Inaugural Ceremony by the Prince of Wales, K.G.

THE PRINCE or WALES, as President of the Institution, on 10th July named the new Dover Motor Life-boat Sir William Hillary, after the founder of the Institu- tion.

This new boat marks an important development in Motor Life-boat con- struction. The aim of the Institution in the design and construction of Motor Life-boats and their engines, which shall be suitable for the work of rescuing life from shipwreck under all conditions, has been, not high speed, but a great reserve of power. It is this reserve of power, enabling the Life-boat to main- tain her speed in face of the worst con- ditions of weather, which may make all the difference between success and disaster at that critical moment when a Life-boat is manoeuvring to get along- side or to get away from a wreck.

While there is no intention of depart- ing from this as the general policy of construction, the Committee decided two ye,ars ago that the conditions of cross-Channel traffic made it desirable to provide a special and faster type of Motor Life-boat to be stationed at Dover. In addition to the very heavy passenger-steamer traffic across the Straits, there is now a considerable daily traffic by aeroplane, maintained in all but the worst weather. The time during which an aeroplane is exposed to the risk of coming down while over the sea is very short, but once she is down in anything but a calm sea, the time during which she will remain afloat is generally so short that the ordinary Motor Life- boat could scarcely hope to reach the casualty soon enough to rescue those on board.

To meet these special conditions, it was decided to re-open the Dover Station, which had been closed in 1922, and to provide for it a Motor Life-boat with the highest speed obtainable with- out sacrificing the essential qualities of a Life-boat, the chief of which are buoyancy and stability. The original proposal had been for a Motor Life-boat able to travel between 25 and 30 knots, but it was found that, unless essential Life-boat qualities were to be sacrificed, the highest speed possible was between 17 and 18 knots. This is nearly twice as high as that of any other Life-boat.

The new boat has been designed by Mr. J. E. Barnett, O.B.E., M.I.N.A., of Messrs. G. L. Watson & Co., of Glasgow, the Consulting Naval Architect of the Institution, and Messrs. John Thorny- croft & Co. She has been built by Messrs. Thornycroft at Hampton-on- Thames.

The keel was laid down in September, 1928, and the boat was completed in November, 1929. Early in December she ran her trials at the mouth of the Thames, and on her way down paid a visit to Chelsea, where she was welcomed at Cadogan Pier by the Mayor of Chelsea (Lady Phipps), President of the newly- formed Chelsea Branch, Captain Basil Hall, E.N. (the Chairman), and Miss Edith Place (Honorary Secretary).

Members of the Chelsea Branch and many other visitors, among them being the late Archbishop Lord Davidson and Lady Davidson, went over the boat, which was described to them by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Oliver Swann, a mem- ber of the Chelsea Committee.

After returning to Hampton for some minor modifications, she went to her Station on 21st January, 1930.

The Hull.

She is 64 feet long and 14 feet broad, with a maximum depth of 5 feet 1 inch.

Her displacement is 27 tons. The skin of the hull consists of double planking of mahogany, each planking f inch thick, and her timbers, or ribs, are very close together, the space between being from 5 to 9 inches, instead of the usual 21 to 36 inches. The result is an un- usually strong and elastic boat. Her keel is 12 inches deep and 7 inches thick.

It was cut from an oak grown in the Tongues Wood Estate at Hawkhurst, Kent, which' was felled in 1921. Its length was 48 feet and its girth over 9 feet. It was then approximately 130 years old. That is to say, it must have been planted a year or two after the first Life-boat, Original, was launched at Tynemouth in 1789, and was already a flourishing tree when Sir William Hillary founded the Institution in 1824.

The boat has eight water-tight compart- ments, with steel bulkheads, and some eighty air cases. They give her an excess of buoyancy of 50 per cent, of her weight.

The Engines.

She has twin screws and is driven by two engines, also designed and built by Messrs. Thornycroft. They are each of 375 h.p., and give her a speed of Yl knots. The next most powerful type of Life-boat, the Barnett type, has two engines each of 80 h.p., with a speed of 9J knots. She carries 350 gallons of petrol in four tanks, and can travel 156 miles at full speed, or 198 miles at 12 knots, without refuelling. She is pro- vided with two cabins, and can carry a maximum of 200 persons—not, it is hardly necessary to say, as first-class passengers.

She has a Line-throwing Gun, with a range of 80 yards, an oil-spray in the bows for use in rough water, and an electric searchlight. She is lighted by electricity. She is fitted with a Marconi receiving and transmitting wireless tele- phony set, with a range of over fifty miles. By means of this she can keep in touch with the wireless stations at Lympne and Ramsgate, and with the various light-vessels in the area of the Goodwin Sands.

She has cost £18,430, and has a crew of seven men, of whom four are perma- nent. She has been specially designed and built to deal with casualties at sea, and is not suitable for work inshore or on the Goodwin Sands. Casualties there will continue to be dealt with by the Life-boats at Ramsgate, Deal, Walmer and Hythe.

The Dover Station was established in 1852, was closed from 1914 to 1919, during the war, was reopened in 1919, and closed again in 1922. It then had a record of ninety-eight lives rescued from shipwreck.

"Sir William Hillary." It was felt that no more fitting name could be given to this special new type of Life-boat than that of the founder of the Institution, Lieut.-Colonel Sir William Hillary, Bt. It is peculiarly appropriate, not only because the new boat represents the latest developments in Life-boat construction, but because she is stationed at Dover, our chief gate- way to the Continent; for Sir William Hillary travelled very widely in Europe, and during the Napoleonic Wars raised a force in Essex for the defence of the south-east coast.

The Inaugural Ceremony.

As already stated, the Prince of Wales himself named the boat Sir William Hillary, the ceremony taking place on 10th July in the Wellington Dock at Dover.

The Mayor of Dover (Mr. E. Hilton Russell) presided, and in opening the proceedings recalled the splendid record of the Life-boat Stations on the coast of Kent—3,931 lives rescued since 1850, while eight Gold, ninety-eight Silver and two Bronze Medals have been awarded by the Institution to men of the Kentish Stations for gallantry in saving life.

Sir Godfrey Baring, Bt., Chairman of the Committee of Management of the Institution, presented the Life-boat to the Dover Branch, and she was received by Dr. J. R. W. Richardson, the Honorary Secretary. Captain H. F. J.

Rowley, C.B.E., R.N., Chief Inspector of Life-boats, described the Life-boat, and she was dedicated by the Ven. E. H.

Hardcastle, M.A., Archdeacon of Canter- bury. The vote of thanks to the Prince of Wales was proposed and seconded by two members of the Committee of Management, Captain the Right Hon.

the Earl Howe, P.C., C.B.E., V.D., R.N.V.R., and Captain G. C. Holloway, O.B.E., R.D., R.N.R. The vote of thanks to the Mayor was proposed by Major the Right Hon. Sir Philip Sassoon, Bt., G.B.E., C.M.G., M.P., President of the Folkestone and Hythe Branches, and seconded by CoJoneJ the Master of Sempill.

Representatives of Foreign Life-boat Services.

Foreign Life-boat Societies were repre- sented by Vice-Admiral Lacaze, Presi- dent, and Commandant Le Verger, Secretary of La Societe Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufrages, Mr. H. de Booy, Secretary of the North and South Holland Life-boat Society, M. Roger Lesage, President, and Mr. S. C. Early, Vice-President of the Boulogne Life-boat Society, and Paymaster Lieut.-Com- mander H. S. Bradbrook, R.N.R., British Vice-Consul at Boulogne.

Two other Life-boats were present at the ceremony, the new twin-screw Motor Life-boat, Marechal-Foch, which the French Society has recently stationed at Calais, and the 51-foot Barnett Cabin Twin-screw Motor Life- boat fer the new Station at Lerwick in the Shetlands, which stopped at Dover on her 700 miles' journey to Lerwick from the building yard at Cowes.

Among the many people present were the Mayoress of Dover, Mr. F. Montague, M.P. (Under-Secretary of State for Air), Sir William Crundall (Chairman of the Dover Harbour Board) and Lady Crundall, Captain H. J. M. Rundle, O.B.E., R.N. (Deputy Chief Inspector of Coastguard, representing the Presi- dent of the Board of Trade), Captain A. L. Strange, R.N. (Inspector of Coast- guard for the S.E. Division, representing the Mercantile Marine Department of the Board of Trade), Mr. F. G. L.

Bertram, C.B.E. (Deputy Director of Civil Aviation), Lieut.-Commander S. E.

Deacon (Civil Air Traffic Control Officer, Lympne), Major Richards (Civil Air Traffic Control Officer, Croydon), Brigadier Sir Hereward Wake, Bt., and Lady Wake, Sir John and Lady Thorny- croft, the Countess of Guilford (Presi- dent of the Dover Ladies' Life-boat Guild), Mr. R. E. Knocker (Town Clerk of Dover and Registrar of the Cinque Ports), Sir Edmund Davis, Mr. Rutley Mowll (Register of Dover Harbour), Captain Iron (Harbour Master, Dover), Canon Elnor (Vicar of Dover), Dr.

C. A. Preston-Hillary (great-great- grandson of Sir William Hillary and Deputy Chairman of the Nottingham and District Branch), Miss Davidson (Honorary Secretary of the Dover Ladies' Life-boat Guild), Vice-Presidents and Members of the Committee of Management, representatives of Life- boat Stations, Financial Branches and Ladies' Life-boat Guilds in Kent and Sussex, Mr. J. R. Barnett, O.B.E., M.I.N.A. (Consulting Naval Architect to the Institution), and Mr. George F.

Shee, M.A., Secretary of the Institution.

The singing was led by a choir under the direction of Mr. H. J. Taylor, F.R.C.O., the Borough Organist, and accompanied by the Band of the 2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, by kind per- mission of Lieut.-Colonel A. H. Hop- wood, D.S.O. The Prince was received by a guard of honour of fifty men of the British Legion.

The Prince's Speech.

Before naming the Life-boat, the Prince of Wales said : "I should like first to extend my very cordial welcome to Vice-Admiral Lacaze, the President, and to Commandant Le Verger, the Secretary of La Societe Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufrages, as well as to the representatives of the Boulogne Life-boat Society, which celebrated its centenary five years ago, and to Mr. de Booy, an old friend of the Institution, who represents the North and South Holland Life-boat Society, which is almost as old as our own Institution.

(Cheers.) " The launch of a Life-boat must, in any case, be a singularly happy incident.

For it is an occasion on which a vessel is dedicated to her humane and heroic service, with the blessing of religious authority and the good wishes of man- kind ; and the fine spirit of the sea is embodied perhaps more in a Life-boat than in any other ship, because those who man a Life-boat do so knowing full well that the chances are that they will be in danger whenever they have to be called out. But there are circumstances present here to-day which mark the ceremony which I am to perform as something unique in the annals of the Life-boat Service. (Cheers.) " First there is the Boat herself. She is the largest, swiftest and finest Motor Life-boat in the world, the last word in design, workmanship and material.

" Then there is her double purpose.

She is here, at England's chief gateway to the Continent, to guard against casualties to the heavy passenger steamer traffic, and also to the aero- plane traffic—a new object of concern to the Life-boat Service, for it is daily increasing in volume and in the variety of aircraft. The risk of casualty to aircraft is limited to a very short space of time over the Channel, but should a casualty occur time is the essence of the matter if life is to be saved. So you will be glad to know that the most complete arrangements have been made with the Air Ministry, the Board of Trade and the Lightships of Trinity House for the immediate mobilisation of this Life-boat in the event of a wireless S.O.S. being received from a pilot during his passage across the sea. (Cheers.) " Then we come to the name, Sir William Hillary. As President of the Institution, I should like to congratu- late the Committee of Management on having chosen to name this Life-boat after Colonel Sir William Hillary, that fine English soldier, sailor, scholar, philanthropist and greatest of Life- boatmen. After 'serving in the Napoleonic Wars, he settled in the Isle of Man, and at once turned his attention and his wonderful energies to the ques- . tion of saving life from shipwreck. He saw many terrible wrecks in Douglas Bay. This led him to make his ' Appeal to the British Nation on the humanity and policy of forming a national Institu- tion for the preservation of life and property from shipwreck,' and this, again, resulted in the Institution being founded in the City of London in 1824.

Sir William himself played an active and heroic part in saving life from ship- wreck in Douglas Bay. He was actually concerned in the rescue of 305 lives, and three times received the Gold Medal of the Institution for gallantry.

(Cheers.) " Finally, I turn to the last circum- stance which justifies my reference to this ceremony as a happy occasion.

You will see in the harbour two other Life-boats. One is the new 51-foot Barnett Motor Life-boat, which is on her way to her far station at Lerwick, in the Shetlands. Then, we have here that fine boat, which is the newest and most powerful Life-boat belonging to the French Central Society, and she bears the glorious name of Mareckal- Foch. While, of course, we cannot compare the position in history of the modest English soldier, the founder of the Life-boat Service, with the great French leader whose renown has added fresh lustre to the arms of France, and whose memory we, too, greatly cherish, I cannot help thinking that both men were typical of the character of their peoples, and that they would both rejoice to see their names linked to a cause which represents the chivalry of the sea." (Loud Cheers.) The Launch On the conclusion of his speech the Prince pulled a coloured ribbon, releas- ing a bottle of champagne, which broke across the Life-boat's bows. He then cut another ribbon, which released the boat herself, and she ran down the slipway while the band played the National Anthem.

The Prince then went on board the Sir William Hillary, the Marechal-Foch, and the Lerwick Life-boat, and the three crews were presented to him. After the ceremony the representatives of the foreign Life-boat Services were enter- tained by the Mayor of Dover..