" I AM writing a few lines to thank you for the life-boat journal you send me, and also my pension I receive at the end of the year. I am very interested in the life-boat. I was born in Clovelly on May 31st, 1869, and in 1887, when I was eighteen years of age, I was one of the life-boat's crew and I have been attached to her more or less ever since, and was sixteen years shore signalman.

I have seen some very dirty nights in Clovelly Bay, especially after a S.W.

gale and a heavy ground swell. Then the wind veers N.W. and it is no model sailing pond. Years agone," in the old pulling and sailing boats, when the gun went off in the middle of the night everybody would be astir.

Men, women and children, men leav- ing their homes trying to get their trousers over their heads and the women and children running after them with the rest of their clothes. I used to live three doors from the life-boat- house. I was not far away when she was wanted. I have had three sons out in the old rowing boats at one time.

I have still got two sons in the City of Nottingham, one is bowman and the other is first mechanic. The bowman, Percy Shackson,* goes to London next month to receive his medal for saving life.

" My wife and I left Clovelly two years agone now and came to Bideford to live with my daughter. She also knows about the launching of the life- boat. Often she has come home scratched and bruised dragging skids over the rocks. My wife very often says to me she can hear the sound of the sea breaking on the shore, and at night when it is blowing a gale she will * See page 344. wake me to know if I hear it blowing, and I tell her, "Yes, everything is bearing an equal strain; we got two anchors down and I think we can ride it out until daylight." Then I hear a little prayer from her if our life-boat has got to go out in this storm, 'May it please God to go with them and all will be well.' " Brave hearts who man the life-boats Both fearless men and true Old England loves her sturdy sons God bless the life-boat's crew.".