THIRTY-EIGHT life-boatmen, from English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh stations were invited to attend the annual meeting in London, on 26th April, to receive medals and vellums awarded to them for gallantry during the previous year. This is the largest number that has ever attended the meeting. It included three crews, those from New Brighton, Torbay and Galway Bay, and Mr. William Freeman, the survivor of the disaster at St. Ives on 23rd January.

The Institution also invited to the meeting five men (three Scottish and two Irish), who had been awarded a medal and vellums for gallantry in rescuing life with shore-boats; and among the honorary workers who were presented with gold badges for distin- guished services was Mrs. Tom Lisle, one of the band of fisherwives of Culler- coats who have carried out a life-boat collection every summer for seventeen years, and in that time have collected over £2,423.

The life-boatmen, the shore-boat rescuers, and Mrs. Lisle, were photo- graphed and filmed outside Life-boat House, on the morning of the day of the meeting, and were then taken for a two-hour tour of London in motor coaches. They saw the Tower, the Old Bailey, St. Paul's, the Victoria Embank- ment, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Kensington Museums, Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.

Visit to the House of Commons.

After the meeting the Torbay crew visited the House of Commons for tea with Mr. A. C. Reed, M.P. for Exeter, and a member of the committee of management of the Institution, and Mr. Charles Williams, M.P. for Torquay. Mrs. Lisle, with her husband and daughter, were taken to the House by Major Sir Alexander Russell, M.P. for Tynemouth, and Coxswain George Milne, of Gourdon, by Mr. C. N. Thornton- Kemsley, M.P. for Kincardine and the West Division of Aberdeenshire.

In the evening the whole party went to the Coliseum, half of them being the guests of Sir Oswald Stoll and the others of the Institution.

As soon as the men returned home other presentations were made. AtNairn, Mr. George Ralph, Mr. George Ralph, junior, his son, and Mr.

George Ralph Grenier, his grandson, who had received a bronze medal and vellums from the Institution, for the rescue of three Russian sailors in January, 1937, were presented by the Burgh of Nairn with a clock, and watches respectively. The presenta- tions were made by the Provost, sup- port ed by the Earl Cawdor, president of the Nairn branch of the Institution.

At the Brixham Yacht Club, Sir Harold Clayton, chairman of the Torbay branch of the Institution, took the chair at a special meeting, supported by Mr. C. R. Edwards, chairman of the Brixham Council, and Mrs. Hay Mathey, president of the Torbay Ladies' Life- boat Guild, and Lady Clayton pre- sented a mat, in the design and colours of the Institution's house-flag, to Coxswain William Mogridge.

The mat was a gift to the Institution from Mr. R. C. Roberts, of Oldham, and the Sudan Government's dockyard at Khartoum. It was made by him on board a steamer on the White Nile.

Mr. Roberts has made several cushions in the style of the Sudanese leather- work for presentation to the coxswains who had carried out the finest service of the year.* The mat was given for the same purpose, and Coxswain Mogridge was chosen to receive it, since he was one of three coxswains to win the silver medal in 1938 and had already won the bronze medal and a second-service clasp to it.

* See The Life-boat for June, 1936..