IN the course of his speech from the chair at the Annual General Meeting,* Lord Burnham made an urgent appeal to the great shipping firms to give their generous support to the Life-boat Service, and pointed out that, at present, many of them make no contribution to it at all.

The fact—for it is a fact—is so extra- ordinary as to appear well-nigh in- credible when we consider that the interests which the Life-boat Service most obviously and directly serve are those of our maritime population, and of the vast aggregations of materiel and personnel represented by the mer- cantile marine of Britain. We propose, • therefore, to examine the matter quite frankly; to state the facts and to suggest an explanation of a situation so little in harmony with what we believe to be the real attitude of the shipping community towards one of ; the noblest expressions of our maritime spirit and our national character.

The capital value of British shipping 'alone runs into many hundreds of millions sterling, and its tonnage is even now, after a war in which Britain f has lost over seven and a half million tons of merchant shipping, over 32 per cent, of the tonnage of the world, while some 250,000 men form its virile and -efficient crews. Nor do these figures include the smaller fishing vessels, steam trawlers and drifters who ply on our coasts, and who, from -the nature of things —• their employment in close proximity to a rock-bound coast and numerous sandbanks, and the relative smallness of the craft—are the most frequent victims of storm and the fury of the sea. Not only British shipping but the mercantile marine of £ * A full report of this speech appeared in 'ihe May number of The Life-Boat.

the world draws to and radiates from these islands in a never-ending argosy of wealth and power and vigorous human life ; but it is, of course, British shipping and British lives whichj by an enormous preponderance, are most fre- quently exposed to jeopardy on our coasts, and the great majority of lires and shipping lost by shipwreck are, therefore, British. So, too, it is British lives and shipping which the Life-boats of the Institution are constantly en- gaged in saving; and, during the Great War, fully 85 per cent, of the 5,322 lives saved by them were British lives saved from British ships.

To protect life against the perils of shipwreck on our coast, the Institution provides and maintains a fleet of 248 Life-boats with their boathouses and slipways, rewards the crews, compen- sates those injured in the Service, and pensions the widows and orphans of those who may be killed in the.per- formance of their duty. It carries out the whole of this great national service at a cost of about £150,000 a year, which is roughly a quarter of the cost of the United States Life- saving Service carried out by the State. .

In the light of these facts the figures which we give below will come as a revelation to the general body of our subscribers, and as a shock to generous and far-sighted members of the shipping community itself.

The lists on pages 73 and 74 show the British and Foreign shipping firms which contribute to the Institution, with the number of their ships and the amount of their subscriptions or dona- tions during 1919.

These tables speak for themselves.

It will be seen that the total amount received in subscriptions from the shipping community of Britain in 1919 j was under £1,300 — less than 10 per cent, of the sum required to carry on the life-saving work of the Institu- ti6n. Very few of the companies contributed even on the modest basis of £1 Is. per ship per annum, and the chief companies owning fleets of trawlers and drifters (the kind of craft to which the Life-boats are constantly rendering life-saving services) are scarcely repre- sented at all. The total is the more striking when it is remembered that the subscriptions received from the officers and men of the Royal Navy—not a body noted for its wealth—'-amounted to over £1,000. It will be observed, moreover, that several foreign companies contribute more than many of the larger British, firms. Compare, for example, the contributions received from the Compania Maritima del Nervion with its eight vessels, or the Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd with its nine vessels, with the contributions received from British firms with twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred, and a hundred and fifty vessels. Anyone who does this will need nothing more to convince him that British shipping firms, taken as a whole, are still very far from supporting the Iiife-boat Cause in the way which one would expect by reason both of the national importance of the Service, and of their own vital and personal interest in its efficient maintenance. He will see that in all but a very few cases their subscriptions bear no proportion either to their material interests or to the number of lives which, while en- trusted to their care, are exposed to the perils of the sea. He will see also what, without the evidence he could scarcely credit, that a great many firms do nothing at all to help the Institution. In the City of London alone there are no fewer than thirty-nine shipping com- panies, with an aggregate of nearly 400 ships, which do not subscribe i to it at all, although the City of London Branch of the Institution was founded as long ago as 1894, and has the Chairmen of three great lines on its Committee.

In the course of the speech from which we have already quoted, Lord Burnham said, "It is not a pleasant reflection that before the war many of the German shipping companies sub- scribed more in support of the Life- Boat Institution than our own." On that point we regret to say that the reproach was justified. In 1913 the Hamburg - Amerikanische with thirty- eight vessels, the Hamburg- Sudamerikanische with seventeen ves- sels, and the Deutsche DampfschiflSahrts Hansa and Kosmos with eleven-vessels, were all subscribers of ten guineas, while the Norddeutscher Lloyd with forty-six vessels was a subscriber of twenty pounds. This was in addition to a number of subscriptions of five guineas.

Ignorance of the Facts.

It is certainly with no wish to indict the shipping community for neglect and want of generosity that we have stated these facts. Indeed, it is only reluct- antly, and after much, hesitation, that we have done so, and mainly for this reason.

We are convinced, that the figures we have quoted do not in the least represent the real attitude of those who draw their wealth and prosperity from shipping, and that the explanation lies in the fact that great companies whose vast enter- prises dente d the exercise of all their Energies are not made aware of the splendid work which the Institution has carried on now for nearly a hundred years, and which is so intimately associ- ated with our maritime interests. The apparent want of generosity on the part of some companies, the complete failure to recognise- any claim at all on the part of a large number of others, is due mainly to ignorance of the facts. We simply do not believe, for instance, that a subscription of £10 10s. per annum represents the recognition by the British- India Steam Navigation Co., owning 139 vessels, of the work of humanity and heroism carried but by the Life- boats, nor that the Bibby Line really regard the services of these boats as deserving no larger support than £2 2*. &d. a year. Where the energy and initiative of the local Branch of the Institution has been successfully exerted the result is seen at once, as in the case of Messrs. Maclay and Mclntyre, a Glasgow firm which has subscribed £50 a year for many years (in addition to a personal subscription of £10 from Sir J. Maclay), and Messrs. J. C. Gould and Co., Ltd., and Messrs. "W. R. Smith . and Sons, both of Cardiff, which have become subscribers of £105 a year since 1919.

There is, however; we believe, another factor which explains the curious anomaly to which we have drawn attention. Shipping firms have, like other great enterprises, become of recent years joint stock companies of such vast financial magnitude that the quasi-personal element, which still ex- isted up to a few years ago, even in the •case of large companies, has practically disappeared. Hence, when questions of charitable contributions are discussed, the generous instincts of the Chairman and of each member of the Board are apt to give way to considerations as to what the shareholders may say, and caution clips the wings of magnanimity.

Only some such reason could explain, for instance, why some shipping companies which fifty years ago used to contribute £150 to £250 a year now subscribe £20 or £25, although the cost of carrying on the Life-boat Service is vastly greater to-day, while the capital of the companies concerned has also multiplied ten or hundredfold.

A Suggested Basis of Contribution.

We venture to suggest to the great companies that this cautious attitude towards their shareholders is an un- deserved slur upon the generosity, nay, the sense of justice, of the latter. When we see how generously the working classes and the hard-hit professional and middle classes contribute to the "support of a Service which makes an indefeasible appeal to every Briton, we feel convinced that the proposal to subscribe liberally to the work of the - Institution would meet with the unanimous support of the shareholders of every shipping company. Would it really be too much to ask that shipping firms should contribute to the mainten- ance of the Life-boat Service on the basis of one-tenth of one per cent, of their profits per annum 1 We cannot think that such a proposal would be regarded as exorbitant if put forward by men like Lord Inchcape, Sir John EDjerman, Sir Owen Philipps, Lord Pirrie, etc., names which stand out in the shipping world like those leviathans the Aquitania or the Imperator, which embody their world-wide activities.

We are the more encouraged in this belief by the fact that recent events have emphasised the value of the personal and local appeal to which we have referred above. In various ways the Committee of Management have been bringing the claims of the Institution before the shipping community. They are asking the big passenger companies both to increase their own subscriptions and to invite the passengers and crews on board their vessels to contribute on the last day of the voyage, and they are glad to be able to announce that a donation of £1,000 has been received from the Cunard Steamship Company in response to the Institution's appeal for £500,000 to carry out its large post- war programme of construction—fifty new Motor Life-boats with their Boat- houses and Slipways. This donation consists of £250 from the Cunard Steam- ship Company itself, and the same sum from the Commonwealth and Dominion Line, the Anchor Line (Henderson Bros.), Ltd., and Messrs. Thomas and John Brocklebank, Ltd. The Institu- tion owes this contribution mainly to the good offices of Sir William Corry, Bt., a member of the Committee of Manage- ment and a Director both of the Cunard Line and of the Commonwealth and Dominion Line, which latter has, for some years past, given an annual con- tribution of one guinea for each of its ships, a basis of subscription which the Committee of Management have urged the shipping community to adopt as a minimum. When we remember that the value of the modern ship runs from £50,000 to £2,000,000, it will be ad- mitted that the suggested minimum annual subscription is modest enough.

It is pleasant to add that the number of companies which have accepted this suggestion is steadily increasing, but there is still a large number which do not reach even this standard.

We feel sure that the facts we have given only need to be known and appreciated by the shipping community of Britain in order that we may see a great improvement in the measure of support accorded to the Institution by that body which has the most direct interest in the Life-boat Service. In spite of the many and splendid inven- tions of the past century, large ships as well as small still-go in peril of shipwreck, as the wrecks of the Rohilla, the" Oceana, the Bessheim, the Sibiria and the Piave —to mention only a few of the larger vessels'lost in the last few years—amply prove. On personal as well as on national grounds the shipping community of the greatest maritime nation can hardly ignore the claims of a Service which, during the war, saved on an average over a thousand lives and forty "vessels and boats each year, and an average of 550 lives and forty-two vessels and boats a year during the ten yeara before the war.

When Sir William Hillary issued in 1823 Ifis famous appeal to the nation, •which led almost immediately to the founding of THE ROYAL NATIONAL LIFE- BOAT INSTITUTION, he looked especially to those " who in the prosecution of their professional duties, encounter so many of the dangers of the sea." " Can it be supposed," he asks, " that there is one [East India] Director, one member of Lloyd's, an underwriter, a merchant, a shipowner . . . from whom a subscription, liberal in proportion to his means, will not be obtained?" And, • again: " To all who revere the naval glory of Britain, to all who duly estimate the commercial greatness of their country, or who profit by its | success, to all who feel the humanity and policy of preserving the brave defenders of the State, and the hardy conductors of that commerce, from those dangers, to which, in the exercise of their arduous duties, they are continu- ally exposed—this institution cannot appeal in vain." In affirming our agreement with the hope expressed by the noble founder of the Institution, we look forward con- fidently to seeing those hopes fully realised in the course of the next two ! or three years; so that in 1924, when | the Institution celebrates the centenary ! of its birth, it -will appear that this I humane and heroic Service receives from I the shipping community of Britain a j measure of support worthy alike of its own heroic traditions and achievements and of the interests and honourable obli- gations of those splendid and powerful manifestations of our maritime and commercial enterprise..