By the death on 4th March of Mr.

Harry Hargood, O.B.E., D.L., J.P., of Worthing, a Vice-President of the Institution, the Life-boat Service has lost its oldest and one of its most loyal and distinguished friends. Mr. Hargood died within a few days of his ninetieth birthday. Through that long life, a life to the end full of energy and activity— his great interest was the Life-boat Service.

He came of a seafaring family and he was fond of telling how the sight of a wreck when he was a small boy was the beginning of that interest which was des- tined to c o n - tinue for some eighty years.

He was a boy of ten when a Life-boat was placed at Worth- ing, largely as a result of the efforts and gene- rosity of his father, Captain (later Admiral) Hargood. When the Station was taken over by the Institution in 1865, and a Worthing Branch was formed, Mr. Hargood's name appears, with his father's, in the first list of sub- scribers. He was elected Chairman of the Branch in 1872, and remained its Chairman until 1919. He then became President of the Branch, a post which he held until 1923. In 1908 he became a member of the Committee of Manage- ment of the Institution, and in 1923 he was appointed a Vice-President. Until September, 1931, just six months before his death, he travelled regularly from Worthing to attend the monthly meetings of the Committee in London. Thus, his service to the Institution, begun as a subscriber in 1865, continued for sixty- six years. In the whole history of the Institution there can be no other example of such long and active devo- tion to its work.

Mr. Hargood was born in Worthing.

He lived all his life there. He gave himself without stint to the service of the town—to its administration, its public life, its charities, its sport. But ever those who knew best his services to Worthing, real- ized that the Worthing Life- boat Station, and the Life- boat Service as a whole, had his chief devo- tion. What the spirit of that devotion was one story will show. In the days when Worthing still had 'a fishing fleet,' Mr. Har- good never went to bed until the news reached him that all the boats were safely in.

A fortnight after Mr. Har- good's death, Mrs. Hargood died. They had been married sixty-four years.

In his will Mr. Hargood left to the town of Worthing many interesting relics of his own association with the Life- boat Service and his family's association with the Navy. Among them are relics of his uncle, Admiral Sir William Hargood, G.C.B., K.H., who com- manded the Bdlisle at the battle of Trafalgar, and of his own brother, who served in the Indian Mutiny. To the Institution he left the sum of £750 to be invested, the income from it to take the place of his annual subscription.

Thus the name of Harry Hargood, which first appeared in the Institution's Report in 1865, will still appear each year in memory of his life-long and generous devotion to the Life-boat Service..