THE LIFE-BOAT FLEET Motor Life-boats, 124 :: Pulling & Sailing Life-boats, 48 LIVES RESCUED from the foundation of the Institution in 1824 to February 14th, 1935 - 63,938 The King and the Life-boat Service.

By Lieut.-Col. C. R. Satterthwaite, O.B.E., Secretary of the Institution.

WHEN the Empire celebrates this summer the Silver Jubilee of His Majesty the King, the life-boat service will celebrate not only the fact that for these twenty-five years of his reign he has been its patron, but that for forty-five years he has been associated with its work, and that for eleven of those years he was a member of the committee of management of the Institution.

This long association began early in 1890, when, as Lieutenant H.R.H. the Prince George of Wales, K.G., R.N., he became a Vice-patron. Four years later, as Captain H.R.H. the Duke of York,-K.G., R.N., he joined the com- mittee of management. He remained a member until, in 1901, on the accession of King Edward VII to the throne, he succeeded him as the Institution's President.

In May, 1895, he gave another proof of his interest in the 'service by be- coming President of the Life-boat Saturday Fund, and a year later the Duchess of York became President of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Fund. In that same year, 1896, the Duke pre- sided at the annual meeting.

He was President of the Institution from 1901 until his accession to the throne in 1910, when he became Patron.

Shortly afterwards, when the Life-boat Saturday Fund, of which he had then been President for fifteen years, was merged in the Institution, he sent a message expressing " his deep appre- ciation of the generosity and public spirit with which so many men and women throughout the country had devoted themselves to a great national object in their work for the Life-boat Saturday Fund." In the following year Queen Mary, who had been a Vice-patron since 1902, became a Patron, and throughout their reign their Majesties have continued, by their patronage, to show their con- fidence in the Institution.

That is the brief record of their official association with the service, but they have shown their personal interest in it in many other ways ; they have met its life-boatmen; they have seen its work on the coast.

In 1902 when the King, as Prince of Wales, was visiting the Earl of Londesborough in Yorkshire, Coxswain John Owston, of Scarborough—a silver medallist of the Institution who, when he retired in 1911, had been coxswain for forty-one years—was in attendance, and the Prince presented him with two pipes bearing his monogram. In 1908 the Prince received at Marlborough House Coxswain John Owen, of Holy- head, a silver medallist, and presented to him the gold medal which the Institution had awarded him for the rescue of the crew of the Liverpool steamer Harold. In 1909 the King and Queen, as the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited the life-boat station at Newquay, Cornwall, and in 1913, the King, during Cowes Week, went a trip in the motor life-boat Frederick Kitchener, just completed for the Beaumaris station, in Anglesey.

During the war the King sent two special messages to the service, one in 1915 and one in 1917, thanking its men for their gallantry and for carrying on " the splendid traditions of an Institution with which the King is proud to have been for so many years so closely identified." In 1924, the centenary year of the Institution, the King sent a message to the delegates of the first Inter- national Conference, held in London, in which he said : " I rejoice that the Prince of Wales succeeded me in the position of President of a society of which I am proud to be Patron, and which has, for upwards of one hundred years, provided, through voluntary support, a service honoured by every maritime people and linking all nations in the chivalry of the sea.

" May all success attend your deliberations; and I pray that God's blessing may be vouchsafed to all brave men who risk their lives in the humane and heroic work of the life- boat services of the world." His Majesty also received at Buckingham Palace in 1924 seven of the eight living holders of the In- stitution's gold medal for gallantry and presented them with the medal of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1931 he knighted the Institution's secretary, Mr. George F. Shee.

The King has been a subscriber to the Institution for many years, and in 1930 he was present with the Queen, the Prince of Wales, president of the Institution, and the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, president of the Ladies' Life-boat Guild, at a variety matinee at the London Hippodrome, which raised over £1,500. This was the second matinee in recent years attended by the Queen, for in 1923 she had been present when the film of the Citroen Expedition, which crossed the Sahara in tracked motor cars, was shown in Great Britain for the first time, in aid of the Institution.

The King's Tribute and Appeal.

I do not think that I can better end this brief record of the long and generous association of their Majesties with the life-boat service than by quoting the peroration of the King's speech when he presided at the annual meeting thirty-nine years ago : "As a sailor, I can most un- hesitatingly say that I have always taken, and shall continue to take, the greatest interest in this Institution. I feel sure that I may speak in the name of the Navy and the merchant service and say that we all have the greatest admiration for the many brave men who risk their lives in stormy weather to save those of others in peril afloat.

" In our sea-girt isles, which are so largely dependent on our war and merchant ships, the greatest interest should always be taken by the nation in any institution which tries to lessen the dangers to which our seamen and fishermen are daily and hourly exposed.

" When we think of the number of vessels arriving at or leaving our ports every day, and the number of fishing boats employed in their occupation off our coasts, I think there must be a large majority of us who have a relation or dear friend afloat for one day in the year at least off our shores. It is to these that I specially wish to appeal for funds in order to enable this most noble Institution to efficiently carry out its glorious work of assisting those in peril on the sea.".