By George F. Shee, M.A., ALL who are connected in any way with the Life-boat Service will have read with special pleasure the announcement which was made on 14th February, that the King had decided to make a personal link between the merchant service and fishing fleets and the Royal Family, as the Navy and Army have long been linked to it, by creating a new post, " Master of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets," and by appointing to this post the Prince of Wales.

The Prince's record as a soldier during the War, and the work which he has done since the War, for such organisations as the British Legion, have possibly led some people to forget how close has always been his interest in and his connexion with the sea. Yet it was as a sailor that he was educated. He went to the Naval Colleges of Dartmouth and Osborne. He served afloat in the Navy, as his father had done before him, and his brothers, the Duke of York and Prince George, have done since. It was only after his sea-training that he went to Oxford, joined the Guards shortly before the War, and, as a Guards subaltern, went to France.

His interest in the sea services was shown immediately the War was over, when, in 1918, he became President of the Institution, as his father and grandfather had been before him. His association with the Institution has been very real and very personal. He presided at the Annual Meeting in 1921, the first opportunity which his overseas tours allowed him. He was the principal speaker at the Centenary Meeting in 1924, and in the same year presided at the Centenary Dinner. Elsewhere in this issue will be found an account of a Gala Performance which we owe to his initiative, and which was a great success, Secretary of the Institution.

principally on account of his presence, bringing the Institution over a thousand pounds. Finally, readers of The Lifeboat will be interested to know that the Prince himself signs all the Vellums which accompany the award of medals for gallantry, and also those which are presented to Honorary Life-Governors.

It is not only because we know, through the help which he gives the Life-boat Service, the Prince's deep interest in the sea services, that we welcome his new appointment, but because, as Master of the Fishing Fleets he is linked in a second way with the Institution.

It is from the men of those Fleets all round the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland that the great majority of our Crews are drawn. It is their daily work as fishermen which give the Institution's volunteer Crews their unrivalled skill in handling a Life-boat, and their intimate knowledge of all the intricacies of our coasts. To them we feel sure it will be doubly gratifying that the Prince, who is already President of the Life-boat Service, in which they willingly risk their lives for the rescue of seafarers round our shores, should now be Master of the Fleets in which they have won their long and hard experience, and in which they earn their daily bread.

May we not hope, too, that the Prince's closer association with the fishermen of our coasts will prove of lasting value to the nation by arresting the growing tendency of the younger men to forsake the service of the sea, in which their fathers have found their strength of character as well as health of body.

Such a result would not only be very beneficial from the point of view of the recruitment of our Navy, but of enduring advantage to our position as a maritime people..