Major H. E. Burton, of the Royal Engineers, who died in December, 1944, in his eightieth year, will always be remembered as one of the outstanding figures in the Life-boat Service in the difficult days when motor-power was replacing oars and sails. He was a skilled engineer and yachtsman and became Honorary Superintendent of the first experimental motor life-boat, placed at Tynemouth in 1905. The local fishermen would have nothing to do with this new means of propulsion, and he manned the boat with his own sappers. Their success was such that eight months later a local crew was found, provided that he remained as Honorary Superintendent. He did remain -- for over twenty years, and when he retired in 1927 he had won the Institution's gold and silver medais for gallantry, the Gold Cross of Honour of the United States, and the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for gallantry, for which the George Cross was substituted in 1941..