the war was over. Even the work of repairing damaged boats was sometimes impossible. But though the war came at a time of critical development in the life-boat service, and delayed that development for over f our years, it found the service ready for every emergency. The brief chronicle of its war-rescues is that from the outbreak of war in Aug. 1914, to the signing of peace in July 1919, the life-boats were launched 1,8°8 times and 5,322 lives were rescued. The boats were launched 552 times to the help of ships or aircraft of the navy, or to merchant vessels wrecked or in distress on account of the war. Besides those 5,322 lives the life-boat saved 186 boats and vessels. The bulk of the crews who did such fine work in the mine-sweepers, trawlers and drifters were drawn from the fishing population which, for gen erations, has manned the life-boats. On one occasion, of a crew of eighteen, twelve were over fifty years of ar and two of the twelve were men of seventy-two.

Relations with the Government.—In 1893 a representative of the Institution moved a resolution in the House of Commons that, in order to decrease the serious loss of life from shipwreck on the coast, the British Government should provide either tele phonic or telegraphic communication between all the coast-guard stations and signal stations on the coast of Great Britain; and that where there are no coast-guard stations the post offices near est to the life-boat stations should be electrically connected, the object being to give the earliest possible information to the life boat authorities at all times, by day and night, when the life-boats are required for service ; and further, that a Royal Commission should be appointed to consider the desirability of electrically connecting the rock lighthouses, lightships, etc., with the shore. The resolution was agreed to without a division, and though its intention has never been entirely carried out, the development of wireless should, in due course, provide a simple and efficient means by which, eventually, all lighthouses and lightships will be connected with the shore.

Finance.—When the Institution was founded, it was laid down as one of its chief objects to reward those who rescued life from shipwreck, and give relief to the widows and families of those who lost their lives in attempting to save others. In carrying out these objects the Institution has long since worked on a carefully pre pared scheme of rewards and pensions. In 1898 a pension and gratuity scheme was introduced by the committee of management, under which life-boat coxswains, bowmen and signalmen of long and meritorious service, retiring on account of old age, accident, ill-health or abolition of office, receive special allowances as a reward for their good services. This was followed in 1917 by a

pension scheme for the widows and dependent children of life boatmen who lose their lives as a result of rescuing or attempting to rescue life from shipwreck. For many years before that date it had been the practice of the Institution to pay a gratuity of at least oo to the widow, and £25 for each dependent child. The financial obligation assumed by the Institution towards those who risk their own lives in attempting to rescue life from shipwreck may be summarised as follows:—It gives retaining fees to cox swains, second coxswains, etc., and wages to motor mechanics; it gives rewards for every rescue or attempted rescue from shipwreck round the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland by whomsoever per formed; it compensates life-boatmen injured on service. It pays pensions or gratuities to coxswains, bowmen and signalmen of long and meritorious service; it pensions the widows and dependent children of life-boatmen who lose their lives on service.

The 4o years after the duke of Northumberland reorganized the Institution were years of many experiments and immense developments. In 1851 there were only 3o life-boats on the coast, and the Institution's income was under £800. In 1890 there were 300 life-boats, and the ordinary income of the Insti tution was over £42,000. Unfortunately, developments outstripped the increase in income, great as this had been, and in the year, 1891, the total expenditure was over £75,000, nearly double the income. Once again the life-boat service was in the greatest need of increasing public interest in its work, and it found the means in the Life-boat Saturday Fund, which was founded by Sir Charles W. Macara, Bt., in 1891. This fund was started as a result of the public interest aroused by the disaster, already mentioned, to the two life-boats on the Lancashire coast in 1886. It remained in existence until 191o, when its work and organization were taken over by the Institution, and during those 19 years it raised nearly £300,000.

The use of mechanical power wherever possible, while it has greatly increased the efficiency of the service, has necessarily in creased its cost. At the end of the 19th century a thousand pounds was sufficient not only to build but to endow a life-boat, so that, out of that sum, it could be replaced in perpetuity. To day a motor life-boat costs, to build alone, from f4,500 to £14,000, while the boat house and launching slipway cost, on an average, as much as the boat. At the beginning of the century the Insti tution required annually, to provide and maintain the service, .1 ioo,000. It now requires £250,000. In order to obtain this much larger sum it has greatly extended its methods of appeal. In 1921 the Ladies' Life-boat Guild was formed, to unite in one body the many hundreds of women who were working for the Insti tution. In addition to over 20o life-boat stations, the Institution has over a thousand financial branches and guilds, with thousands of voluntary workers attached to them. It is one of the remark able features of the Institution's work that, in spite of the great changes and developments which have been made in the course of over a century, it is still maintained by voluntary means.