THE advantages of the Motor Life-boat over the Pulling and Sailing Life-boat are obvious in speed, in range oi action, in power to travel in the face of a gale, and, above all, in manoeuvring power at the critical moments when the Life-boat is getting alongside or away from a wreck. There is yet another aspect of the mechanisation of the Life-boat Fleet —the enormous saving in human energy.

This aspect is so clearly put in an article in the Cornish Guardian, of Bodmin, for 5th September, as a comment on the Inaugural Ceremony at Fowey, and, at the same time, so eloquent a tribute is paid to the almost superhuman strength and endurance of the Life-boat crews at the oars, that we quote it in full:— " ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new,' and before very long, I suppose, there will be few, if any, of the Kowing Life-boats left along our coast.

At Fowey yesterday there was the Inau- gural Ceremony in connection with the new Motor Life-boat, C.D.E.C., which is to do duty henceforward at the port and along that part of the south coast.

Not long ago Padstow gave a welcome to Princess Mary, also a Motor Life-boat, though in this case the craft replaced was a steam tug and not the ordinary Rowing Life-boat.

" Sails, of course, have in the past sometimes enabled Life-boats to per- form their noble missions in conditions not too arduous and exacting to their crews ; but it is wonderful to recall what magnificent work was done by man- power before steam and then motor power came to lighten and expedite the work of the Life-boatmen. How in the teeth of the great winds and turbulent seas, with oars and good seamanship as their only means of making headway, the Life-boatmen have for so many years been able to accomplish such heroic feats as redound to their credit is one of the wonders of Life-boat work, not less, perhaps, to those "who live around our coasts than to those who dwell inland. But there are limitations to human power, even when it becomes almost superhuman in the heroic exaltation of a great mission. And that is the reason for the changes that are being made in Cornwall and else- where.

" A new motive power is being pressed into the service of life-saving at sea and it is right that this should be so. Human skill and human courage, which in the past have been so readily placed at the service of the distressed at sea, and nowhere more so than in Cornwall, will still be needed and will still be given. But the old tremendous tests of endurance and physical strength will not now be so generally imposed, and more and more as time goes on people will marvel at the prodigious feats of the Life-boatmen of old.".