THE LIFE-BOAT FLEET Motor Life-boats, 131 :: Pulling & Sailing Life-boats, 37 LIVES RESCUED from the foundation of the Institution in 1824 to November 30th, 1936 - 64,872 The Last of the Life-boat Horses.

WHEN the motor life-boat Royal Silver Jubilee, 1910-1935, reached Wells, Norfolk, on 11th February of this year, and replaced the old pulling and sailing life-boat Baltic, the last team of horses for launching life-boats came to the end of its work. There are now only two horses left in the life-boat service.

They are two of the horses of the Corporation of Hastings, which are used, not to haul the life-boat herself, but for turning the capstan which pulls her up the beach. Even these will soon be gone as an electric- winch is to be installed at the Hastings station.

Thus passes away one of the most familiar and spectacular features of life-boat work, a feature at one time as familiar as the horses of the old fire-brigades. Another stage is ended in the process which began in 1904, and which will be completed in the next few years, of the mechanization , of the life-boat fleet.

Though the last team has only just been withdrawn, horses have been very little used for many years. At station after station they have been replaced by motor caterpillar tractors. Sixteen years ago it was already clear that the " horse age " was coming to an end.

There were then still twenty-five stations which used horses for launch- ing, but the need of finding an alterna- tive for launching was already urgent.

Fewer and fewer horses were available.

They were for the most part hired from farmers. Some farmers were then re- placing them by caterpillar tractors Others were reluctant to continue to hire them to life-boat stations for fear of injury, and the cost of hiring was becoming prohibitive. At some stations it was impossible to hire them at all.

At others they had to be brought from such distances that there was much delay in launching.

Farm horses were being replaced by caterpillar tractors; and it was with these agricultural tractors, adapted to make them water-tight in shallow water, that the Institution made its first experiments at mechanical launching in 1920. The twenty-five stations which still had horses at that time were all round the coast, but the majority were on the East Coast: on the coasts of Yorkshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, Sussex, the Isle of Wight, Cornwall, the Channel Islands, Flintshire, Lancashire and Aberdeenshire. Now all the stations which still had horses then have either been closed or have been provided with tractors, of which the Institution has eighteen.

The change has added to the effi- ciency of the service, but it has taken from it something of its picturesque- ness. When the alarm had been sounded the first man to arrive at the boat-house with his horse received an extra five shillings, and those who saw the race for the boat-house, and the team of four, six or eight horses taking the boat into the sea, will not easily forget what a fine sight it was.

In this farewell to horses two of the many services in which they took part may be recalled. One of them is among the most remarkable launches—in diffi- culties overcome and distance covered —in the whole history of the Institution.

The other is a reminder that horses as well as men have given their lives in the service.

A Launch Over Exmoor.

The first of these two launches was in January, 1899. On the night of the twelfth of that month, at the height of a westerly gale, news reached Lyn- mouth, Devon, that a vessel was in distress off Porlock. It was impossible to launch the life-boat in face of the gale. Instead it was decided to take her overland to Porlock. It seemed an impossible attempt. It meant climbing Countisbury Hill with its gradient of 1 in 4f, a thousand feet up to the open moor, crossing a very ex- posed part of Exmoor in the gale and the rain, going over Hawcombe Head, 1,400 feet above the sea, and then going down the very steep and winding hill into Porlock with one of the heaviest loads that had ever attempted that famous hill.

A team of sixteen to twenty horses was assembled ; men were set forward with pick-axes and shovels to widen the road ; and every available man and woman in the village turned out to help the horses up Countisbury Hill.

The journey started at eight in the evening, by the light of flares and oil lanthorns. It was not until six the next morning that the men and horses brought the life-boat into Porlock. She was launched at once, and the ship and her crew were saved.

Horses Drowned on the Yorkshire Coast.

The other launch was during the Great War. On the night of 18th March, 1915, a hurricane was blowing at Bridlington, Yorkshire, with thick snow, and it was bitterly cold. Just before eleven o'clock the life-boat was called out in answer to the flares of a mine-sweeper in distress. The life-boat was dragged along by hand for two miles. Then the horses took her out, crossing a sandbank, and brought her into deeper water. There a heavy sea struck her, overwhelming life-boat, men and horses. The life-boat was lifted right off her carriage. The carriage axle was broken. The men were washed off the horses. The horses were swept off their feet. The life-boat herself, only slightly damaged, was able to go on her way to the wreck, but one of the horsemen and two of the horses were drowned. Nor was that the end of the disaster of that disastrous wave.

The life-boat reached the mine-sweeper, but was swept past her, and had to go ashore. The carriage was broken ; it was impossible without it to launch her again; and twelve of the mine-sweeper's crew were lost.

These are two of the many stories in the Institution's records of the splen- did work, now come to an end, which horses have done in the life-boat service.