Under the heading " More Motor Life-boats " the following letter from the Secretary of the Institution appeared in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce on the 22nd April, 1920 :.— SIR,—I have read with much pleasure in a recent issue the high and well-deserved praise which you give to those who have succeeded, in the face of what seemed in- superable difficulties, in designing and build- ing a petrol engine which would meet the stringent requirements of the Life-boat Service. They have .succeeded, as you say, in producing an absolutely reliable engine, and they may rightly feel that by so doing they ; have saved no one can say how many lives: in '•• the future which otherwise would most certainly be lost. The petrol engine is ; revolutionising the Life-boat Service, so greatly is it adding to the speed, power, and range of ; the Life-boats. The Motor Life-boat can have lives in the face of storms against which ho human strength in the pulling and sailing boats could hope to make headway. It can carry out rescues under conditions which i would make it impossible even to launch any - other type of Life-boat. It is for these reasons that the Institution is so anxious to carry out, ; with as little delay as possible, its constructional programme of fifty new Motor Life- boats. It was our bitter experience to know, i during the war, that lives were lost in tor-pedoed vessels which would certainly have been 'saved had we had Motor Life-boats, which were actually ordered and building, but, owing to the scarcity of labour and material, could not be finished.

I feel sure that all your readers will learn with great satisfaction that the Committee of Management of the Institution have just 'decided to design and supply for Liverpool a 'new and very powerful type of Motor Life- boat, which will be the largest hitherto con- ~ited, having a length of sixty feet and a of about ten knots. A very generous of £7,600 has been received by the Port of il Branch, of the Institution towards the cost of this boat, which will probably amount to £15,000 or £16,000.

It is just eighty-one years since Sir William Hillary, Bt., of the Isle of Man, who, fifteen years before, had founded what is now THE ROYAL NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITU- TION, addressed an urgent and eloquent appeal to the shipping and commercial community of Liverpool. He wrote of the " almost insur- mountable obstacles which presented them- selves to the powers of a common Life-boat, amongst the dangerous shoals and in the narrow channels between the formidable banks which stretch out to sea for many miles beyond the entrance of the Mersey, against which obstacles no human strength could contend." He urged the shipping and business men to support his suggestion for constructing vessels which should not only have all the qualities of Life-boats, but in addition " a commanding steam power," and he wrote that it had always been one of the great objects of the Institution " to avail itself of the advance of science." Again we have "to avail ourselves of the advance of science." Petrol power has proved itself, for the purposes of the Life-boat, superior to steam, if only because the Motor boat, which has not "to get up steam," is more quickly away to the rescue; and the Steam Life-boat, such as Sir William desired, which has for many years now been stationed at New Brighton, will, in its turn, give way to this new type of Motor Life-boat.

I have referred to what Sir William Hillary wrote in 1839 because it adds a happy historical appropriateness to the reasons which decided the Committee of Management to station at New Brighton the first of this new, larger, and more powerful type, a type which we earnestly hope will perform even more efficiently than the Steam Life-boat the great beneficent task of life-saving, to the promotion of which Sir William Hillary gave so much of his noble life and energies.

Yours, etc., GEORGE P. SEES, Secretary.

Royal National Life-Boat Institution.