" Bill" Adams of the Goodwins died at Deal in 1926. The tempestuous weather round our coasts which heralded 1930 has spoken loudly to us of him and of his dauntless successors.

I WILL ADAMS of the Goodwin Sands ! Your iron heart, your gripping hands Baulked the wild waters of their prey, Full many and many and many a day.

A thousand storms you battled through, A thousand times your mates and you Pulled where the fiery signal flew, Pulled where the leaping rocket cried Upon a fierce grey drowning tide.

You helped to save a thousand lives ! And long as gratitude survives, And prayers of mothers and of wives Rise when the roaring storm wind drives, Rise on the wings of agony To Him Who spake in Galilee, And curbed the power of His sea, Blessings shall fall in tender dew Upon your memory leal and true, Who feared not any wind that blew ; Ready !—at Duty's high demands, Brave Adams of the Goodwin Sands.

II Three score and ten and five years more Your sum of life on sea and shore.

You shipped your oar at the close of day : You beached your boat : and you've gone away To rest: to stand within your lot When all days end and Time is not.

Ill Yet from east and west the ships will sail Again in the teeth of a driving gale ; From south and north—for a while, a while, They will race to sight the little Isle ; And raging seas will shoal and shock About the quicksand and the rock, And gun and rocket speak—and when Again the Kentish Life-boat men Shall battle out and battle through, And fight the surf as you used to do, And reach the wreck and save the crew, They'll spin a hundred yarns of you ! Who neither flinched nor quailed nor failed, Who often against hope prevailed.

Hero by daring, and by deed, Staunch sea-dog of the British breed, Who bold as Caister boatmen be Never went back for any sea ! IV And while the breasting barque beats by, And flags of many nations fly Under our wild grey Channel sky ; As rescued men—the danger over- Turn homeward from the Straits of Dover They'll bear your name to many lands, Old Adams of the Goodwin Sands ! ADA LOUISE JACKSON.

William Adams, to whom Mrs. C. N. Jackson (Jim's Wife) has paid such a fine tribute in her poem, was Coxswain at the famous Life-boat Station of North Deal, opposite the (treaded Goodwin Sands, from July, 1907, until he retired at the end of 1920 at the age of sixty-nine. During his thirteen and a half years of service as Coxswain, the North Deal Life-boat rescued 321 lives and saved fourteen vessels. Adams was three times awarded the Institution's Silver Medal for gallantry. He also held a Gold Watch from the United States and Silver Medals from the Italian and Esthonian Governments, and had received the special thanks of the German Government. He died four years ago at the age of seventy-five. His record was typical of the character and courage of the Coxswains and Crews all round our coasts, and we publish Mrs.

Jackson's poem as a tribute, not to Coxswain Adams alone, but to all his comrades of the Service, who equally deserve it.

Mrs. C. N. Jackson has generously given her poem to the Institution for publication, with permission to make full use of it in its appeals, and we would specially recommend it to Honorary Secretaries for recitation at Life-boat meetings and concerts. The copy- right of the poem, however, belongs to Mrs. Jackson, and the rights of reproduction are strictly reserved.—EDITOR, The Lifeboat..