The Busy Lifeboats and a Record

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 189, 12 August 1936, Page 16

The Busy Lifeboats and a Record

THHE YEAR 1935 was for the British

- life-boat service the busiest for nineteen years. There were 378 launches of life-boats to vessels in distress. To find a larger number one has to go back to 1916, the third year of the Great War, when there were 386. “In one way it was a record year for launches. There have been other years in which the total of launches Was greater, but these were years in which the number of life-boats was also greater. NinetceD-thirty-five, with a smaller fleet than any previous year, owing to the increase in the number of motor life-boats, has a larger average of launches per station than any other year in the history of the Institution. The average was 2.24.

The number of lives rescued was 498. That is 144 more than in 1934, and the largest number rescued for the past seven Of these lives 393 were rescued by life-boats, and 105 by shoreboats, for u'hose rescue the Institution gave awards. Life-boats saved or helped to save from destruction 55 boats and vessels, the largest number for twenty years. In addition life-boats stood by, escorted to safety, or gave help to over 200 vessels and boats. Up to the end of 1935 the Institution had given awards for the rescue from shipwreck round the coasts of the British Isle* of 6-4,411 lives since it was founded in 1824. That is an average of ll lives saved every week for 112 years.