Was The Queen a pilot boat in Lagos? After World War 2 I went to work in British West Africa and spent the 1950s in Lagos.

The Lagos pilot used an ex-UK lifeboat reputed to have been on the Mersey. As almost all the major trading and shipping firms at this time were Liverpool-based this is quite likely.

As I recall she was quite a big boat with typical self-righting end boxes, a slender fairly steeply raked funnel rising from a deckhouse amidships and a steering position at the after end.

Even after the construction of the east and west moles at the Lagos harbour entrance, the Lagos bar could be quite nasty and to watch the pilot go out with a strong southerly trade wind against a rainy season ebb tide running at around 6 knots was quite spectacular.

I do not know if this boat was The Queen and it seems to me unlikely that she was pre-1923, but I thought you might find this snippet of interest.

Intheearlyl960'slleft Lagos so I do not know how long the old pilot boat remained in service.

Geoffrey Price Lymington, Hants.

I was most interested in the letter from Mr Dixon regarding the New Brighton lifeboat Queen.

I spent a number of years in the employ of Elder Dempster Lines on the West African service. When I first sailed with them in 1955 the pilot launch at Lagos, Nigeria, was reputed to be the ex-New Brighton lifeboat, presumably the one about which Mr Dixon enquires. The vessel had the line of a lifeboat and stood up well to the heavy swell encountered outside the port when delivering or picking up her pilots. I regret I do not know the name she went under at that time but she was owned and operated by the Nigerian Marine - the port authority for Nigeria.

She was painted in the standard grey hull and cream upperworks of their fleet and had a tall funnel and canvas tilt over the stern cockpit.

By the end of 1956 she had been replaced by a purpose-built modern style pilot boat named Patience.

What happened to the old launch I cannot say except that she was to be seen laid up for a while in Lagos.

Please find enclosed a snapshot (left) of the old lifeboat leaving the ship in which I was serving in early 1956, just before she was replaced.

J.F. Powell, Salisbury, Wiltshire..