Honorary secretaries of today's lifeboat stations who sometimes find themselves buried in paperwork will be interested to see how one of their predecessors of a century ago had to cope with the minutiae as well as the more important issues of the day.

John Corin, public relations officer of Penlee and Penzance station branch, looks at the correspondence from 1886 to 1889 of Colonel Tom Cornish who became honorary secretary of both Penzance and Sennen Cove lifeboat stations 99 years ago.TO BE HONORARY SECRETARY of 3 lifeboat station for 44 years is perhaps not a record. To be concurrently honorary secretary of a second, neighbouring, station for 27 of those years must surely make Colonel T. H. Cornish's service to the Institution one for the record book.

He was honorary secretary of Sennen Cove from 1886 to 1930, the year he died, aged 67, and honorary secretary of Penzance from 1886 until 1913, the year the lifeboathouse at Penlee Point was opened.

Sennen Cove and Penzance are separated by some nine miles of road including the long hill at Tregonebris and the steep descent of 1 in 6 down to the cove. It could not have been too easy a journey by mail coach or carriage and pair. In the 1880s the advantages of motor transport and telephone connections were still some way off. The colonel's home and office were in Penzance and he must have relied heavily, and confidently, on next day delivery of any letter he posted to Sennen, or London.

Thanks to Mr Tony Pawlyn, who hails from Newlyn, we have a photocopy of his typescript of the good colonel's outward letter book from 1886 to 1889. What is contained in those letters is only occasional reference to the wreck and rescue dramas which would have figured in the RNLI's journal, but there are many intimate sidelights on the work of an honorary secretary in those days. Relations with the coxswains and crew and local people can be deduced and the reliance on headquarters in London for very minor matters is sometimes remarkable. On the other hand the divisional inspector does not figure very much in relation to Sennen and the honorary secretary seems to have been responsible for periodical exercises and the quarterly inspections.

Tom Cornish, as some would have been able to refer to him but fewer allowed to address him, was very much a product of his time. He was a practising solicitor in Parade Street, Penzance, where the firm of Cornish and Birtill still have their offices. In 1890 he succeeded his father as Town Clerk of the ancient Borough of Penzance. In those days the functions of local government did not permeate most facets of our lives in a town as they do today and the office of Town Clerk was a part time post. A relic of this arrangement persisted until comparatively recently in that Town Council employees had a day's holiday for Madron Feast, the Patronal Festival of the mother church of Penzance, when solicitors' offices closed.

With the clerkship of Penzance went clerkships to several other bodies, such as the Borough Magistrates, and also the post of representative of the Board of Trade on the Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee. The colonelship was the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Devon and Cornwall Rifle Volunteers, the Territorials of the day, but Colonel Cornish did not see active service. Onthe other hand he is recorded as having owned a smart little sailing yacht and to have been ready to pull an oar in the lifeboat Dora in a summer gale in 1886, in company with the honorary treasurer, when most of the usual crew were away at sea. After that rescue he wrote rather quaintly to Charles Dibdin, secretary of the RNLI, 'Although I have claimed 101- (50p) for T. H. Cornish I hear from him that he will give that as a donation to the Institution.' We can also imagine him perhaps writing the letter for Henry Bates, who had retired as second coxswain, for Bates to sign, thanking the Committee for a gratuity.

Many of the letters written by the colonel are naturally concerned with maintenance and minor building works at the boathouse. All letters to the RNLI in London are addressed to the secretary in accordance with Victorian business custom of a vertical structure of command. In May 1888 there was trouble over work carried out on the slip at Sennen: Chas Dibdin, Esq.

'The Rev. R. ]. Roe is questioning our right to have interfered with the slip at all and especially what right we had to build a wall between "A. B. and D." without first obtaining his consent. We here were under the impression that the slip belonged to the Institution and therefore we have not exceeded our power. Roe is a rum chap but I think with a little discreet management he can be put right, but don't trouble about it yet.' No doubt many honorary secretaries of today will testify that there are still rum chaps about who may nevertheless succumb to discreet management! Concerning Penzance lifeboathouse, then in Wharf Road and still standing, local relationships were rather morefavourable. On the occasions in 1888 when there was trouble with subsidence affecting the boathouse and also an unevenness in the adjacent municipal slip, used for launching, the honorary secretary was able to write to his father, as Town Clerk, to seek some action. As they lived in the same house and worked in the same office, communication was not difficult.

There was also correspondence with the Lord St Levan regarding a collecting box at St Michael's Mount, referring to 'the great interest your Lordship takes in this Humane Institution', an interest maintained by his present Lordship. At a somewhat different level there is a letter of January 1889 to a Miss Dingley: 7 return your box. The contents amounted to 8d. (3.3p). Will you kindly have it fastened to your stair case.' As launching authority the honorary secretary had a rather more onerous task than asking the coxswain to slip the moorings or launch down a slipway by knocking a pin out. Horses had to be found to haul the lifeboat carriage, and paid for.

December 14th, 1886, to the Secretary of the RNL1: 7 return the receipt paper. In making out the total amount required I inserted 51- (25p) per head for horses. The job master has seen me today and refuses to accept sosmall a sum, telling me that for night service he is entitled to £1 per horse. The late Secretary is away from home and nobody seems to know how much he is entitled to. So please pardon me for troubling you . . . I think his demand exorbitant.' Some of the correspondence addressed to the secretary of the RNLI would seem to us now to concern very minor matters . . .

'Will you also kindly send me a key for the Penzance Boat House as one of mine is broken and is now quite useless.' There was also endless correspondence about the whereabouts of a Very pistol. Navigational aids do not figure very largely, except for barometers. At that time the RNLI provided them for fishing craft and coastal vessels at subsidised price . . .

'Will you kindly send me an Aneroid Barometer for Stephen Downing of Church Town, Newlyn, Captain of a fishing lugger . . .' The cost was 13/- (65p).

Signalling was confined to pyrotechnics and a set of private signals between the Longships Lighthouse and Sennen Cove. Captain Tregarthen of Trinity House was asked to have a set of signal rules placed 'in some conspicuous place in the lighthouse . . .' and to the coxswain at Sennen, 'The signalling rules pasted on the board are to be hung up in the BoatHouse, and I think one spare one, you had better ask the Landlord of the Public to hang somewhere in his house.' which was a realistic idea.

Not all the correspondence was parochial. On December 22, 1886, the colonel wrote to the secretary of the RNLI, 7 am glad that for once a Board of Trade Inquiry has resulted in something satisfactory and the reason of those Southsea Boats remaining upside down is known. Will the Institution issue any order relating thereto, so that we can place them in our Boat Houses?' Fund raising was confined to subscriptions and collecting boxes. There are still some pillar collecting boxes in West Penwith and it was decided to place one on the way to the Logan Rock, a favourite place for tourists of the day. The landlord, Sir Vyell Vyvyan, agreed and was offered an acknowledgement of one penny a year. The local mason was engaged to set the box up, but there was the little matter of getting the box out to Treen, a few miles to the westward. Today a friendly lorry owner might do it for the honorary secretary in about 20 minutes from Penzance. It was not so easy for the colonel.

To J. Nicholls, Esq., Balswidden, St.

Just. 7th June 1887.

7 have a small box ofScwt Iqtr which I wish to send to the Logan Rock Village. Is it possible to send it by your Traction Engine, and if so will you kindly tell me what your charges are, and when you can take it.' This was probably an engine used for towing and working thrashing machines from farm to farm, which in wet West Cornwall was done as soon as possible after harvest.

There seems to have been some delay in getting two of these boxes transported as about two months later the Victoria Iron Foundry in Birmingham was getting impatient for the return of the packing cases. One wonders how the traction engine from Balswiddencoped with the 1 in 5 gradient down to the Penberth valley, with its hairpin bend, on the way to Treen. However, by September the new pillar boxes were reported to 'have done better than the most sanguine could have hoped'.

Unfortunately disaster soon struck.

On the next January 6 the colonel was ordering a carriage and pair from the supplier of the lifeboat horses to take him and the honorary treasurer, Captain Marrack, to Logan Rock, Land's End and Gurnard's Head, where the pillar boxes were installed. 'Weather permitting' was specified. On the Sunday morning they set out on what would have been a rather bleak journey, unless it was one of those mild days lent from summer which occasionally grace the West Cornwall winter.

Anyone hearing of a large lifeboat box being robbed today will doubtless ascribe such a crime to the degenerate nature of our present society and say that such a thing would never happen in days gone by. Not so. On the night of that month a telegram was being sent to the secretary of the RNLI saying that the box at the Logan Rock had been broken into and the locks destroyed.

Subsequent correspondence showed that the County Police did not have much luck in tracing 'the scoundrel who did it'.

What manner of man was Colonel Cornish? Very much a man of his time, as a photograph of this Victorian gentleman shows, with an air of self-assurance common to that era. It did not take him long to find his feet as an honorary secretary, and he had to exercise a good deal of local technical judgement in maintenance matters where today he would have prompt assistance from the RNLI's divisional officers. The coxswain had to be trusted to make a temporary repair and Charles Dibdin consulted on the proper way.

It might be asked why an honorary secretary for Sennen had to be found as far away as Penzance. The answer is that there was probably no man of business anywhere near Sennen in those days suitable for the task. Indeed the secretary for Sennen was found in Penzance until about 30 years ago.

Like all honorary secretaries, Colonel Cornish was not happy while his station boat was away: To Captain The Hon. H. W. Chetwynd, RN.

7 trust you will not keep the Dora long as the boat we have in her place is nothing near as pretty as she is.' The year after he took up his appointment, Tom Cornish had occasion to write to Charles Dibdin, 7 desire to thank you very much for your kind letter. I feel with your Committee that the cause is a great one and a blessing to our Country. And I can but hope that I may long be spared to have the honour of being associated with such a noble Institution.' It is a sentiment which we can all echo today without any qualification..