The first international lifeboat conference was held in London in 1924, the centenary year of the RNLI; the first international lifeboat exhibition is being held at Plymouth this summer to celebrate our 150th anniversary.

PATRICK HOWARTH, public relations officer since 1953, recalls some of the happiest passages of these years of international conversation.MY FIRST memory of an international lifeboat conference is from Bremen in 1959. I was standing outside the hotel in which the RNLI delegation was staying when a small German car drove up. The Chairman of the RNLI, Earl Howe, emerged from the passenger seat and said to me: 'I've just wrapped my car round a tree and this young man kindly gave me a lift.' Earl Howe was known to the general public principally as a famous racing driver. He was then in his 70's, but I knew that he was unlikely to have been driving at less than 100 mph and I naturally enquired whether he was hurt or shaken. He dismissed the suggestion almost with indignation.

The next day the eighth international lifeboat conference was opened by the President of the Federal German Republic after the Bremen Symphony Orchestra had performed Haydn's Oxford Symphony. Earl Howe was then called upon to reply on behalf of all the guests. This he did with remarkable felicity—the fact that he had mislaid his spectacles and could not read the notes I had prepared for him probably helped —and the conference got off to a splendid start.

The first international lifeboat conference took place in London in 1924 to mark the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the RNLI. Since then conferences have been held at fouryearly intervals, apart from a gap caused by the Second World War.

The eighth conference, at which the hosts were the German Lifeboat Society, was, as might be expected, organised extremely ably, and when it was announced that the ninth conference was to take place in Great Britain we knew that a high standard of organisation had been established with which comparisons might be invited. Looking back, I think I can state that throughout the ninth international conference this high standard was maintained. Early June in Edinburgh happened to be a very happy choice of time and place.

The weather was perfect throughout, and with Edinburgh Castle as a settingwe were able to offer a quality of ritual and ceremony which was perhaps unique in the staging of lifeboat conferences.

The tenth conference was held in Dinard and St Malo in 1967. It is the practice at these conferences for hospitality to be provided by governments, municipalities, chambers of commerce and shipping interests.

Gastronomically the 1967 conference was, not surprisingly, outstanding, and I can still recall the taste of the langoustes with which we were served From this it may be deduced that international lifeboat conferences are pleasant occasions. This indeed they are, but what is becoming more and more apparent is that they are of the greatest importance to the efficiency of lifeboat services throughout the world.

The Waveney lifeboat now in the service of the RNLI is an obvious example of this. It was at the Edinburgh conference in 1967 that the United States Coast Guard delegation presented a paper on the US 44' steel lifeboat.

This was supported by a film and a model. So impressed was the RNLI delegation that arrangements were made to inspect and later to purchase a lifeboat of this kind. She was subjected to intensive trials around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, and lifeboats of the Waveney class then began to be built at Lowestoft. Through the generosity of the United States Coast Guard the RNLI was spared substantial development costs.

The free exchange of information between the different lifeboat organisations is an essential feature of lifeboat conferences, and the RNLI as the oldest organisation has been proud to make its own experience and expertise available to other nations.

By the time the eleventh international lifeboat conference took place in New York City in 1971 it had become apparent that with more and more new developments in lifeboat designs, building materials, protective clothing, electronic aids and other forms of equipment, the existing methods of exchanging information needed reexamining.

A paper was therefore presented by the RNLI delegation to this conference entitled 'Exchange of Information between Lifeboat Societies'. The opening paragraph of this paper was: 'International lifeboat conferences exist largely in order to provide an opportunity for an exchange of knowledge between lifeboat organisations in different countries and to allow new ideas and new discoveries to be jointly examined and discussed. With the increasing complexity of lifeboat design and equipment and the rapid development of new techniques, the time may have come for a closer examination of the question whether the international conferences and the machinery they have created fully meet our needs.' A number of suggestions for in-creasing the flow of information were put forward, and the conclusion the conference reached was that steps should be taken to obtain the support of some international trust or foundation for the production of a scientific periodical incorporating new information of general interest.

Efforts made by the RNLI and other lifeboat organisations to obtain such support failed, and it was later decided to produce a periodical publication at minimum cost and at the joint expense of the principal lifeboat societies. The first number of this publication is being timed to appear at the time of the international lifeboat exhibition at Plymouth in July 1974. Grahame Fair has kindly undertaken to act as editor.

At all the international lifeboat conferences the accepted language has been English, and the mastery of this language shown by the delegates of most of the nations present has been, to our own delegates, revealing and rather humbling.

During the conference held in Bremen a discussion was held on the possible use of glass reinforced plastics. In certain quarters some doubts were expressed about this material, which one of the Norwegian delegates, Captain Holter, summarised with the words: 'Our experience in Norway suggests that before you'go in for plastics, touch wood.' Try to do better than that in a foreign language..