THE occasional claims for property salvage made by members of life-boat crews sometimes lead to misunder- standing of both the law and practice in this matter, and mis-statements of fact are not infrequently made both publicly and privately. In order to obviate some of these misunderstan- dings Earl Howe, Chairman of the Committee of Management of the Institution, recently wrote a letter to a number of yachting papers, of which the following is the text : " There seems to be a fairly wide- spread belief, even among yachtsmen, that the Royal National Life-boat Institution sometimes makes claims for property salvage. I can state emphati- cally that this is not so, and I should be grateful if you would afford me the hospitality of your columns to point this fact out.

No Claims by Institution " The Royal National Life-boat In- stitution exists for the sole purpose of saving life at sea. If at the same time, without interfering with this object, its life-boats can also help to save property, that is clearly to the advantage of owners. But the Institution never makes salvage claims of any kind.

Not Paid Servants " Salvage claims are made as a legal right by the crews, but in practice such claims are seldom made. In 1958, 120 vessels were saved by life-boats, but only in 24 cases were salvage claims made by the crews. That is to say in only one-fifth of the cases in which property salvage might reasonably have been claimed was any claim made.

During the two main holiday months of 1958, the months in which a very high proportion of the services of life-boats are to the help of yachts and yachtsmen, claims for salvage of yachts were put forward from only one life-boat station in the whole of July and from only two stations in the whole of August.

" The majority of the crewmen make their living on the foreshore. The Institution rewards them whenever they go out in the life-boat, but they are not its paid servants. To make it a con- dition of their service that they are not to undertake in the life-boats any work of salvage, which they are free to under- take in their own boats, would be unfair to the men. It would interfere with their rights in law and could also lead to property being lost which might have been saved.

" The Institution would like to make this clear to all yachtsmen :— " 1. That it is not the duty of a life- boat to save property.

" 2. That in the case of any help which yachtsmen may ask of a life-boat to salve their yacht or of any help which a life-boat's crew may offer towards the salving of a yacht, the yachtsmen are dealing with the crew as individual seamen.

" 3. That if such help is asked for, or accepted, the members of the life-boat crew are entitled by law to make the same claims for salvage as if they were in their own boat. Such claims are often settled out of court.

" 4. That if the above facts are taken into account and the yachtsmen whose boat has been saved are grateful to their rescuers, it has been found in practice, although there is no written rule on this subject, that the life-boat crews are unlikely to make salvage claims where these would cause hardship to the owners them- selves.".