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Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22594, 27 December 1938, Page 11

Wireless has now been in use in lifeboats for 10 years, but those who have seen the spectacular results of wireless in bringing help to vessels in distress on the high seas, and who with simple receiving sets in their own homes can hear distant broadcasting stations, can hardly realise the difficulties of taking messages in small boats like a lifeboat in the midst of the noise of wind and waves and the lifeboat’s engine, and with the impossibility of having masts sufficiently high to carry really effective aerials. Another great difficulty has been the protection. of the delicate apparatus from the sea. At present it is possible to use wireless only in lifeboats with cabins. of these lifeboats now have radio-telephony, and one has wireless telegraphy. A number of cabin lifeboats have also been fitted with watertight loud speakers on deck. Other cabin lifeboats will be fitted with radio-telephony as they are built, and experiments are now being made with a receiving set, which has been made watertight so that it can be used on lifeboats which have no cabins to protect it fiyam the seas.