THE Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society completed its first hundred years of work in February, 1939. The Institu- tion sent its cordial congratulations to the Society on its magnificent record of 897,801 fishermen, sailors and their families helped during those hundred years, and its best wishes for the success of its indispensable work as it enters on its second century.

The Society's object is to provide lodging, board, and clothing, for all persons, whatever their nationality, who are landed after shipwreck or other mishap at sea, and to pay their fares to their homes. Immediate relief grants are given to the dependents of those lost at sea, and further grants are made to widows, orphans and parents of members of the Society.

Assistance in old age is also given to members themselves; and membership, which costs a minimum of only 3/- a year, also entitles sailors and fishermen to relief for personal loss or damage to boats and gear owing to shipwreck or other accident at sea.

Silver and gold medals and other awards are granted by the Society for heroism on the high seas.

All round the coast of Great Britain, and at many points on the coast of Ireland, the Society has honorary agents, whose aid is promptly forth- coming for survivors of shipwreck the moment they are landed.

In its early days the Society main- tained a number of life-boat stations.

In 1854 these stations, nine in all, were transferred to the Institution. At the same time the Institution resigned to the Society the whole care of the shipwrecked as soon as they had been landed. As Mr. Francis Thorn, who has just retired from the secretaryship, says in his " Brief History of the First Hundred Years," "the two societies have worked in close harmony ever since.".