THOUGH the honour of designing and building the first Life-boat to be per- manently stationed on our coasts belongs to William Wouldhave, of South Shields, and Henry Greathead, and the initiative of establishing the first Life-boat Station and getting the first Boat built belongs primarily to Mr. Fairies and Mr. Roch- wood, of South Shields, Lionel Lukin, the coachbuilder of London, was the first Englishman to devote his energies systematically to the work of devising means for increasing the stability and buoyancy of small boats. He was think- ing of all small boats, and not of a special boat for life-saving, but one of his " immersible " boats, as he called them, was actually the first Life-boat on the 'British coasts. It was a coble, which he converted in 1786; and for some years it was used at Bamburgh, on the Northum- brian coast, for saving life from ship- wreck. Though a coachbuilder by profession, and Master of the Coach- builders' Company, Lionel Lukin had , sea-blood in his veins, being descended from Lionel Lane, one of Blake's captains. He was born at Dunmow, Essex, in 1742, and was an old man, but still with ten years of life before him, when the Institution was founded, the only one then alive of those who had been concerned in the first Life-boat experiments, nearly forty years earlier.

His letter of congratulation to the Chairman is still preserved by the Institution.

It is right that Lukin's name should be remembered with honour in the Cen- tenary Year of the Life-boat Service, and a special service in memory of him was held at Little Dunmow Church.

" You will like to know," so wrote the Vicar on 4th March, " that yesterday in the ancient Priory Church of Little Dunmow, Lionel Lukin's birthplace, special commemorative services were held, and thanks duly rendered to Almighty God for the village-boy's invention.".