" You are at the seaside. You get into conversation with a fisherman and find that he is the life-boat coxswain. Describe your conversation with him." IN 1938 the competitors in the essay competition were asked to imagine themselves as life-boat coxswains and describe a rescue. They sustained their exciting part with great success.

This year they were asked to perform the more tranquil, but not necessarily easier, task (on paper) of carrying on a conversation. The subject was: " You are at the seaside. You get into con- versation with a fisherman and find that he is the life-boat coxswain.

Describe your conversation with him." The judges were much impressed by the extent and accuracy of the know- ledge shown and by the literary quality of the essays. Most writers kept to the subject, but a few entered on a wider field, discussing with the coxswain his favourite football team and such subjects as unemployment and the European situation.

Life-like and Lively Talks.

The chief criticism was that a good many writers produced, instead of a conversation, a monologue or a lecture on the Service. Many however gave life-like and lively talks, and a few used dialect very successfully.

Much care was taken to get into conversation in a natural way. Many of the writers met the coxswain by tripping over a rope and colliding with him. Then, after he had recovered his breath, and, in many cases, his temper, they found him ready for a talk.

One Irish writer opened with an elaborate description of a holiday scene on the seashore, a scene, he said, " worthy of the brush of an artist ".

After noting the large number of child- ren at play he " thanked his lucky stars he was still a bachelor ". The same lordly young bachelor opened his conversation with the coxswain " by tossing him a two-shilling piece ".

Another writer (aged 10|) began: " I had nothing to do. The round- abouts were closed and so were the swings. There was no afternoon ser- vice at the church. A seaside holiday and nothing to do! " A description of the coxswain him- self introduced some of the conversa- tions : " The coxswain's deep blue sweater looked as if it had been in every storm since the Normans conquered England." " His majestically pointed beard wagged vigorously." " He was a beefy fellow, with arms like tree trunks." Another essayist (with perverse in- genuity) described him as " The ancient entrapper of Neptune's children—in short the brown and wrinkled fisher- men ".

And yet, however beefy a man may be, and however majestically his beard may wag, age will tell in the end. As one writer said: " The coxswain stopped for a minute in the middle of his story for he was short of breath, being a man of about forty-six years old." Education also is beginning to tell: " ' I always expected seamen on this part of the coast to speak with a local accent.' He threw back his head and laughed. ' Oh no,' he cried.

' Many of us are well educated and study elocution.' " Waves as High as Skyscrapers.

The storms also inspired some graphic phrases: " The waves were so high that they looked like buildings like you see in New York." " The storm was as if Satan and a thousand of his devils had come howling from the bottom of hell." " The wind was strong and rough, so that everybody looked untidy but cheerful." That last phrase certainly suggests, as perhaps the others do not, that the writer had been to sea and had enjoyed it.

But even after such storms as those described, the coxswain soon recovers.

As one essayist writes: " After making six journeys to the sinking vessel the coxswain fainted,but on the morrow, after a pint of beer, he felt better." Many of the conversations ended with the writer putting a coin in the life-boat box: " At the end of the coxswain's story I said no word of thanks, but walked over to the collecting-box and dropped in my pocket-money for the week." " I noticed a box bearing the large letters ' Help the Royal National Life-boat Institution '. Unconcernedly my hand ventured into my pocket.

Out came a shining shilling—my last shilling—but it rattled into the box." " I could not help thinking that a pound note in the miniature life-boat at the local post office was not badly placed." But perhaps the happiest ending came from the Scottish essayist to whom the coxswain said good-bye in the following words: "'Cheerio, lass! I must be going.

It's dinner-time now, and I would rather face an angry sea than an angry wife,' and with these words he took his departure." 2,253 Schools Take Part.

This was the nineteenth competition and 2,253 schools took part, an increase of 50 on 1938. Of this total of 2,253 schools, 1,638 were English, 326 Scottish, 172 Irish and 117 Welsh. There was an increase in England of 51 schools, a small increase in Ireland, and a small decrease in Scotland and Wales.

The number of essays sent in for the inter-school competition was 1,396, sixteen more than in the previous year, and the number of schools which held their own competitions, but did not send in for the inter-school competition was 857, an increase of thirty-four.

The Best'Essay.

The best essay in Great Britain and Ireland has, for the second year running, come from a London girl. It was written by Rita Daphne Harding, of the Colville Junior Girls' School, Lonsdale Road, Netting Hill, W.ll.

She is under eleven years old and is one of the youngest of the winning competitors. She has been very suc- cessful in putting into an easy and natural conversation the information from the lecture on the life-boat the essays were of England and of England the won by schools 1936. In all the the shields have which have never service given before written.

In the south-west in the north-west shields have been which won them in other seven districts been won by schools won them before.

Successful Towns.

For the fourth year running Ports- mouth (including Southsea) takes the first place in the number of winning schools. It has twelve out of the thirty-five prize-winners in the south- west of England, while the neighbour- ing borough of Gosport again has five winners. Cardiff is again second with seven. Croydon also has seven; Liver- pool and Stoke-on-Trent six each; Walthamstow five, and Edinburgh and Southampton four each.

Girls versus Boys.

Last year the boys were more suc- cessful than the girls. This year the girls have it. Besides the best essay of all they have won four of the nine challenge shields; and of the total of 315 prizes, girls have won 164 and boys 151. The prize for the best essay of all has now been won twelve times by girls and eight times by boys, a boy and a girl tying for it in 1933.

Awards.

Rita Daphne Harding will receive an inscribed copy of the edition de luxe of Britain's Life-boats, by Major A. J.

Dawson. Each of the other eight winners of challenge shields will receive a copy of Launch, by Major-General Lord Mottistone (Major-General Seely), ex-coxswain of the Brooke, Isle of Wight, life-boat, inscribed by the author. The schools will hold the shields for a year, and each school will also receive, as a permanent record of its success, a copy of the certificate awarded to the pupil. The other prize- winners will each receive a certificate, the boys copies of Launch and the girls copies of The Life-boat in Verse.

The 857 schools which did not enter for the inter-school competition, and the 1,081 schools which did not win a prize in it, will each receive a certificate for presentation to the writer of the best essay in the school.The Institution's Thanks.

The Institution is most gratefu to the Education Authorities for allowing the competition to be held, and in many cases for bringing it to the notice of the schools; to the teachers for the great trouble which they have taken in lecturing to their classes and correct- ing the essays; and to the judges in the nine districts who, year after year, f ive the Institution their generous elp.

Below will be found the names of the nine winners of challenge shields and the best essay. The full list of winners is printed as a separate leaflet, and will be sent, with a copy of this journal, to each of the schools which entered for the inter-school com- petition.

LONDON.—Rita Daphne Harding, Col- ville Junior Girls' School, Lonsdale Road, Netting Hill, W.ll.

NORTH-EAST OF ENGLAND.—Stanley Scholes, Intermediate School, Bul- lion Lane, Chester-le-Street, Co.

Durham.

NORTH-WEST OF ENGLAND.—Evelyn Robinson, Upton Road School, Moreton, Wirral, Cheshire.

MIDLANDS.—Reginald Charles Wing, Mount Senior Mixed School, New- ark-on-Trent.

SOUTH-EAST OF ENGLAND.—Betty Perkins, The Tavistock Senior Girls' School, Croydon.

SOUTH-WEST OF ENGLAND.—Norman Christopher Cooper, Oakfleld Church of England Boys' School, Hyde, Isle of Wight.

SCOTLAND.—Anne G. Notman, Flora Stevenson School, Comely Bank, Edinburgh.

IRELAND.—Fred Guy Kerrigan, Gar- vetagh Public Elementary School, Castlederg, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

WALES.—John W. Staff, Copperworks Boys' School, Llanelly..