IN 1901 the Institution stationed at Queenstown, on the south coast of Ireland, a pulling and sailing life-boat of the Watson type, 43 feet long, 12 feet 6 inches in beam, with a draught of 37f inches. She was named James Stevens No. 20, and was the last of twenty life-boats built out of a legacy of £50,000 which the Institution had received in 1894, under the will of Mr.

James Stevens, of Birmingham.

The James Stevens No. 20 was at Queenstown until 1923, and was then transferred to Fenit, Co. Kerry. There she remained until 1928, when she was sold out of the service. Her twentyseven years at these two Irish stations had been very quiet. It was after she left the Life-boat Service that her adventures began.

On an African River Old life-boats usually have a long life before them when they leave the life-boat fleet. Most of them become pleasure cruisers, but not all. One of them, another boat from the Irish coast, went into the coal business.

Some go far afield. One became a motor launch on the Kowie River in South Africa. Another, the steam life-boat Queen, became a tender for landing passengers through the surf on the Gold Coast. But none can have had more adventures than the James Stevens No. 20.

In 1931 she was bought by Mr. Tom Norman Dinwiddy, whom Motor Boat and Yachting described—when he died three years ago—as " one of the greatest yachtsmen that this or any other country has ever known." Mr. Din-viddy converted the James Stevens No. 20 into a motor cruiser, fitting her with a 30 h.p. Kelvin Ricardo as her main engine, and a 15 h.p. auxiliary.

He renamed her the 'Eternal Wave, and under that name she was—the same paper said—"the motor boat that deserves to be the most renowned in all the history of yachting.

"To begin with," continues Motor Boat and Yachting, "Dinwiddy characteristically put her through Alderney Race, in a very stiff breeze, blowing against a savage spring tide, to see how she would behave." Evidently he was satisfied, for that year he sailed her from Dartmouth to Dover and then to Holland, across the Zuider Zee, by the Kiel Canal into the Baltic, and so to Copenhagen and Oslo. He returned through the Kiel Canal to Cuxhaven and crossed the North Sea to Lowestoft.

That was a journey of 1.800 miles.

Two years later the Eternal Wave went to Norway by way of the west coast of Great Britain and round the north of Scotland. Her longest passage on that course was from Lerwick to Sogne Fjord. It was a passage of 225 miles and she did it in heavy weather. She visited many fjords and returned by way of Denmark. That was a cruise of 2,735 miles, done in 51 days. Next year the Eternal Wave was in the Baltic again, all up its eastern shore, calling at Danzig, Memel and Riga. Helsingfors and Abo. From there she crossed the Baltic to Stockholm. By the time she arrived home she had done 3,288 miles on that cruise at an average of 50 miles a day.

In the following year the Eternal Wave was again in. the Baltic, and reached her "farthest north" at Haparanda, the most northerly port in Sweden. That was another 3.600 miles.

Such is the account of her cruises as given in the Motor Boat and Yachting.* 15,400 Miles In October, 1935, on his return from Haparanda, Mr. Dinwiddy wrote to the chief inspector of life-boats: "It may be of interest to you that I took my Watson type Fenit boat this year to Haparanda at the top end of the Gulf of Bothnia—a 3,600 miles cruise—with one hand, calling at various ports with longish passages between, and that wherever she goes, and that now embraces 14 different countries, she creates interest as an English lifeboat type. In almost every foreign port that I have been in, and it is many, * The number for June, 1945, in "The Skipper's Page." I have met with interested questions as to the life-boat's characteristics and type, and much favourable comment on the boat's seaworthy appearance.

. . . Eternal Wave has cruised some 15,400 miles. I have experienced some crashes forward against bad weather and bad water—one last early summer in the race off Start Point, when it broke the exhaust cross pipe of the engine, perhaps because I was asking too much and- driving her too hard. But I have never had a drop of following water over the stern." That was the Eternal Wave's last cruise with Mr. Dinwiddy, for he then sold her. She was in her thirty-fifth year; but she was still very far from the end of her career.

A Fire-float in the War It was not until eleven years later that the Institution again heard of her.

Her first six years after Mr. Dinwiddy sold her are a blank, but in 1942, the third year of war, the Ministry of Transport bought her, and handed her over to the National Fire Service River Thames Formation, which sent her from London to Norwich. There she arrived on the 1st of December of that year. From Norwich she went to Lowestoft and there Mr. Dinwiddy's accommodation was taken out of her and she was converted into a fire-float, with two 700-gallons-per-minute pumps.

She was ready for service in September.

1948—that was the date of her commission —and as a fire-float she served in Lowestoft harbour until the end of the war, in May, 1945. She was then sold out of the Fire Service and her new owner took her to Chertsey. on the Thames, where she was to be converted again into a motor cruiser. From there he sailed her to Littlehampton.

A friend who went with him wrote: "It was far from ideal weather but we found her remarkably comfortable in a seaway, with not a creak or a groan anywhere, in spite of her 45 years of service.

That speaks well for the excellence of the Institution's specifications." So in her 46th year the old Jamex Stevens No. 20 underwent her third transformation and entered on her fourth career. Her name is still Eternal Wave..