EVEN if there had been no war the winter of 1939 to 1940 would have been one to try the endurance of the life-boat crews to the utmost. To the gales and high seas was added a cold so severe and so prolonged as scarcely to have been known before in the waters round the British Isles.

The Great Yarmouth and Gorleston life-boat was out for four and a half hours in a very heavy sea and snow squalls in the middle of January. As the seas broke over her deck they froze into a solid mass. The spray on the oilskins covered the men in an armour of ice. Their life-belts had to be broken off them when they landed, and the whole life-boat was so thickly coated with snow and ice that, when she returned in the darkness, she looked, as one onlooker described it, "as if she had been smothered in tallow from a giant candle." The coxswain's own phrase to describe that hard journey was characteristically laconic: "We have never had so bad a washing." Crew Frostbitten.

On another afternoon of January the Wells life-boat went out to search for a tug disabled and drifting in the- Wash. The sea was rough. The cold was intense. After travelling nearly six hours, the life-boat began her search at half-past nine at night. She searched all likely places, but found nothing. The tug, in fact, had got in unaided. The life-boat then made for King's Lynn, to refuel. When she attempted to put out again she was fast frozen in the ice, and the flowing tide carried her and the ice together up the river until a tug was able to tow her clear. Then she made for her station again. She did not arrive until the afternoon of the following day.

She had been out for twenty-two hours, and was covered with ice an inch thick. Her crew had not been able to get any food in all that time and they were all suffering from frost bite.

91 Launches in 12 Days.

Such was the weather which would have made the •winter of 1939 to 1940 memorable even if there had been no war. For two months the severe cold continued, with only one short break, from shortly before Christmas until towards the end of February.

When to these arctic rigours are added the full perils of war, and when it is remembered that in twelve days during that bitter weather—from 29th January to 9th February—there were 91 launches of life-boats to vessels in distress, it can be seen that the past winter has put upon the life-boat crews a strain, not only of exertion but of suffering, such as they have never known before.

By the end of the first six months of war life-boats had been launched on service 676 times and had rescued 1,774 lives. They had rescued more lives in those six months of war than in the last four years of peace. Now, after eight months, the figures stand at 816 launches and 1,922 lives.

Stations on the East Coast.

Of those stations on the East Coast which have been conspicuous since the outbreak of war, Walmer has, in the first eight months, been launched 40 times and rescued 85 lives; Cromer has a record of 34 launches and 115 lives; Margate 32 launches and 104 lives; Ramsgate 31 launches and 69 lives; the Humber 29 launches and 189 lives; Great Yarmouth and Gorleston 28 launches and 52 lives.

On the east coast of Scotland, Fraserburgh has been out 14 times; Wick and Peterhead 10 times each; Broughty Ferry 9 times; and those four stations have rescued between them 53 lives.

Sixty-Four Medals.

In the first eight months of war sixtyfour medals were awarded for gallantry, 1 gold, 20 silver, 43 bronze. They were won by twenty stations. In the same time the Institution paid in rewards to crews and launchers £14,908.

Though the brunt of the rescues of the war has been borne by the east coast, that coast has had no monopoly in gallantry. Those medals have been von all round Great Britain. The outstanding station has been the Humber.

Not only has it rescued 189 lives, but it has won 1 gold, 6 silver and 1 bronze medal. Its coxswain, Robert Cross, has won the gold medal, the silver medal, the thanks of the Institution on vellum, and a special letter of thanks for four separate services. That is a record of gallantry without equal in the history of the Institution.

The Full Perils of War.

These figures are impressive, but no figures—and indeed no words—can do full justice to the great achievement of the life-boat crews. Only those who are themselves sailing the seas, who know, by personal experience, the unrelieved strain of watching for the sudden destruction which may rise upon them from the waters or fall upon them from the air—only they can know what the saving of those 1,922 lives has meant in courage and endurance, in coolness of action when faced by sudden emergency, in seamanship, in ceaseless vigilance.

Once at sea the life-boatmen take their lives in their hands. Cromer went out to the help of an Italian steamer which had been sunk by enemy action. She took on board her crew. While she was engaged in this work a German aeroplane circled round her and then attacked with bombs and machine-guns a trawler a mile away.

Again she circled over the life-boat and again came down to attack the trawler. The life-boat made at once for the trawler, and the coxswain went aboard. He found the captain injured, the engines out of action.

The life-boatmen gave first aid, and for three hours towed the trawler until her engines were repaired and she could go on her way.

Rescue under Fire.

At Arbroath the life-boat was only a quarter of a mile from a hopper-barge, to whose help she was going, when two German bombers appeared out of the mist and attacked the barge with bombs and machine-guns. Both passed only a few feet above the lifeboat, but she did not alter her course.

She made straight for the barge. Ten bombs dropped close to the life-boat.

Their explosion, her crew said afterwards, "seemed to lift the life-boat out of the water and made all the air-cases inside her rattle." But she went on and rescued seven of the barge's crew. Two had already been killed in an earlier attack from the air.

These are two of the services which the life-boats have carried out in the midst of the war-fare on the North Sea.

Those east coast life-boats have put out again and again knowing themselves, as soon as they launched, to be in imminent peril. In these words, one honorary secretary of an east coast station describes those journeys to the rescue, made sometimes twice and thrice in one day: "Frequent explosions are heard in the town, many in one day, of drifting mines striking the sands. Only very subdued navigation lights are permitted on the life-boat, searchlights not at all.

The sea is dotted with sunken wrecks, unbuoyed and unlighted, and on moonless or overcast nights, the men are without assistance to safety during their passages other than their trust in God and their own stout hearts.

Add to all this, gales of wind, high seas, heavy rain or snow squalls, when the presence of floating or submerged dangers is much more difficult to detect.

It is doubtful if any other section of the community has to contend with equal obstacles. Certainly there is no other section which carries out its duties so cheerfully and with such persistent heroism." Two Lives Lost Those 816 launches have been made, those 1,922 lives rescued, with the loss of only two lives. They were both lost at Whitby on the night of 3rd February when, in intense darkness, with no lights showing, the life-boat was feeling its way among the rocks at the foot of the cliffs in search of a Belgian steamer. A huge sea rose out of the darkness and as it broke it hit the lifeboat on the side. The coxswain was flung overboard, but he kept his hold on the wheel and dragged himself aboard again. As he did so he felt the life-boat touch bottom. She touched again. She was in extreme peril.

With his left arm injured, and half blinded with blood from a cut on his head, the coxswain brought_her out into deeper water. It was impossible to see who was on board and who was not. The coxswain called the roll.

Neither the second coxswain nor the bowman answered. Both had gone overboard in the darkness, unseen and unheard.

The two men were John Dryden and Christopher Wale. Both were old lifeboatmen of long experience. Both had returned to the life-boat to take the place of men who had left it on account of the war. Christopher Wale had taken the place of his own son who is serving in the navy.

The coxswain, injured though he was, had brought the life-boat out of a place where it was a miracle that she had not been wrecked with the loss of all her crew. There was nothing more that he could do and he returned to harbour. But Whitby men are not easily defeated. The life-boat put out again in the darkness with another crew, to find again that among the unseen rocks a rescue was impossible.

She put out a third time at daybreak, but by then four of the Belgian crew, had been rescued from the shore. Of six more men on board there was no sign. They had been drowned. That story of a gallant failure, in which two lives were lost, shows the spirit of the service more clearly, perhaps, even than its resounding successes.

Generous Gratitude.

Admiration and gratitude for the work of the service during these eight months of war have been shown by hundreds of unsolicited gifts of money and of woollen comforts for the crews.

Enough gloves, mittens, helmets, scarves, jerseys, socks and sea-boot stockings, have been received to equip over twenty life-boat stations.

The gifts of money have been of all amounts from a few pence to a thousand pounds. They have come from individual men and women; from Women's Institutes; from special bodies of people collecting and working for war charities; from A.R.P. workers; from members of the Auxiliary Fire Service; from the police. They have come from all parts of the world. Two consecutive days brought cheques from Southern Rhodesia, Toronto, Rome, New South Wales, Malta, Durban, New Zealand, Chicago, Pietermaritzburg and the Orange Free State.

A cheque from the United States came from an Englishman who did not expect, so he wrote, to take any active part in the war, being in his seventysixth year, but he was trying to help i n other ways. " I am from Portsmouth so I know the worth of the work the life-boatmen are carrying on. It takes real men for their work, and they are men." The cheque from Durban came with this letter: "Part of this gift is from my elder son's money and part from me.

My boy was killed in a flying crash not long ago at home. He was always interested in your splendid work and the life-boats, and I have very happy memories of him when we had our morning swim off the life-boat's slipway at St. Mary's, Scilly! I am sure I am carrying out his wish in this manner.

I am from West Cornwall where some of your men were my friends." So are Britons overseas remembering their life-boat service in time of war..