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Lieutenant-Colonel C. R. Satterthwaite

LlEUTENA'NT-COLONEL CLEMENT RlCH- ARD SATTERTHWAITE, O.B.E., late of the Royal Engineers, who was deputy secretary of the Institution from 1925 to 1931, and secretary from 1931 to 1946, died in his sleep on the 5th of May, 1953. He was in his seventieth year. The tribute which Colonel Burnett Brown, the secretary of the Institution, paid to his work and his character in The Times is the most fitting tribute which can be paid in The Life-boat Journal, for it expresses what his colleagues and friends at the Institution felt about him. Colonel Burnett Brown wrote: "May I add to your admirable notice of Colonel Clement Richard Satterthwaite a more personal tribute ? He will be remembered in the Life-boat Service for two things. He was in command of it during its six most difficult and arduous years, the years of the last war, when its work increased threefold, when most of his colleagues, in responsible positions, returned to the Navy and Army, when its resources were never more than barely sufficient to meet its greatly increased needs.

Only those who have held command know what it is to be in command at such a time.

"The second thing was his great modesty. When all was going well he effaced himself. It was when there were difficulties to be met that he became at once the commander.

Praise he would let go by. His care was to see that it went to others. But when there was responsibility to be taken he was there to take it. He was a professional soldier. He gave over twenty years of his life to the Army.

He won the sword of honour at Wool- wich. He served with distinction.

But I have never met a professional soldier whose sympathies, understand- ing and tastes were so wide as his.

That was the secret of his success in the Life-boat Service." At the funeral in London the Insti- tution was represented by Sir John Gumming, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., one of its vice-presidents, and by five members of the staff who were old friends of Colonel Satterthwaite.

After his retirement Colonel Satter- thwaite settled at Alton, in Hampshire.

He took an active part in the life of the town, and among other things, was vice-chairman, joint honorary secre- tary and a trustee of the Jane Austen Society. In those few years he made for himself a secure place in the grati- tude and affection of his new friends.

At the memorial service at Holy Rood Church, Holybourne, the vicar said of him: " Clement Richard Satterthwaite was pre-eminently a man who gladly, cheerfully and willingly bore the bur- den of work and organization in the community of which he was a member.

He seemed utterly dedicated to service and although he had been here for what, in comparison with a life-time, is but a small space of time, he had made himself fully one with the com- munity which he had adopted as his own."* * An article by Colonel Burnett Brown on Colonel Satterthwaite's work for the Institution was published in The Life-boat for June, 1947..