CHRISTMAS was a busy time for the life-boat service. On Christmas Eve the motor life-boats at St. Abbs (Ber- wickshire), Blyth (Northumberland), Sunderland (Durham) and Falmouth (Cornwall) were all launched on service, and the motor life-boats at Weston- super-Mare (Somerset) and Barry Dock (Glamorganshire) brought into Barry 27 men from the Greek steamer Michalis Poutous, whom they had rescued the night before.

On Christmas Day itself the Aberdeen trawler George Stroud was wrecked just inside the harbour (as fully de- scribed on page 4). Two of her crew of five men were rescued, and the Aberdeen coxswain won the bronze medal for his skill and gallantry. On Boxing Day the Hoylake (Cheshire) motor-life-boat was called out.

In other ways it was a busy Christ- mas. The motor life-boats from Mar- gate, and Ramsgate (Kent), Clacton, Walton and Frinton (Essex), and Selsey (Sussex), carried Christmas presents and Christmas dinners out to men who would be spending Christmas on lighthouses and lightships oft their coasts.

Clacton visited the Gunfleet Light- house and the Barrow Lightship; Margate the Tongue, Edinburgh and Girdler Lightships; Ramsgate the Brake Lightship; Walton and Frinton the Kentish Knock Lightship (a journey out and back of some 40 miles), and Selsey the Owers Lightship.

The branches at Bognor and Cuck- field (Sussex), Marlow (Buckingham- shire), and Tenterden (Kent), all sent out carol-singing parties, and in the Christmas Day broadcast, in which different parts of the Empire greeted one another, ending with the King's speech to his peoples, the spokesman of Northern Ireland was the coxswain of the Donaghadee life-boat..