COXSWAIN GEOEGE STANLEY RICH- ARDS, who died on the 10th of January, 1954, at the age of 91, was a well-known personality in Lynmouth, and had been .coxswain of the Lyn- mouth life-boat from 1926 to 1931.

For forty years before that he had been second coxswain, and on the 12th of January, 1899, he took part in an extraordinary operation whereby the Lynmouth life-boat Louisa was taken on her carriage to Porlock. It had been impossible to launch the life-boat at Lynmouth owing to the heavy seas and a west-north-west gale.

and the life-boat was therefore carried over two of the steepest hills in Eng- land, the road rising 1,500 feet in two miles. Along part of the road the life-boat was moved on skids, the carriage being taken through fields, and gates and posts being pulled down where the road would otherwise have been too narrow for the wheels to pass. Twenty-eight helpers as well as horses took part in this operation, which lasted ten and a half hours.

The life-boat crew went for twenty- four hours without food..