IN the last issue of The Life-boat it was said that Coxswain Robert Cross of the life-boat station on the Humber, whose 'portrait appeared on the cover, had joined the crew in 1906, when the station was under the control of the Humber Conservancy Board. Cox- swain Cross writes that he joined the crew on the llth October, 1902, when the station was still under the control of the Hull Trinity House. He served in it for six years, and then left it and bought a share in a herring drifter.

In 1909 he went out with the life-boat at Flamborough to the help of several Flamborough cobles caught in a sudden gale. Two of the cobles were lost.

With one of them went down Coxswain Cross' brother and the brother's two sons. It was after this tragedy that Coxswain Cross decided to devote him- self to the life-boat service, and when the opportunity came in 1912, he sold his fishing boat and returned to the station at Spurn Head as the Institu- tion's coxswain. Thus his total service to date is thirty-two years, six of which he has served as a member of the crew and twenty-six as the Institution's coxswain..