Sumner Offers Help For Lifeboat Move

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31662, 24 April 1968, Page 18

Sumner Offers Help For Lifeboat Move

The Sumner Lifeboat Institution has supported a move in Wellington to provide a volunteer lifeboat service to be operated from the Wellington Heads.

When he heard that a meeting was being held in Eastbourne last evening, the secretary of the Sumner voluntary organisation (Mr W. J. Baguley) telephoned the meeting, promised support and said he would go to Wellington if necessary to help to organise an appeal.

’The meeting was in progress when I rang, and they were immensely pleased at our interest,” Mr Baguley said.

The Press Association reported that the Wahine disaster had fostered strong interest in a lifeboat service. The Wellington people should “go for their lives, forget about the Government entirely and they would soon find that public opinion was with them,” Mr Baguley said. It would be possible to have a lifeboat service throughout the country if there was sufficient interest, he said, and Sumner had shown that a ser-

vice could be provided to save lives. While a lifeboat could cost more than $50,000, a new service could start with a sec-ond-hand boat which would not be nearly so costly, he said. The Government had built a police launch for Wellington at a far greater cost than that for a lifeboat, but it could not do anything like the work of a lifeboat. The Wahine disaster had shown the need for a lifeboat in Wellington, Mr Baguley said. If it stirred interest elsewhere that would only result in good. Sumner, a long-established institution, was ready to give help and advice to anyone interested.