LIFEBOAT – General Notes

Accreditation The Standard The Independent Newsagent Saturday, JULY 1st 1933

The Life-Boat Service

   The report of the Royal National Life-boat Institution for 1932 has been issued. The number of lives recovered from shipwrecks was 395. This was more than  in 1931, and the largest number for the past four years. Although there were 137 launches of life-boats on service, besides the regular exercises, not a single life was lost at sea in the service, but the most a man lost his life on land when a lifeboat was being launched.
Two silver and two bronze medals were won for gallantry, one of each by English, and one of each by Scottish coxswains.
In rewards, pensions and other payments to coxwains, crews and launchers, the Institution spent during the year £48,191.
Total cost of the life-boat service was £245,417. This was £27,227 less than 1931, and the report states that now that there are 110 motor life-boats on the coast and the period of intensive building of motor life-boats is past, the annual cost of the service should be kept in the immediate future within the sum of £250,000 which represents 1.1/2d per head of population of Great Britain and Ireland.
Income exceeded expenditure by £23,170. but this was due to the large number of legacies received. Subscriptions and donations during the year amounted to £102,941, a decrease on 1931 of over £12,513.
The report also states that the Institution’s policy is, and has been, to make no use of lotteries or sweepstakes to raise money. It prefers to appeal to the British people to support their life-boat service from a sense of public duty, and it feels that the support which it continues to receive amply justifies this policy.

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Accreditation Cleveland Standard 22/07/1933

Redcar Life-boatmen
ARE NOT SWIMMERS

COX EXPLAINS WHY

   Redcar Life-boatmen are amused. The suggestion made by Dr. Young that the time will come when the anomaly of life-boatmen being unable to swim a stroke would no longer prevail if the cause of their amusement. The majority of the crew of the Redcar lifeboat cannot swim. They never had the time to learn. But they do think it impairs their use as rescuers, nor place them in any additional danger.
Mr. R. Stonehouse, the cox, interviewed said. The fact that I cannot swim a stroke has never given me any undue anxiety. I don’t know whether any members of the crew can swim. There may be one or two, but if the can it will stand them in much stead under the conditions we usually face.”
Mr. Stonehouse observed that swimming in a gale with heavy sea boots, and oilskins on would be well nigh impossible. Unless a man was washed overboard near the shore he certainly would not be able to make it by swimming. His only chance would be to trust to his life-belt keeping afloat and the sea take him in. They were usually out in heavy seas when the best swimmers unhampered would go under. Weighed down with tackle, their chances would be equal with those of non-swimmers.
“I have seen swimmers drown when non-swimmers have been saved.” Mr. Stonehouse added, “It makes little difference. It is alright talking, but personally I don’t think there is much in it.” Swimming is very useful, and I think everybody ought to know something about it. But for the lifeboat-men – well, they wouldn’t find it much of a help.”
The remarks referred to were to Dr.Young at a meeting of the Executive of the North and East Yorkshire Branch of the Royal Life Saving Society.