TO MARK THE FRIENDSHIP and mutual goodwill shown during the bicentennial celebrations of the American Declaration of Independence a number of leading Americans in Britain have decided to appeal to their fellow citizens to provide a new Waveney lifeboat for the RNLI. Their choice of a lifeboat is gratifying evidence of the esteem in which the RNLI is so widely held.

Perhaps the best known of the Americans who have agreed to serve on the committee is Douglas Fairbanks.

Others who have signified their willingnesswillingness to serve include officials of the United States Embassy, leading service chiefs (Admiral David H. Bagley, Commander - in - Chief U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, is among them), representatives of oil interests, banking, the press and commerce generally. Frank Goodhue, Vice-President of the National City Bank, and Bruce Mitchell, Vice- President and Manager of the Bank of America in London, have agreed to act as honorary treasurers and an account has been opened at the Bank of America at 27-29 Walbrook, London, EC4.

British citizens who have agreed to serve on the appeal committee include two former Prime Ministers, Edward Heath and Sir Harold Wilson, the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Air Staff as well as former ambassadors, leading industrialists and well known RNLI figures such as the Duke of Atholl, Raymond Baxter and Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Compston.

Details of the progress of the appeal will be announced in future numbers of THE LIFEBOAT.

Rarity of salvage The old belief that RNLI crews regularly claim salvage is effectively dispelled by a detailed summary of services by RNLI lifeboats to pleasure craft last year. Offshore and inshore lifeboats were launched to the help of pleasure craft 1,604 times in all. The value of the boats they saved is estimated to have exceeded £2 million yet only five salvage claims in all were put forward by crews. The total amount received in settlement is not known, but if divided among lifeboatmen generally it would be extremely unlikely that it would buythem as much as half a pint of beer each.

The number of RNLI services to pleasure craft last year was high, amounting to 63% of the 1688 launches by inshore lifeboats and 46% of launches by offshore lifeboats. By far the commonest reason for calling upon the services of lifeboats was machinery failure. Out of 251 services to pleasure craft by offshore lifeboats when vessels were saved, 127 were to the aid of boats whose engines had failed.

Fire at Southern! The disastrous fire which wrecked Southend Pier on the evening of July 29 and which destroyed the Coastguard station caused the RNLI less immediate damage than had been feared. The two inshore lifeboats, an Atlantic 21 and a 16' D class boat, which are kept on the pier were launched while the fire was raging. They helped the fire brigade throughout the night and on the following day, as did the Sheerness lifeboat which regularly transported men and equipment. At 1.30 am the inshore lifeboats answered an emergency call which proved to be a false alarm.

The lifeboat house was not seriously damaged but it happened that plans had been made to install a permanent lifeboat exhibition in the boathouse on the day following the fire. Characteristically the Southend branch decided to press ahead with the setting up of the exhibition with as little delay as possible.

Mumbles Memorial A memorial window is to be placed in the parish church of All Saints, Oystermouth, to the memory of eight men who gave their lives nearly 30 years ago.

They were the crew of The Mumbles lifeboat who put out on April 23, 1947, in storm force winds rising to a hurricane to go to the help of the steamer Samtampa. The whole lifeboat crew were lost. The coxswain, William John Gammon, was a gold medallist who had won his award for the rescue of the 42 crew from a Canadian frigate three years earlier. The lifeboat which replaced the one lost at the time of the disaster bore William Gammon's name.

New lifeboat societies Bermuda's first lifeboat was formally named Deborah B on Sunday, May 9.

She came from New Zealand and was presented by the Hon. Dudley Butterfield, whose wife named the boat. On the evening following the naming ceremony she was called out to a fishing boat which had run out of fuel. The wife of the owner of the fishing boat had notified the police as she had not realised that the Bermuda Search and Rescue Institute had come into being.

Captain Sir David Tibbits, who was in Bermuda at the time of the naming ceremony, represented the RNLI, which has been in close touch with N. Lishman, Secretary of the Bermuda Search and Rescue Institute, who was a delegateto the Twelfth International Lifeboat Conference at Helsinki in 1975.

The RNLI has also received a letter from J. M. Kooijman of the Citizens Rescue Organisation of the Netherlands Antilles, whose headquarters are in Curacao, stating that funds are being raised to purchase equipment for a new rescue institute. This institute will, the letter stated, be 'drawn after the lines of your prestigious organisation and both Dutch counterparts'. The new institute hopes to obtain at 40' utility-boat from the United States Coast Guard and is planning to purchase an Atlantic 21ILB.

Pressure of space From time to time we are asked why fewer accounts of services by lifeboats appear in THE LIFEBOAT today than was the case ten, twenty or more years earlier. At one time this journal consisted largely of a historical record of the actual services carried out by lifeboats, but with the huge increase in the number of calls which occurred in the 1960s, largely because of the pleasure boat explosion, it became impossible to maintain this record within the confines of a quarterly journal. Theopportunity was then taken to change the nature of the journal, a process which has continued steadily. Our aim now is to produce a high quality magazine of interest to all who care for the lifeboat service, both crew members and those who are actively engaged in the fund-raising branches and guilds, as well as the growing number of members of Shoreline.

Today we find continual pressure on our space, and while it is our firm policy to pay due attention to the many outstanding services carried out by lifeboats we find it impossible to record all services in any detail. This is a cause for regret, but we have to make the choice between an attractive magazine with a wide and growing circulation and something approximating to the old historical record. We hope our readers agree that we are making the right choice..