THE adventures of life-boats after they pass out of the service have, from time to time, been recorded in this journal.1 Some go far afield. One became a launch on a South African river. An- other, a steam life-boat, was sent some years ago to the Gold Coast, to serve as a tender of the Elder-Dempster Line, in landing passengers through the surf. Another is plying with passengers and cargo between Guernsey and Sark in the Channel Islands.

Another is a mission yacht, belonging to the Missions to Seamen, and is working in the Solent. Yet another became a coal boat. At several places round the coasts old life-boats pass busy summers taking holiday- makers on pleasure trips. The old Coverack pulling and sailing life- boat, Constance Melanie, which was replaced by a motor life-boat last year, made an adventurous overland journey by motor, from Falmouth to Skegness, causing great excitement in villages, where the inhabitants had never before seen a life-boat. At Skegness she became a pleasure boat.

Other old life-boats have fallen to 1 See The Life-boat for February, 1922, and November, 1920.

still humbler service. One, sawn in half and up-ended, for long served as two shelters on the beach at Aldeburgh.

Others are bought simply to be broken up for the sake of their timber.

The illustration on the opposite page shows the old Falmouth pulling and sailing life-boat in a Surrey lane. She had been bought by a builder for her timber, but has never been broken up, and is lying at her last peaceful moorings in the depth of the country.

The great majority of old life-boats are bought to be converted into yachts, and as such sail many seas.

The Institution always has a long list of would-be purchasers, who are in- formed whenever old life-boats are for sail. They are gaining an international reputation. The American magazine, Yachting, had an article on their con- version into yachts last year, illustrated with photographs of the old Cromarty pulling and sailing life-boat converted into a ketch rigged yacht, and during the past year letters from would-be purchasers have come from Monte Carlo, Lagos, in West Africa, Los Angeles, in California, Vancouver, in British Columbia, and Singapore, in the Straits Settlements..