FROM time immemorial it has been the custom of the Life-boat Service not to maintain fixed crews for Life-boats, but to draw volunteers as required from the seafaring population of the coast towns and villages where Life-boats are stationed.

The advantages of such a system over any in which men would be engaged permanently to form a Life-boat's crew are manifold. Not only is there the obvious economy of such a course, but what is more important, there is actually a greater efficiency ; as the men, con- tinuing to pursue their avocations as fishermen, boatmen, etc., and spending their lives in open boats, are kept in constant training for the particular class of work which is required in the Life-boat Service, the very nature of which is such that the occasions of use are few and far between ; and a crew of men who did no other work would, it is feared, soon degenerate into loafers.

Fortunately the conditions are such that in the great majority of places where it is necessary to keep a Life- boat the right sort of men are to be found, and perhaps nowhere are these conditions more amply fulfilled than on the long stretch of seaboard between Tees and Humber which forms the coast of Yorkshire, with its numerous villages, whose seafaring population have for countless generations followed the profession of fishermen.

In the Tees itself a Motor Life-boat has recently been stationed, and in the Humber and at Whitby it is proposed shortly to placS others, the mouths of these two rivers and Whitby Harbour being the only spots in the whole of this beautiful but, to the mariner, inhospit- able coast where boats can be safely kept afloat at all states of the tide.

The Teesmouth boat is manned by the hardy boatmen of Redcar, who also have their own beach boat in the town ; and are proud of owning, in addition, the oldest Life-boat in the world, the Zetland, a boat built by James Great- head, the inventor of the Life-boat, in 1802. No longer on the active list, she lives in honourable retirement in a specially constructed glass house on Redcar Esplanade.

Further south, at Saltburn, there are now no fishermen left, and the Life-boat is manned for the most part by men who work in the winter in the local iron ore works, and in the summer gain a livelihood by " pleasure" boating, a combination which leads to a remark- able ability to pull a strong oar, for these men will take their Life-boat out through the heavy breaking sea, which makes home on this beach, in a manner which would do credit to a crew of professional seamen.

Next, Staithes, with its beautiful but treacherous bay, once the home of that splendid Yorkshire seamen, Captain Cook, and now, as then, the abode of as plucky and reckless a lot of fishermen | as ever took their lives in their hands ! when setting forth in their gaily painted cobles for the fishing-grounds, or pro- ceeding in their Life-boat to escort some i belated coble in, captained by old George | Webster, fisherman, preacher, lecturer, and withal as fine a coxswain of a Life- boat as ever held a tiller.

Just south of this is beautiful Runs- wick, beloved and rendered famous by artists, where male labour being scarce, even in peace time the women often turn out to lend a hand in the launching of the Life-boat.

. At Whitby no less than three Life- boats are stationed, manned by the best oarsmen on this coast, and ready as Whitby men have always been to do or die ; for are not their records written in ; the graves of that high churchyard on • the East Cliff? Five miles south of this is the extra- ordinarily picturesque village of Robin Hood's Bay, whose inhabitants are said to contribute more master mariners per head of the population to the British Merchant Service than any other place in the kingdom ! No wonder there is no difficulty in finding a crew for the Life-boat. The episode which led to the founding of this station is one of the romances of the Life-boat Service.

It was on the 19th January, 1881, that memorable month of snow, that a vesselcame to grief off the dangerous rocks which fringe this bay. What was to be done ? There was no loca! Life-boat in those days, and any attempt to launch a fishing-boat in such a sea would have been madness. The nearest Life-boat was at Whitby, but it was out of the question for her to attempt to reach the wreck in the teeth of the north-east gale. Gould she reach it by land? There were several feet of snow lying on the roads, and more than one person who had with the greatest difficulty j come into Whitby that morning gave it j as his opinion that to take the Life-boat on her carriage over them would be quite impossible. But the Whitby men do not know this word, and mustering all their forces they made a start.

The account of how they took the boat up and down the precipitous hills which form the road between Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, battling with the snowdrifts and the gale, is one of the most thrilling chapters in the annals of the Life-boat Service. But it is too long to tell here. Suffice it to say that they reached the bay at last, launched their boat there, and rescued the crew of the doomed vessel. j Soon after this a Life-boat station was established at Robin Hood's Bay, and ! every year since, on the anniversary of j this rescue, a meeting of the Local Committee is held, and, business over, the venerable vicar, who is also the Honorary Secretary of the Life-boat branch, reads the specially composed prayer of thanks for the mercy vouchsafed that day.

The next Life-boat station is at Scarborough, where the boatman are equally at home standing by the fishing-cobles in the broken waters of the bay and in piloting visitors over its smiling summer aspect. Here old John Owston, famous among the Life-boat coxswains of Yorkshire, and indeed of the kingdom, though retired from active service, still serves the Life-boat Institution as an honoured member of the local committee.

Next comes Filey, where the splendid team of horses which draw the Life-boat on her carriage into the water are second only in value to the splendid team of fishermen who man her. And so to Flamborough Head, with men notorious all over the country for pluck and grit. There is a Life-boat at both the north and south "landings," so that whatever the direction of the wind and sea one Flamborough boat can always go out.

And so we come to Bridlington, unique as the place where the Life-boat is launched off her carriage on the open beach under sail: in a heavy sea a piece of seamanship which could only be performed by men of iron nerve and consummate skill, such as are found here.

So far the manning of the Yorkshire Life-boats is an easy enough problem, solving itself, as has been shown by the fact that wherever Life-boats are wanted the men to man them are at hand. But south of Bridlington the Life-boat Institution is confronted with a peculiar difficulty. Here and there on the coasts of this kingdom villages are found which formerly supported a population of fisherman, but where the industry has gradually ceased to exist. The causes of this decrease are complex, and not easy to follow ; the advent of steam trawling, the rural exodus into the great towns, the greater facilities which modern means of travel give the rising generation of finding work elsewhere, and the advantages which are to be found in other walks of life, all contribute ; and that splendid figure, the inshore fisherman, is slowly but surely going the way of the hand-loom weaver and the driver of stage coaches. Of such is Holderness, whose coast villages once supported a population of fishermen, but do so no longer.

Yet, on the other hand, the proximity of the mighty Humber, with a greater actual number of vessels passing up and down it than any other river in the ] world, makes it imperative to guard its approaches, and two Life-boat stations are maintained on this coast. At Hornsea the boat is manned by Bridlington fishermen, who, on an alarm being given, drive over in three motor cars, while the local men get all ready for launching, and take the boat to the water's edge.

Further south the Withernsea Lifeboat has been moved to Easington for two reasons. One is that the groiningof the foreshore at Withernsea makes it ' extremely dangerous to launch a boat there from half flood to half ebb ; the other is that by far the greater number • of wrecks on this coast take place at; Dimlington, just by Easington. Already this newly-formed station has given a good account of itself. I Last, but by no mean least, Spurn Point, loneliest of all Life-boat stations in the kingdom, where for many years the Life-boat has been owned and manned by the Hull Trinity House, has recently been taken over by the ROYAL NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION, who intend, as soon as the War is over, to place a Motor Life-boat there. Here, alone on the coast of England, owing to the absence of any population, it is necessary to maintain a permanent paid Life-boat's crew. The men are entirely in the service of the Institution, but are allowed, when weather permits, to pursue their ordinary avocation as fishermen..