SAVING LIFE IN WATER.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2278, 15 September 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

SAVING LIFE IN WATER.

The simplest and most efficient method of reselling a drowning man, and of restoring life in the ease of the apparently drowned, are fully described in ' Pearson's for July, ui article which should not only appeal to all swimmers, hut al.so to all who have not mastered the most neglected and the most important of arts : Everyone (says the writer) should learn to swim as naturally as everyone learns to walk—there would then I'" an end to the appalling number of drowning fat:, .tics that occur every year. To take one example alone, in (Jreat Britain, yearly, between fi.t.lW and 7.000 lives are lost in inland waters and oil' the sea.-hore bv drown-

Not onlv, however, should everyone he taught how to rescue the drowning. There are many fine swimmers, champions for speed and powers for endurance, who could not carry a drowning person. This is the more remarkable when it is understood how simple the proper methods of rescuing life in water really are.

The reason, however, is easily explained. In order to bring a drowning person to land with the maximum of ease and the minimum of risk, a sound knowledge of what is known as the "hack stroke" is essential—and this comparatively few swimmers possess. The hack-stroke means swimming on the back, using the legs and arms for propulsion, or. when rescuing another, the arms are used to support the drowning person, the rescuer's body being undermost.

31 any swimmers content themselves with the use of racing strokes in the hope of winning prizes, and the crude back-stroke they employ when saving life in water causes the body of the rescuer and the person carried to sink, so that the mouth is under water, and the person is in danger of being drowned before safety is reached. In life-saving it is a great object lesson to see the advantage gained by the man ■who lias studied life saving over the expert swimmer, who knows only the racing strokes, and whose contortions are excruciating.