the prosperity of the country is due. (Cheers.) It is not for me, in these preliminary remarks, to anticipate what will be told you in the forcing and convincing terms of the annual report, but I may state that the institution has now planted lifeboats on every spot throughout the British Isles where shipwrecks are frequent, and where men are to be found to man the boats, of which it has now a noble fleet of about 250. There is not one of us who does not feel the deepest admiration for the gallant services performed by these boats in every storm, and you will agree with me that the brave and devoted men who work them deserve every encouragement at our hands. Long years of actual working and experience on our coasts have resulted in the production of a lifeboat of as perfect a description as can well be designed. Liberal rewards are granted by the society to the crews of the boats, though it is not possible to put a price on the services so often rendered by these gallant men. (Cheers.) You will, I am sure, cordially join me in doing justice to the energy and unremitting exertion which has brought the institution to its present point of success, and in wishing that God's blessing may continue to rest on its merciful operations. (Cheers.) In this prayer no one can join more heartily than the Queen and the other members of the Royal family. (Cheers.)

The Secretary (Mr. R. Lewis) read the annual report, which stated that during the year the institution had placed 12 new lifeboats on the coast, five of them at new stations, and the others replacing old or inferior boats. Seven of them had been provided with transporting carriages, and six new boat-houses had been built. The society's lifeboats, 250 in number, had saved 543 persons, nearly all of them under perilous circumstances, when ordinary boats could not have effected their rescue, or could only have done so at extreme risk to those on board them. Those invaluable services had happily been rendered without any loss of life amongst the brave men who had performed them.

It was

satisfactory to know that, as far as the operations of this institution were concerned, the violence of no storm appalled the gallant men who manned the lifeboats. On the contrary, there had been services amongst them of the grandest character, and particularly during the heavy and continuous storms of December last, when the lifeboats saved 122 lives and four vessels. During the past year eleven silver medals, eighteen votes of thanks inscribed on vellum, and £2,413 had been granted by the society for saving 543 lives by lifeboats, and 170 lives by fishing-boats and other means. The efforts of the Board of Trade in the maintenance and extension of the rocket apparatus on the coasts of the United Kingdom were unceasing. Many libera donations and legacies received during the past year were gratefully acknowledged. The total amountof the receipts in that period had been £33,500 14s. 2d.

Resolutions were ably moved and seconded by Lord Lawrence, Count Schouvaloff, the Lord Mayor, Earl Percy, M.P., Mr. T. Chapman, Admiral Sir W Tarleton, Earl Fortescue, Lord Lisgar and others, including a complimentary vote of thanks to His Royal Highness, who graciously acknowledged it; and the meeting, which was a most large and influential one, was brought to a close. June 3.-His Grace the Duke of Northumberland, P.C., in the chair Payments to the amount of £2,700 were ordered to be made on various lifeboat establishments. The Scilly Islands lifeboat was promptly launched on the occasion of the melancholy wreck of the 'Schiller,' but, unfortunately, the intelligence of the disaster did not reach the lifeboat station in time to allow of the boat rendering any service in saving life. Mr. Banfield, local secretary of the Institution, stated that the lifeboat was towed to the wreck by his steamer, which had its steam up, but she was too late to save life. If early intelligence of the wreck had been received, when the masts were standing, the lifeboat could have saved any number by taking them to the steamer.

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1 Dundalk agent reports, March 10: This vessel was from Fowey for Liverpool with cargo of China clay, and in act of coming to anchor, about one mile from Crosby Light Ship, lights brilliantly burning, with a Liverpool pilot on board, when was Been a large steamer bearing down on them, and she was struck about ten feet from the stern. Vessel went down in about ten minutes. Crew and master and captain's wife and child took to the rigging, the vessel remaining upright in the water. For about one hour the poor creatures remained on the fore top-gallant rigging, when the captain's wife was nearly washed away, only he succeeded in getting hold of her by the hair, and pulling her on to the yard. Her little girl (three years of age) was washed out of her arms. The steamer that run them down (one of the large American mail steamers), after the collision passed on without stopping to render assistance. Fortunately the Dundalk steamer Enterprise,' Captain John Farrell, happened to be the last steamer sailing from Liverpool this day, and passing close to the wreck, and hearing the cry of the poor people in the water, immediately got his boat out (thinking it was a man fallen overboard from some passing vessel) and succeeded in getting the unfortunate people on board, when Captain Farrell took them into his own cabin, and treated them with the greatest humanity and kindness, and even after the steamer arrived in Dundalk kept the captain's wife in the cabin, she being very ill and badly hurt. I sent for a surgeon, who stated her to be

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injured in the spine and back, and unfit to be removed.

2 The Brighton Agent, March 19, reports that the 'Jeanne Louise' was run down by the Swedish schooner Johanna Mathilda,' eight miles south of Beachy Head. Five men of her crew managed to scramble on board the schooner, leaving three others on board the lugger, which it is believed has sunk. The five men aforesaid were landed here perfectly destitute by a Brighton fishing lugger, John Leech, master, and their wants attended to.

3 A Newport pilot cutter arrived at St. Ives and landed Captain Smith and the crew of the steamship Kynance,' of Falmouth. They stated that at about four o'clock on Monday morning the Kynance' was twelve miles off St. Ives Head, with Trevose light bearing east by south. The weather was very thick at the time, and a light S.S.W. breeze was blowing. The chief mate, who Iwas in charge of the deck, heard a steamer's whistle, and immediately answered it, and ordered the helm to be ported. Directly afterwards the masthead and green lights of a steamer became visible, and before anything more could be done to avert the calamity she ran into the Kynance,' striking her just abaft the fore rigging, carrying away boats and davits, smashing the lifeboat, aud cutting her through to the decks. As soon as the vessels cleared, the unknown steamer went on her course, not paying the slightest heed to Captain Smith's appeal for her to stand by and render assistance. As it was evident that the Kynance'

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was in a sinking condition the small boat that fortunately remained uninjured was launched, and all the crew, twelve in number, got into her just in time to save their lives, for the Kynance' went down nine minutes after she was struck. men, who brought away with them nothing but the clothes they were wearing at the time of the disaster, drifted about for a long time in their little boat until picked up by the pilot-cutter. The unknown steamer was very large, had a red bottom, and black top-sides. The Kynance,' which was bound from Llanelly to Sables in France with a cargo of coals, was built of iron at South Shields in 1873.

4 At a little after ten o'clock on the night of the 7th May the fine German Transatlantic Mail Steamship Schiller' was totally wrecked on the Retarrier Ledges, near the Bishop Lighthouse Isles, at Scilly, about twenty-five miles from the Land's End. It seems almost incomprehensible that when a ship has escaped the dangers of the ocean she should find herself in peril upon a coast as familiar o all seamen as the Strand is to a London cabman. Yet it should not be forgotten that the scene of the disaster of Friday night is historic in the annals of shipwreck. The Scilly Isles have an ill fame among mariners; and the reefs of inhospitable granite which invest the Scilly Archipelago have been fatal to many more victims than those who went down with the Schiller.' The lighthouse for which the ill-fated steamer was on the look-out is on the Bishop's Rock, and it was on the rocks known as "the Bishop and his Clerks" that, as Burnet tells us, the greatest naval disaster of the reign of Queen Anne happened. There the gallant Sir Cloudesley Shovel, returning from the bombardment of Toulon with a fleet of fifteen sail, went ashore in his flagship, and was followed by two of his consorts, in a dense fog. The Admiral and his three ships and 2,000 British seamen went to destruction as utterly as did the German steamer. "Thus," says the historian, "one of the greatest seamen of the age was lost by an error in his own profession, and a great misreckoning." But in Sir Cloudesley Shovel's days there was no lighthouse upon the Bishop's Rock, and in these times of daily Transatlantic voyages there is not even so much excuse as there was in the beginning of the last century for "a great misreckoning." The Schiller' was a new iron screw steamer, built in 1873 at Glasgow by Messrs. Napier and Sons. Her tonnage was 3,421 gross. Her length 380 ft. 6 in., and her beam 40 ft. She had six bulkheads, and consequently was divided into seven compartments, which doubtless were watertight, and gave her great strength. She also had two decks and a spar deck. The Schiller' left New York on the 27th of last April, but did not pass the bar at Sandy Hook till the following day at noon. She had on board 264 passengers, with a crew of 120 officers and men, all told, making a total of 384 persons, and she carried a full cargo, about £60,000 sterling in specie for Cherbourg, and 253 sacks of the heavy Australian and New Zealand mails. During the three

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days, of which the 7th May was the last, the Schiller' had to make her way through a heavy fog, which rendered it impossible to take observations. On Friday, as night drew on, the fog suddenly increased, and then the sails were taken in, the engines were reduced to half-speed, and additional men were ordered to look out. At about 10 p.m., without any admonitory warning, the ship struck on the Retarrier Ledge. At that hour the women and children were in bed, and many of the men also. The alarm spread quickly, however, and all were soon on deck, where, with the officers of the ship, many of the male passengers had remained, looking out for the land, which was supposed to be at no great distance. The scene that followed is best described in the narratives and formal reports of some of the survivors; but the courage and coolness of the commander, Captain Thomas, his cheerful demeanour, and his strenuous efforts to preserve order and subdue the panic that so speedily added to the terrors of the time, demand special notice, although there seems to have been something wanting in the system which he worked, which is competing for quick passages with rival steamers at whatever risk.

The Retarrier Ledges on which the Schiller' struck are barely a third of a nautical mile inside the Bishop Lighthouse, the light of which is visible in clear weather 16 miles off, between the Bishop and the islets of Rosevear and Rosevean, on which the lighthouse builders lived in the summer months. Of the passengers and crew 41 were saved and 343 were lost. It must be added that had the wreck been known at the Scilly Isles within a short time of its occurrence the boats from the shore might have saved the lives of every person on board; as every life might also have been saved had the 'Schiller' herself been duly provided with boats, of which she had eight. It has been recommended that a telegraphic communication should be established between the Bishop Light and the shore, in order that any wreck upon the outlying ledges may immediately be made known. Guns were fired from theSchiller' as signals of distress; but, if they heard it, it is said that they would not have commanded such attention as would have led to help being promptly rendered, in consequence of a grievously mistaken habit adopted by some steamers to fire guns at night merely to intimate the fact of their passing the isles. The London agents for the owners of the Schiller,' however, positively deny this misleading practice to be known on board the steamers of the line to which the 'Schiller' belonged.

Admiral of the Fleet Sir George Sartorius, wrote to the Times:-"There is a proverb among sailors, old as the hills, that with lead and look-out no ship need be lost.' The correctness of this proverb may be verified by the fate of 90 vessels out of 100 that have been lost or wrecked. In the terrible case of the 'Schiller' we shall see how infallibly this vessel would have been saved by attention to the saying. This ship was rapidly advancing upon the most dangerous part of our southern shores