By GEORGE F. SHEE, M.A., Secretary of the Institution.

A VISITOR who called at Life-boat House this autumn made the remark that he never opened a newspaper without seeing in it something about the Life- boat Service. Allowing for the exaggera- tion of a friendly critic, we may hope that his observation fairly describes the facts of the case. If so, it is a gratifying sign that our aim in this Cen- tenary Year has been to some extent achieved.

We have not aimed at raising a special Centenary Fund, although in many ways it would have been fitting enough that the Institution should ask the people of these islands to present it with a fund of, say, an additional £100,000 or £200,000, to enable it to deal as promptly as possible with the com- pletion of the programme of Motor Life- boat construction which was announced in 1917, initiated in 1918, and has been steadily pushed forward ever since. It would, as I say, have been a natural and proper suggestion that such a fund should have formed the central aim of our Centenary Year ; and it Would have been much easier to raise such a fund by a central effort, organized from Head- quarters, than it has been to initiate and develop the several funds which have been started by different cities and counties, in order to present Life-boats bearing their respective names, thus linking their civic and county pride with one of the noblest and most character- istic of our national achievements, and one in which the Institution has been the acknowledged pioneer and leader among the maritime nations of the world.

But the Committee of Management decided, after mature consideration, not; to aim at this object, mainly because its achievement might well have had a bad effect upon our position in the following years. People might have been disposed to say : " You raised a special fund in your Centenary Year; we contributed generously to that fund, and you ought not to ask us to do any- thing more—at any rate, for some years to come." Now such an attitude would be very harmful in the case of an institution whose task is as permanent as the sea and as vital as the fives of the hundreds of thousands of seafarers of all nations who ply their arduous trade in the waters that encompass us. The character of our work and its intimate relationship to the element by which we have developed our wealth and strength and world-wide dominion make it a matter of the utmost importance that the support we receive should come not merely, or even mainly, from the wealthy, that is, the few, but should represent the deep-felt interest of the millions of all classes who rightly regard the Life-boat Service as their own. The Committee have felt, too, that there was a distinct advantage in offering to the great cities and to the counties an opportunity of marking their association with our maritime interests by naming one of our Motor Life-boats after them.

And so it is that our aim in this Centenary Year has been rather to impress upon the British people the main facts about the history, develop- ment, and present position of their voluntary Life-boat Service, being sure that such knowledge, sufficiently wide- spread, is the best guarantee of that broad and steady support from men and women of all classes which is required to maintain it as a living, efficient, and truly national organization.

We have carried out this aim by widespread organization, both central and general. This has embraced big undertakings, such as the publication of the history of the Institution, under the title "Britain's Life-boats," by Major A. J. Dawson, with an Introduc- tion by the Prince of-Wales and a Fore- word by the late Joseph Conrad; the building of a special pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, to house one of our most up-to-date Motor Life- boats, and a series of models showing the developement of the service; and the holding of an International Con- ference on the Life-boat Services of the world, as well as hundreds of Centenary meetings, Thanksgiving Services, special Fetes and Bazaars, the revival of the Life-boat Essay Competition in the elementary schools, etc. In all these undertakings we have received, as always, the loyal and enthusiastic assist- ance of hundreds of Hon. Secretaries and thousands of voluntary workers, to whom our heartfelt gratitude is due, and is hereby conveyed. The present issue of The Lifeboat must be regarded mainly as a permanent record of what has been done at Headquarters and through- out the country in this Centenary Year.

The Centenary Meeting, at the Mansion House on 4th March, has already been reported (The Lifeboat for June, 1924), and two of the principal Centenary functions in London still remain to be held—a London Thanksgiving Meeting, at the Central Hall, Westminster, on 14th December, and the London Bazaar, which is to take place at the Hyde Park Hotel on the 3rd and 4th of next March (the 4th March being the date of the foundation of the Institution).

For the rest, this account will show the variety and extent of the celebrations, the enthusiasm of our workers and the interest of the public: above all, the truly national character of the celebra- tions. From the Bang, who personally decorated the Institution's Gold Medal- lists with the British Empire Medal for gallantry, and the Prince of Wales, who presided both at the Centenary Meeting and the Centenary Dinner, and who has issued a personal appeal to the Empire,* down to the humblest of those who were present at a Thanksgiving Service, or contributed on a Century Life-boat Day, all classes of the people of Great Britain and Ireland have joined with the Institution in celebrating this great event. The King's action in conferring personal distinction on the Gold Medal- lists of the Life-boat Service marked once more—and in a signal manner— that close association of the reigning monarch with the Life-boat Service which has been a feature of its history since the date of its foundation, and probably few marks of royal favour have had a more far-reaching influence and have given profounder satisfaction to a magnificent body of men than this gracious act by which our Royal Patron showed his appreciation of the thousands of humble fishermen who, around our coasts, form the crews of our Life-boats.

Nor is it the British people only who have thus paid their tribute to the Institution's work. Eight foreign coun- tries were represented at the Inter- national Conference, and nothing in this year of celebration has given the Institution greater pleasure than the tributes which they paid to the British Life-boat Service,f and the visit to the Thames of six foreign Life-boats in honour of our Centenary.' Since the work of the Life-boat Service knows no distinction of race or creed, it has always been our aim to remain in close and friendly touch with the Life-boat Services of other countries, exchanging with them ideas and putting at their disposal our own experience and developments. The International Con- ference, held in July last, the first in the history of the world, has done much to I increase that friendly co-operation, and j we hope that it will bear permanent fruit in the establishment, as suggested by Count Yoshii, President of the Imperial Japanese Life-boat Institution, •of an international Life-boat organiza- tion, of which all the national Life-boat Services will be members. Such a result ' would in itself repay all the effort which brought the Conference together, and might thus well prove to be one of those * This appeal appears in facsmile in the June issue, and is reprinted in this issue on page 187.

t See p. 174.

steps which are of lasting benefit to humanity; for if such an organization is set up, it should not only be a great help to the Life-boat Services which already exist, but should lead to the establish- ment of services in those countries, some of them with long and dangerous coasts which still have no organized means o: succouring the shipwrecked. It if interesting to note in this connexion that since the Conference the Institu- tion has been approached by the Life- boat Society of Latvia with a requesi for its assistance in the reorganization of the service on that coast, which was formerly under the direction of the Imperial Eussia Life-boat Service.

By the visit of the Life-boats to London, the trip of a Motor Life-boat up the Thames, the land-tour of a Life- boat in the Midlands, and the presence of a Motor Life-boat at the British Empire Exhibition, hundreds of thou- sands of people of our own and other countries have seen a Life-boat for the first time, have been aboard her, and now will have a memory of their own to help them realize what lies behind those brief words: " Last night the Life-boat went out, and rescued so many lives," often the only record which the public see of some of the most heroic work carried out by our crews.

As already indicated, although we have made no effort to raise a Centenary Fund, several towns and counties opened £10,000 funds of their own, with the idea of presenting the Institution with Motor Life-boats to bear their names. Brad- ford had already completed last year its fund for the Life-boat now stationed at Spurn Point, Humber, and had started a second fund for the Boat House and Slipway. Manchester raised over £10,000 in three days by means of a bazaar. Birmingham, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire have all started funds. A special appeal was also made to regular subscribers to double their subscriptions as a Cen- tenary Gift. In a large number of cases this appeal has been answered.

Apart from these appeals, the Cen- tenary has been celebrated chiefly as an occasion for thanksgiving. But we are sure that those who have joined with the Institution in giving thanks for a cen- tury of achievement, for the heroic ser- vices of the Crews, for the devotion of Life-boat workers, for fche generosity of the public, for the rescue of nearly 60,000 lives, will not fail of their material sup- port as we set out on our second century.

The resolution which was passed at all the Centenary Meetings was not only an expression of gratitude for the past, but a promise for the future : " That those present at this Cen- tenary Meeting, recognising the im- portant services which the Institution has rendered to the seafarers of all nations during a century of life saving, desire to record their hearty appre- ciation of the gallantry of its Cox- swains and Crews, to pay a tribute of respect and admiration to those who have sacrificed their lives in the attempt to save others, gratefully to acknowledge the invaluable help ren- dered to the Life-boat cause by the Local Committees, Honorary Secre- taries and Honorary Treasurers, and many thousands of self-sacrificing men and women who have helped to maintain that cause in the hearts of the British people, and to pledge themselves to do all in their power to secure a widening and increasing measure of support for the Life-boat Service." No one who has been present at any of the Centenary Meetings at which this resolution was passed can fail to have been stirred by its reference to those who have lived—and died *—in and for ;he Life-boat Service. The mind goes jack to some of the days of mingled tragedy and glory, in which whole crews lave lost their lives in the heroic effort in bring succour to their fellow-men.

Such scenes occur to the mind as that at South Shields on 4th December, 1849, when the Life-boat put out to a vessel which had been driven aground on the lerd Sand, and, in a heavy easterly sea, was capsized, with the loss of twenty out )f her crew of twenty-four ; or that ther episode when, on the 9th February, 861, the whole crew, except one, of the - After a careful study of the records I have come to ie conclusion that some 500 life-boat men have lost heir lives in the service.—EDITOR, " THE LIFEBOAT." Whitby Life-boat were drowned, in the sight of many thousands of spectators, in going to the rescue of the seventh ship wrecked that day, and when, hot- foot on that disaster, a group of seamen and landsmen nevertheless launched a second and inefficient Life-boat within a few hours in order to rescue the crews from yet other vessels driven ashore on that tragic day. Nor will the older generation among us forget the South- port disaster of 1886, in which thirteen of the crew of that Boat and the whole of the crew of the St. Anne's Boat were drowned in the efforts to rescue the crew of the German barque Mexico.

Too often in the history of the Insti- tution have the mighty forces of Nature finally prevailed over man's courage, endurance, and humane effort. But the spirit of the Life-boat Service has re- mained undimmed, and burns to-day with the same steady flame which has inspired the splendid men who have illustrated the annals of Life- boat story during the last century. That spirit is the proudest possession of our people, and would be very precious even if, under some mighty cataclysm, the seas around Britain were to dry up, and this country were to cease to be an island. As it is, that spirit is beyond price, and will con- tinue to inspire the men of our Service and, in a different degree, the thousands of our voluntary workers " so long," to quote Sir William Hillary, " as men shall continue to navigate the ocean and the tempests shall hold their course over its surface." For, so long,too, shall there be a British Life-boat Service for the succour of the seafarers of all nations, an example to all other seafaring peoples, a promise of closer union among the nations in the work of peace and progress, and an honour to the British race.