WE record, with great regret, the death on 20th September, at the age of eighty-one, of Commander Thomas Holmes, R.N., late chief inspector of life-boats. Commander Holmes was a Norfolk man, hailing from Morning- thorpe Manor House, Long Stratton, where his father lived to a great age.

He entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1866, on board H.M.S. Victory, was flag lieutenant to Vice-Admiral Corbett on the East Indies station, and served in the Ashanti War, receiving a medal for that campaign.

In 1884 he was invalided out of the Navy, and in 1892 entered the service of the Institution as inspector of life- boats for the Irish district. He was transferred later to the Eastern district, and in 1908 became deputy chief inspector of life-boats. A year later he became chief inspector, and held that post through ten of the most difficult years in the history of the service.

The first experiments with a petrol engine for life-boats had just been made, and he had the task of super- vising the construction of the earliest boats in that fleet of motor life-boats which now numbers 120. This work of transforming the life-boat fleet from pulling and sailing to motor power was interrupted by the war, but before Commander Holmes retired in 1919 there were twenty-four, and during the war he had prepared a comprehensive scheme for the placing of motor life- boats at fifty of the most important stations, to be carried out as soon as building could be resumed on the return of peace.

Award of the Silver Medal.

Just before the war broke out Com- mander Holmes took part, as chief inspector, in a service for which the Institution awarded him its silver medal for gallantry. On 20th Feb- ruary of that year the Norwegian steamer Mexico was wrecked in a gale on South Keeragh Island, off the coast of Wexford. The life-boat from Fethard was launched at once to her help, but was herself wrecked and smashed to pieces on the rocks of the island, nine of her crew of fourteen being washed away and drowned. The other five managed to scramble on to the island, where they set to work at once to rescue the Mexico's crew, and succeeded, by means of ropes, in get- ting eight of them safely to the island.

This happened on the Friday afternoon.

On the Saturday night Commander Holmes left for Ireland, arriving there early on the Sunday morning. At- tempts to reach the island had already been made without avail by the life- boats from Dunmore East, Kilmore, and Wexford. As soon as he arrived Commander Holmes put out in the Dunmore East boat, but again, on account of the heavy swell, it was found impossible to get near the island, and for a second night the marooned men had to be left exposed to the gale.

Early on the Monday morning Com- mander Holmes again set out on board the Dunmore East boat. The Wexford boat was also called out, and between them, with the help of a skiff and a punt, which were floated down to the island, they succeeded, after a long and perilous struggle, in rescuing the twelve men.

The Years of War.

As chief inspector during the years of the war Commander Holmes's work and responsibility were very great. He was deprived almost at once of all his district inspectors, and the war took in rapid succession, surveyors, mechanics, and all the younger members of the life-boat crews ; and this at a time when the life-boat service had to face greater perils and more frequent calls for help than ever before in its history. Through all these difficulties the life-boat service carried on. Of Commander Holmes's work at that time Sir George Shee, the late secretary of the Institution, wrote : " Only those who had the privilege of working day by day with him can appreciate his imperturbable optimism, his unruffled temper, his unrelaxing grip of the work in hand, and his un- failing consideration for all colleagues and subordinates." The Confidence of the Crews.

Major Ernest Cooper, for many years honorary secretary of the Southwold station, and the author of Story of the Soutkwold Life-boats, Mardles from Suffolk, and A Suffolk Coast Garland, who was out with Commander Holmes on many occasions in the life-boats, writes of him that though he lived chiefly in London, he was most at home when visiting the East Coast.

There he knew the men and they knew him. " The old longshoremen," writes Major Cooper, " do not as a rule take over-kindly to the somewhat arbitrary type of Navy people, and are apt to look upon them as big-ship men knowing little of small boat work; but Commander Holmes, being of the same race, understood his men, and I never heard anything from them but the warmest expressions of respect and confidence. He could also appreciate the quaint ways and sayings of the old-time life-boatmen, and once when I took him to a life-boat supper he laughed till he cried at the songs and the singers, and spent a most jovial and often-remembered evening." All who knew him at the Institution, where, in his retirement, he was an always welcome visitor, had for him not only " respect and confidence," but real affection.

At his funeral the Institution was represented by Lieut.-Col. C. R. Satter- thwaite, O.B.E., secretary, and Com- mander E. D. Drury, O.B.E., R.D., R.N.R., chief inspector of life-boats..