TRIALS of the prototype of a new tractor for launching life-boats—a powerful Fowler tractor with a 95 h.p. diesel engine—were held at Aberystwyth in November. Members of the com- mittee of management and officials of the Institution were present. The tractor was tried on the roughest part of the beach, and came successfully through its difficult test. As a result four more tractors were ordered.

But the trials were trials in another sense. The final test was complete immersion in about seven feet of water. Besides her driver—a man of the Fowler firm—she had perched on top of her the chief engineer of the firm, the Institution's chief inspector of life-boats, Commander Michelmore, its district engineer for the west, and the motor mechanic of the Aberyst- wyth life-boat station. Having reached the depth of seven feet the chief inspector told the driver to reverse. At that depth, of course, the controls were under water, and the driver, instead of reversing, put his engines in neutral. The tractor, it so chanced, was just on the edge of a gulley in the hidden sand. She began, to run down the slope, deeper and deeper into the sea.

When she was in ten feet of water, and twenty yards from the shore the chief inspector gave the signal to abandon ship, and the five men set out on a cold swim. The story of it is best told in the pictures on pages 436-7. All safely landed, none the worse. The only thing missing was the wallet, with banknotes in it, of the Aberystwyth motor mechanic.

It was found afloat and rescued later.

The abandoned tractor (which looks so forlorn in the final picture) was hauled ashore, and was found to be none the worse mechanically for her immersion..