MR. CLAUDE M. HART, secretary of the station at The Lizard, Cornwall, retired at the end of last September after serving for 39 years. He had then passed his 79th year. He brought to his work for the Life-boat Service a great love of the sea and a close knowledge of the beautiful but dangerous coast from Falmouth to Pen- zance. During his 39 years the life-boats at The Lizard rescued 264 lives. Besides his work in charge of the station Mr. Hart collected nearly £3,500.

The Institution has shown its gratitude for his long and splendid services by presenting him with its inscribed binoculars in 1919, its gold badge, given only for long and distinguished services, in 1931, and its aneroid barometer in 1918, and by appointing him, on his retirement, an honorary life-governor, the highest honour which it can give.

At the same tune the committee at The Lizard elected him its vice-chairman.

Mr. Hart, who was at one time art correspondent to The Graphic, has given his whole life to the sea As an artist he has devoted to it the study of a lifetime, and he has made a special study of the most difficult art of painting the sea with mist on it. Two of the most beautiful of these studies of sea and mist are reproduced on the opposite page. One of them is of the wreck of the White Star cargo vessel Bardic.

She ran on the Maenbreck Rock, close to the life-boat station, in August, 1924, and the life-boat rescued her crew of ninety-three..