SIR Charles Macara, Bt., of Manchester, for many years one of the most prominent figures in the cotton industry, who died on 2nd January last, nine days before his eighty-fourth birthday, will always be honourably and gratefully remembered in the history of the Lifeboat Service as the founder of the Life-boat Saturday Fund.

The Fund originated in the disaster, in December, 1886, when the St. Anne's and Southport Life-boats were capsized, with the loss of thirteen out of the fifteen men in the Southport boat, and the whole crew of the St. Anne's boat— twenty-seven men in all. The Lytham boat went out at the same time and rescued the crew of the vessel in distress, the barque Mexico,* of Hamburg. Sir Charles Macara, who had a country house at St. Anne's, took the principal part in raising a special fund for the dependants. This fund in a fortnight amounted to £33,000.

He followed this in 1891 by issuing an appeal on behalf of the Institution, which, in the previous year, had had a deficit of £33,000. At the same time he formed a Committee in Manchester and Salford, of which the two Mayors were President and Vice-President, while he himself was Chairman of the Executive Committee, and this Committee organized the first Life-boat Saturday, with a procession and collecting boxes. It raised £5,500. Other towns in the North of England followed suit, and in that first year the contributions received from Lancashire and Yorkshire increased * It is a curious coincidence that it was the wreck of another Mexico, in this case a Norwegian vessel, which led to the disaster to the Fethard Life-boat in February, 1914, when nine of the crew of thirteen were drowned.— ED. Lifeboat.

from £3,000 to £21,000. The movement soon spread to the whole country, with a Central Committee, an office in London, and a Ladies' Auxiliary. King George V. and Queen Mary, as Duke and Duchess of York, and later as Prince and Princess of Wales, were Presidents respectively of the Fund and the Ladies' Auxiliaries. The Fund continued its work until 1910, when its organization was taken over by the Institution, and from 1891 to 1910 it contributed to the Institution £287,397.

Sir Charles Macara brought to his appeals for the Life-boat Service, as he did to every work that he undertook, an energy, a directness, a confidence in. the cause, and a confidence in himself which deserved and which won success.

He came to the help of the Institution at a time when its needs had far outgrown the support which it was receiving from the public, and through the Lifeboat Saturday Fund he was not only instrumental in raising over a quarter of a million pounds, but laid the foundations of the Institution's present methods of appeal.

He remained as Chairman of the Fund for the first five years, retiring when the Fund's Headquarters were moved from Manchester to London in 1896. For several years he was a member of the Committee of Management of the Institution, and he was Chairman of the St. Anne's Branch from 1889 until his death. In 1924, the Centenary Year of the Institution, the Committee of Management showed their appreciation of his long and faithful interest in the Institution by electing him an Honorary Life Governor..