To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the RNLI, brandies and guilds were asked to make some special fund raising effort to help raise the six million pounds needed for the vast boat building programme on which the Institution has embarked with the aim of achieving a virtually self-righting fleet by 1980. The response has been wonderful.

So many, so varied and so successful have been these special efforts that even to mention every one would be impossible. Every one, however, has been equally vital to the success of our lifesaving service and this gathering together of the stories of a few representative events is a tribute to the many, and to the great generosity of everyone who has helped.UP AND DOWN the country during 1974, branches and guilds of the RNLI have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into a great endeavour to raise funds, over and above normal income, to finance the biggest boat-building programme the lifeboat service of Britain and Ireland has ever attempted. The aim is to provide a virtually self-righting fleet by 1980. Having reached the milestone of 150 years' service since its foundation, the RNLI paused in its path, not only to look back with thanksgiving and pride for the devotion of the men of the past, but also to look forward with rededication, hope and determination.

Lifeboats must keep pace with advances in design; the crews of the present and future must have the best boats and the best equipment possible so that, whatever the weather and however great the challenge, they can put to sea confidently and come home safely. The work of the branches and guilds in towns and villages all over the country is one of the most vital forces in ensuring that this aim will become reality.

A large number of the special efforts made by branches and guilds during 'The Year of the Lifeboat' have already been reported; others will never be generally known, but they are no less valued for that. Everyone has helped. Record after record for flag days has toppled.

Well-tried functions have been repeated with greater success; new ideas have brought new enthusiasm. People have contributed as groups or as individuals.

While adults have been planning down to the last detail splendid public occasions which will bring in thousands of pounds, children have thought out their own schemes and been happy to collect pennies. Any activity that can be sponsored must surely have been sponsored! Take, for instance, pigeons.

Pigeons from Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumberland were sponsored for arace from France. They were let off from Rennes on Bastille Day, July 14, and the winning bird, belonging to Jack Roberts of Marple, won, among other prizes, the 'Lancashire Post' RNLI Charity Championship Race trophy.

For the RNLI the pigeons brought home £600. The North West, incidentally, has started on a project this year which will continue until 1976—collecting the cost of an offshore lifeboat in books of Greenshield stamps (if you have any, please send them to the district office, Prince's Chambers, 26 Pall Mall, Manchester M2 1JR). Life goes on.

Many efforts are, indeed, being directed towards a particular goal.

Hampshire, for instance, inspired by circumnavigator Sir Alec Rose, has been working to raise £50,000 for the Rother class lifeboat, Hampshire Rose, which will be stationed at Walmer. Among many efforts on behalf of this appeal was a sponsored row round the Isle of Wight by members of Lymington inshore lifeboat crew. Maroons were fired from the pontoon of the Royal Lymington Yacht Club on the morning of June 29; 60 miles and 10| hours later the five-man crew had achieved £1,350 for Hampshire Rose. A similar amount was raised when more than 1,000 fishermen met for the Elmore Angling Festival at Lee-on- Solent.

Branches at Petersfield, Liss, Liphook and Alton launched an East Hampshire appeal, setting themselves the task of providing £3,000 for the engines of Hampshire Rose. The climax was a twoday fete and flower festival at HMS Mercury on September 14 and 15. No less than 60 clubs of the Wessex Flower Arrangement Association helped to decorate both Leydene House and East Meon Church as their appreciation of the work of the RNLI; there was a preview cocktail party and then a grand programme of arena events and sideshows planned for the two days of the fete. Despite torrential rain on the second day, the target was easily reached and a cheque for £3,500, made out on a lifebelt, no less, was handed over by Petersfield branch president, Lady Tollemache, to Sir Alec Rose, the Hampshire Rose appeal chairman.

There has been a splendid response to special appeals in many areas: Jersey (£100,000 raised for its new Waveney 44' lifeboat); the Arun appeal in Guernsey; appeals in Cornwall and Medway, Poole, Bradford... A new appeal was launched in the West Country in the autumn of the year; the Bristol Lifeboat appeal to raise the cost of City of Bristol, the third 70' Clyde class lifeboat, to be stationed off Clovelly in the Bristol Channel. The amount— £150,000: the time the organisers have set themselves—one year from September 1, 1974, the day City of Bristol was named. It was the beginning of Bristol's lifeboat week; a week which coincided with some of the worst gales of the yearwhen, as reported elsewhere in this journal, lifeboats were out all round the coast; a week when collectors met quick recognition and ready response.

It was not only in Hampshire that crews were rowing in a good cause. In June the crew and launchers of Walton and Frinton lifeboat held a sponsored row in their 3-ton boarding boat from Walton pier to Clacton pier, a distance of 6£ miles. Rowing in teams of six with one on the tiller, they covered the distance in 1 hour 52 minutes.

Another of the many crew efforts was an exhibition of records and photographs of local lifeboats staged at Southwold by Crew Member John Goldsmith with the help of Andy Palmer, who had served for 30 years in the Southwold lifeboat, and Phil Jarvis, an auxiliary coastguard. That brought in £75 for Southwold and Dunwich branch.

Back on the water, there was a sponsored raft race organised by London Rotaract Clubs in August. Each club had to assemble a raft of not less than ten components. Some of the more complicated parts could be made beforehand, but the actual assembly had to take place during the afternoon of therace, on site. Although many of the rafts were ingenious and very seaworthy, others were distinctly fragile; none-theless, every one finished the mile course.

It was fun—and it raised about £500.

Young people have offered their strength and their ingenuity; they have also offered considerable organising ability. A 'sell-out' pop concert 'The Rediculous Roadshow Starring the Silly Hawkwind Brothers' was arranged at Clacton by 16-year-old Simon Porter.This lively event comprised two hours of non-stop music, entwined with complex and spectacular lighting, and the proceeds of the evening amounted to £319.27.

Galas, balls, garden parties... Cardiff branch and ladies guild arranged a gala operatic evening, with a First Night performance by the Welsh National Opera Company of "The Flying Dutchman'.

Bristol Light Opera Company put on a gala performance of "The King and I', followed by a champagne supper on stage. At Guildford in October there was an 150th anniversary concert in the Cathedral given by the Kensington Festival Orchestra and guest organist Dr. George Thalban Ball, CBE FRS.

Many stately homes threw open their gardens to the RNLI during the summer.

The principal effort of the Petworth branch (which has increased its income from £586 in 1973 to £2,077.71 in 1974) was a spectacular in the grounds of Petworth House, the home of Lady Egremont, president of the ladies' lifeboat guilds. The target of £1,000 to provide new publicity caravan units for the Institution, was reached with ease.A South London gala, in Ashburton Park, Croydon, opened by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Edward Ashmore, was not so fortunate. It was one of those occasions when the people who have made prodigious preparations are let down by the weather, and the £600 made was much less than had been anticipated.

As we all know only too well, in this country it's the luck of the draw, and the events of this day were not such as could be moved under cover. However, although attendance was disappointing, those who did brave the weather thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon's programme, which included bands of the Royal Marines, the 16/5th Queens Royal Lancers and the Nautical Training Corps of Croydon, the RAF police dog demonstration team, a field gun display by Sea Cadets, a tent pitching competition organised by RM Cadets, the Royal Artillery motor cycle display team and the Royal Naval gymnastic display team. Croydon Sea Cadets supplied a guard of honour and visitors included Leslie Crowther, Michael Bentine, the Mayor and Mayoress of Croydon and the Mayor and Mayoress of Kingston.It was bad weather for Birmingham's anniversary gala, held at Hallfield School, Edgbaston, in June. The Regimental band and drums of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (TAVR) were there, police horses gave a demonstration and there were stalls and sideshows of all sorts, including a Punch and Judy show; but, after all the organization, the result was disappointing. However, that was just one day. During the course of the year Birmingham branches and guilds raised over £10,000, with stalls at the Birmingham Boat Show in the spring and the Birmingham Show in August, a record lifeboat week and flag day and such events as the Midlands anniversary ball in October.

Anglesey was unlucky with the weather for its 150th anniversary celebration, too. It was to be an afternoon fete and evening cocktail party in the beautiful ruins of Beaumaris Castle.

Penelope Corrigan, whose father, Colonel Lawrence Williams, was an honorary life governor of the Institution, gathered a committee representing all branches and guilds on the island. When the day chosen proved to be one of the wettest of the year the fete was hurriedly transferred to the Town Hall and the evening guests crammed into two small marquees at the castle. The wiser of those present at the cocktail party wore Wellingtons or galoshes, but that did not prevent them from receiving a soaking from a waterfall caused by an overflow from the bellying of the marquee, sagging under the weight of rainwater! By the end of the evening there was f" of water on the floors of the tents. The target for the day had been £1,000, but Anglesey has had to deal with awful weather before: the net result in the end amounted to a magnificent £1,480.

Down in the south of Wales the sun shone for the twin holiday villages of Port Eynon and Horton, nestling among the cliffs and coastal folds of Gower Peninsular. A special committee, formed with the blessing and full support of the station branch, fired residents and holidaymakers alike with their enthusiasm and they all joined together in all sorts of ambitious plans. There was a dance, a champagne party in the caravan parkwith the swimming pool as a backcloth, a coffee morning and treasure hunt. The culmination was a fete and garden party at nearby Penrice Castle, home of the branch president, Christopher Methuen- Campbell. It was one of the very few extra fine days of the Welsh summer.

Stalls, conventional and amusing, abounded, manned by Scouts, Guides and Young Farmers; many stallholders, betrayed by their 'foreign' accents, came from nearby Walter Groves Caravan Park, marginally press-ganged by the spirit of the RNLI prevailing that day.

It was a good summer, forming strong bonds between the small seaside community and its holiday visitors; between them they raised £2,500 for the RNLI.

At Skegness, celebrations were both traditional and unusual. In a special fund raising effort on August 17, the lifeboat Charles Fred Grantham was brought out in front of the boathouse and dressed overall, while Mr and Mrs Woodhead played their old barrel organ and 'star' collector Percy Price was busy with his collecting box. In the afternoon the ILB was paraded from the boathouse to the pier and back to the beach, with the Skegness Salvation Army band heading the procession and members of the ladies' guild in attendance collecting.

Both boats were launched at 1600, the organ grinders (dressed as gypsies) keeping up the collection while the boats were afloat. The guild raised £84.96, the organ and Mr Price £36.90. Then, in September, to mark the 150th anniversary, the Skegness Landladies' Larks, an annual show, donated its profits, £732.92, to the lifeboat station.

Pembrokeshire was another area in which branches and guilds banded together to form a 1974 committee, under the chairmanship of R. A. P. Lewis of Narberth. The main effort was an appeal letter which raised £2,194.61. A service was held in St David's Cathedral at which the lifeboat colours were 'trooped' by a colour party of coxswains.

There was a reception at Narberth and the committee commissioned a very beautiful cut-glass decanter engraved with lifeboat pictures, which was raffled in aid of their efforts. £2,400 was raised altogether with more to come.

246As in many other parts of the country, there was an impressive list of stately homes and gardens opened to lifeboat supporters in Scotland during the summer: Traquair House (Peter Maxwell Stuart), Braemar Castle (Captain H. A. Farquharson,) Blair Castle (The Duke of Atholl), Inverary Castle (The Duke of Argyll), Haddo House (The Marquess of Aberdeen), Dunnottar Castle (The Viscount Cowdray), Scone Palace (The Earl of Mansfield) and Hopetoun House (The Marquess of Linlithgow). Scottish Omnibuses cooperated by including many of these open days in their tours. Another contribution from transport in Scotland was made by the British Airports Authority, with collections at airports.

'Nearly New' shops did well inScotland. Hawick guild raised £640 in their shop, and Montrose guild, running a shop in the High Street for five days, made £1,102. Stornoway guild, by a tremendous effort, raised £1,061 at a sale of work in March, and there were all sorts of other special efforts: Selkirk guild made £300 selling daffodils, for instance, and Mrs. Margaret Fraser of Kilcreggan held open house, with coffee and home baking, every Saturday.

Surely every area has its own characteristic ways of celebration and festivity; so, in Scotland, we find the ceilidh and dance—at Portree £52 was raised, at Campbeltown £161.

Branches in the Republic of Ireland have been making an all-out effort and a very successful year's fund raising is confidently predicted when the whole story is told. A new 44' Waveney lifeboat is due to go on station at Dunmore East in the spring, and there is a special appeal on foot to offset her cost.

Clayton Love, Jnr, chairman of the appeal committee, reports that £60,000 towards the necessary £100,000 hasalready been notched up, over and above normal Irish revenue.

Despite its troubles, Northern Ireland branches celebrated 'The Year of the Lifeboat' by increasing their contribution by 30 per cent, to about £40,000.

£3,000 of that was raised by Kilkeel, under the impetus of the honorary secretary, Cecil Baxter. Among the events which led to the collection of this grand amount was a raffle of gigantic proportions organised by Mr and Mrs Rex McKinty at the Royal Hotel; so many tickets were there that no receptacle could be found large enough to hold them all and, in the end, a double bed sheet was laid on the floor and the tickets piled on it like a heap of sand.

It is from Kilkeel, too, that a report comes of what must be unequalled stoicism: Tim Hayes lay on a bed of nails 1 " apart for six hours—and that was a hard-earned £600 and no mistake.

Time and again, flowers have given colour to 'The Year of the Lifeboat'.

Indoors, floral groups have decorated churches and houses with the lifeboat service as their theme. Out of doors, through the kindness of civic authorities, carpet bedding displays have been laid out in many parks—at such widely scattered places as Birmingham, for instance, York and Plymouth; decorated with, perhaps, the RNLI flag or crest, they have announced the 150th Anniversary to passers by.

Derbyshire made its own distinctive contribution. It is an area which practises a unique local craft of 'well dressing1: decorating the village wells with pictures made from flower petals, leaves and anything which has been grown, mounted in a bed of clay on a wooden screen. This year the village of Dore, using 47 different natural ingredients, produced a picture of a lifeboat at sea; it took nine people a week, working from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. in shifts, and £60 was raised while the screen was on display.

What about sport? Once again the breadth of the scope has been impressive.

There was a day at the races at Goodwood in September, when theproceed's of the day's racing, £2,303, was given to the RNLI. Races were sponsored by Associated Fisheries Ltd., Greig Shipping Group, Boston Deep Sea Fisheries, University Marine, Arthur Bell and Sons and Brooke Marine.

Chichester branch were out in strength and collected £873 on the course.

Cricket matches, too. Down in the West Country, Whitbread Wanderers' Cricket XI, captained by Tom Graveney and including eight past or present test cricketers from England, India and the West Indies, played a late summer match against the Exmouth club. All expenses were paid by Whitbreads and all proceeds went to Exmouth branch funds.

Enjoyment has gone hand in hand with hard work, and there has been a great deal of fun and laughter. Woodstock branch staged an RNLI exhibition in the grounds of Blenheim Park in July. As part of the proceedings there was an ILB demonstration on the lake.

To make it more lifelike, the chairman of the branch, Jack Carlin, offered to swim to the centre of the lake to be 'rescued'. This he did and the first couple of 'rescues' were fine. Trouble came, however, when it was suggested that, for a change, he might like to take a canoe out and capsize it. As the commentator explained to the 1,000 or so spectators what was about to happen, Jack launched the canoe and tried to get into her. Alas, this was no ordinary canoe, but a light racing one which at that moment began to behave like an unbroken racing filly. She refused to be mounted. Every time Jack got near to climbing in, over she went.And another watery story: Warminster branch were invited by Lord Bath, as his contribution towards the Duke of Atholl's appeal, to set up a stand near Longleat House for two days in August.

A site was arranged with His Lordship's public relations officer, near the pay desk for the model railway. Shortly before the weekend, however, the PRO put forward the suggestion, in all seriousness, that since there was to be a demonstration ILB at the stand, it would be more effective if the RNLI took to the lake.

After consulting district office, the branch honorary secretary turned this offer down on the grounds that demonstration ILBs would be no match for the other denizens of the lake, His Lordship's hippopotamuses! Then there was the hot spring bank holiday afternoon at Tidworth Tattoo, when sale of souvenirs and tickets for the Hampshire Rose car competition (which, incidentally, raised £3,000 during the summer) was flagging—until 10-year-old twin brothers arrived with their parents. One re-organised the souvenir counter while the other went out into the crowd and electrified passers by into buying his car tickets, directing his customers firmly on to his brother.

And then there was the occasion...but there is no end to the stories of the year.

It will be some time before they are all told and before the grand financial total is known. Already, however, the RNLI has had renewed overwhelming proof of the response and backing it can expect from its family and friends. The Year of the Lifeboat' has indeed made a wonderful start for the next 150 years..