THE summer of this year has not been as busy a time for the life-boats as the record summer of 1948, but during June, July and August life-boats were launched 169 times and rescued 92 lives.

In 88 of those 169 launches the life- boats could find no vessel in distress, or were not needed. In the other 81 launches, lives were rescued or help was given. No fewer than 30 of these, more than a third, were to yachts, and life- boats rescued the li ves of 25 yachtsmen and women. Four other services were to rubber dinghies and from them life- boats rescued eight lives.

Among other holiday services were the rescue of two campers, imprisoned on an island by heavy seas, who had had hardly any food for forty-eight hours; the rescue of several parties of anglers, including eight policemen, members of the Metropolitan Police Sea Angling Society; and the trans- port from islands to the mainland of a woman and a boy who had been taken ill while on holiday. A life- boat also escorted to a safe anchor- age a schooner with the famous name Hispaniola. She was being used by a film company for a film of Treasure Island.

Among the things which caused false alarms were beach balls, a rubber duck, a packing-case, a dead cow and logs of timber, all of which were mistaken for boats or rubber dinghies or bathers in distress..