An earlier operation involving both launches was in I960 when an Alitalia DC-7C crashed seconds after take-oft" from Shannon Airport with 52 people aboard. It transpired that the aircraft failed to gain altitude after lifting off the runway, struck a small hillock about a mile from the runway end, there being a simultaneous explosion as the fuel tanks ruptured. Blazing metal and debris were scattered for about a mile around. Twenty-three people survived the actual crash but some subsequently died in hospital.

N on-tidal sector The slow but steady increase in pleasure boating on this much longer sector had caused an increase in lifesaving facilities also. Emerald Star Line Ltd. of Dublin, a subsidiary company of Guinness, the brewers, set an example in this respect when they started a boating centre at Carrick-on- Shannon, Co. Leitrim, a few years ago.

The marina which they helped to construct there is probably one of the best on the entire river as it accommodates a fleet of four, six- and eightberth cabin cruisers on a finger jetty, equipped with fuel and water facilities.

Members of the staff of the marina are under orders to wear their life-jackets at all times whether they are able to swim or not.

Ottersports life-jackets are part of the equipment of each cabin cruiser, adult and child size. Instruction on how to use them is given immediately the hirers of the craft arrive at the reception office. The uninflated adult life-jackets give a 13i Ib buoyancy and 35 Ib inflated. Hirers are told to wear them, uninflated, whenever they are in the boat's wheelhouse or on deck, and inflated whenever any abnormal hazard occurs such as a sudden squall, an engine failure or a deterioration in visibility.

Other life-saving aids provided include two lifebelts per boat; a life-saving quoit; a rescusciade, this being the proprietary name of a small device to assist mouth-to-mouth respiration; a simple first-aid k i t ; a fire extinguisher; a boarding ladder which can be fitted into several positions on the boat; a packet of distress signals.

This non-tidal stretch, with the riseof pleasure boating, has been recently extensively buoyed to indicate the area within which cruising should be confined. They are coloured black to starboard and red to port for an upstream journey and vice-versa for a downstream one. Similar marks are features on the several, multi-arched Shannon bridges So far, practically all the calls for help from these cabin cruisers have been from craft which have run aground because of failure to keep to the marked courses.

The provision of inflatable lifeboats, manned by volunteer crews, is under consideration by the Shannon boating firms for two of the largest Shannon lakes, i.e. Loughs Ree and Derg, for these are not considered safe in any wind above force 3. Boat hirers are given a rough guide as to conditions on the lakes, one feature making them unsafe being 'if the branches of trees on the shores are being tossed about by the wind'.

Further and considerable growth in pleasure boating on the Shannon is envisaged for the future. For its current total of pleasure craft is probably only around the 300 mark, against the 25,000- odd on the upper Thames alone. It has no industrial traffic such as barges or tugs and no large-scale factory development.

Only three Shannonside towns are in the multi-thousand population group with a few villages in the multi-hundred.

These attributes help to make it, currently, about the only unpolluted river in Europe. Life-saving facilities on the Shannon, therefore, should over the years steadily increase. Certainly such an early awareness of the need for efficient life-saving facilities on the Shannon is a good omen..