BY the death of ex-Coxswain Kobert Smith of Tynemouth, on 30th October last, in his eightieth year, one of the greatest of the Institution's Coxswains has passed away. No man more gallantly and more honourably carried on the great traditions of the Service on that North-East Coast, where the first permanent Life-boat Station was established and where men and women have shown, in the work of saving life from shipwreck, a gallantry unsurpassed anywhere in the British Isles.

Born at Cullercoats in 1849, Robert Smith was connected with the Service for fifty years. He was already a Life-boatman of long experience when, in 1909, he was appointed Second Coxswain of the Tynemouth Life-boat. The following year he was appointed Coxswain, and he held that post through the dangerous years of the War, retiring on account of old age in March 1920, at the age of seventy-one.

Some years before Robert Smith became Second Coxswain, the first Life-boat to be converted by the Institution to motor-power was stationed at Tynemouth, and this was replaced, the year after he became Coxswain, by the Motor Life-boat Henry Vernon. Thus Robert Smith was one of the pioneers in the use of the Motor Life-boat which has revolutionized the Service.

It was in the Henry Vernon that Robert Smith performed the great service—the rescue of the fifty survivors of the hospital ship Rohilla in 1914—for which his name will be chiefly remembered. The year before, however, he and Major Burton, R.E., the Honorary Superintendent of the Tynemouth Motor Life-boat, had each been awarded the Silver Medal for their gallantry in the service to the s.s.

Dunelm, of Sunderland, one of the most daring in the history of the Life-boat Service on the North-East Coast.

The Dunelm had stranded quite close to Blyth east pier, at low water, in such a position that the Blyth Lifeboat could not reach her. The Tynemouth Motor Life-boat, ten miles away, was summoned, and Major Burton and Coxswain Smith, although they could not get together a full Crew, brought the Life-boat to Blyth, in a whole S.E. gale, with a very heavy sea, and rescued the shipwrecked men.

The epic story of the service to the Rohilla has been told many times.

Here it is only necessary to recall that after the late Coxswain Langlands— another of the great Life-boat figures of the North - East Coast—had twice succeeded, by heroic efforts, in reaching the wreck in the Whitby No. 2 Lifeboat, and had rescued thirty-five men and women, the Life-boat being so badly damaged that she was unfit for further service, and after every effort of four other Pulling and Sailing Life-boats to reach the wreck had failed, the Tynemouth Motor Life-boat was summoned as the last hope of saving those who still lived on the wreck. Within fifteen minutes of the summons, she was launched, and Coxswain Smith and Major Burton brought her safely through her hazardous journey of forty-four miles in the wild night storm, with all the coast-lights extinguished on account of the War. Early next morning she rescued the fifty men on the wreck, who had survived their terrible ordeal of forty-eight hours. For that service, one of the greatest in the history of the Institution, Robert Smith, with Major Burton and Thomas Langlands, was awarded the Gold Medal, the highest honour which can be given by the Institution, and which it gives only for conspicuous courage and devotion.

Robert Smith held a number of other decorations and awards. He was one of the eight Gold Medallists of the Institution alive when its Centenary was celebrated in 1924. He attended the Centenary dinner at which the Prince of Wales presided, and, with the other Gold Medallists, was received by the King at Buckingham Palace, and decorated with the Medal of the Order of the British Empire. It was to him, so one of the other Gold Medallists said afterwards, that the King talked most, asking him about all his medals.

He lived for another four years. His sight, already failing in 1924, had completely gone some time before his death.

He has died, in his eightieth year, leaving behind him a great record and a name which will be remembered with honour and gratitude so long as the Life-boat Service itself is remembered..