AFTEK their busiest winter on the seas for twenty years, life-boatmen have been very busy during the past year on the air. There have been nine broadcasts in which English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh coxswains have taken part.

The first was on Boxing Day of last year, when Coxswain Thomas Sinclair, of Aberdeen, broadcast from Aberdeen an account of the service on Christmas Day of the Aberdeen motor life-boat to the trawler George Stroud, for which, later on, he was awarded the Institution's bronze medal.

On 6th March, Coxswain Douglas Oilier, of Dungeness, took part in a talk to schools from London, and described his own experiences.

On 13th March an Irish coxswain was on the air, Coxswain Patrick Sliney, of Ballycotton, Co. Cork, who broadcast from Cork the story of the Ballycotton service to the Daunt Rock lightship on llth, 12th and 13th of February, for which he was awarded the Institution's gold medal, and each member of the crew the silver or bronze medal. When Coxswain Sliney and his crew came to London on 6th May to receive their medals from the Duke of Kent, at the annual meeting of the Institution, he again broadcast an account of the service, this time in the London Regional programme.

An Empire Broadcast.

These individual broadcasts were followed in April by a special Empire programme in which three coxswains took part. This programme, which was- called " Life-boats," was devised by Mr. S. E. Reynolds and produced by Mr. Pascoe Thornton of the B.B.C.

The principal part in the programme was taken by Major-General the Right Hon. Lord Mottistone, P.C., C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., a vice-president of the Institution, and coxswain of the Brooke, Isle of Wight, life-boat.

Lord Mottistone spoke as at a banquet to the Institution, proposing the toast of "Life-boats." He described the work of the service, and in doing so took his hearers to different parts of the coast. He took them first to Aberdeen, where Coxswain Thomas Sinclair again described the service to the George Stroud; then to Hythe, where the Hythe life-boat crew were heard giving one of their concerts, being interrupted by the firing of the maroon calling out the life-boat, and finally launching her to the orders of Coxswain Buller Griggs; then to Barry Dock, Glamorganshire, where Mr. A. C. Jones, the honorary secretary, gave an account of the service to the French schooner Goeland on 17th September, 1935, when he took charge of the life-boat in the absence of the coxswain, and won the silver medal of the Institution and the silver medal of salvage of the French Government.

The final visit to the coast was to the station of which Lord Mottistone was coxswain, Brooke, Isle of Wight, where the orders and sounds of a launch by tractor could be heard. The broad- cast concluded with King Edward VIII's appeal for the life-boat service, made when he was its president, as Prince of Wales : " The story of our life-boats cannot but be read with pride by all British men and women, for it is one of the noblest parts of our heritage as a great seafaring race." This programme, which lasted half an hour, was broadcast in all six trans- missions, so that it could be heard in all parts of the world. The first trans- mission was to Canada on 14th April.

On 16th May, Lord Mottistone again spoke, this time not to the Empire, but to Great Britain, in " Topics on the Air " in the Regional programme. In this talk he spoke of the plan of the Institution for completing the mech- anization of the life-boat fleet in about three years, and described what it was like to be out in a motor life-boat in a heavy sea.

On 15th July a description of a practice launch of the Walmer motor life-boat was broadcast from Walmer in the National programme; and on 2nd August there was a broadcast talk from Dun Laoghaire (Kingstown), in the Irish Free State, in which Coxswain James Redmond, ex-Coxswain Dan Murphy, and the motor mechanic, A. E. Smith, took part..