THE 51-feet Barnett (Stromness) Motor Life-boat is a modification of the 60-feet Barnett Motor Life-boat which was described in The Lifeboat for last February. She is nearly as fast as the larger type (only half a knot less), but she has not such a wide radius of action.

She is a much lighter boat, her displace- ment being 26J tons in service condi- tions instead of 44 tons, so that, although the majority of these Life-boats lie afloat, she can be launched down a slipway. She has twice as many air- cases and a heavier keel (weighing 2| tons), which gives her a greater range of stability. Like the larger boat, she was designed by Mr. J. R. Barnett, O.B.E., M.I.N.A., the Institution's Con- sulting Naval Architect.

She is 51 feet long by 13 feet 6 inches beam, and has a mean draft of 4 feet 1 inch. She is divided into eight water- tight compartments and is fitted with 160 air-cases. She has one cabin, with seating room for ten people, and cock- pits forward and aft, both fitted with shelters, with room in them for twelve people. In rough weather she can take on board 100 people.

She is built with skin of mahogany, keel of teak, ribs of Canadian rock-elm and stem and stern post of English oak.

She has two six-cylinder 60 h.p.

engines. They are in a water-tight compartment, and each engine is itself water-tight, so that they would continue to run even were the engine-room flooded and the engines themselves entirely submerged, for the air-intakes are well above the water-line even when the boat is waterlogged. The exhausts are carried up a funnel amidships. The engines give a maximum speed of 9 knots, the equivalent, in a boat of this size, to 31 knots in an Atlantic liner.

As with all the Institution's Motor Life-boats, there is a great reserve of power, so that the maximum speed can be maintained even in very severe weather.

This type of Motor Life-boat carries enough petrol to be able to travel 122 miles at full speed without refuelling,but two of the type, those stationed at Barra Island in the Southern Hebrides, and at Fenit, Co. Kerry, have a greater radius of action. They can travel 184 miles at full speed without refuelling.

This type has a line-throwing gun, an electric searchlight and a mechanical capstan, and is lighted throughout with electricity. She has a fire-extinguishing plant, worked from the deck, which can throw jets of Pyrene fluid to all vital parts of the boat, and is fitted with an oil-spray in the bows for spraying oil on the waves to make smooth the water round the wreck.

There are eleven Barnett (Stromness) Motor Life-boats in the Institution's fleet. The first was built in 1928 and stationed at Stromness in the Orkneys.

The other ten are at Holyhead (Anglesey), Stornoway (Island of Lewis), St. Peter Port (Guernsey), Campbeltown (Argyllshire), Lerwick (Shetlands), Bally- cotton (Co. Cork), Torbay (Devon), Weymouth (Dorset), Barra Island (Hebrides) and Fenit (Co. Kerry)..