miles from shore. The small lifeboat belonging to
that place put off to the rescue. Eight stout men of the coastguard
composed her crew. She belonged to the National Lifeboat Institution--
all the boats of which are now built on the self-righting principle.
The wreck was reached soon after midnight, and found to have been
deserted by her crew; the boat therefore returned to the shore. While
crossing a deep channel between two shoals she was caught up and struck
by three heavy seas in succession. The coxswain lost command of the
rudder, and she was carried away before a sea, broached to and upset,
throwing the men out of her. Immediately she righted herself, cleared
herself of water, and the anchor having fallen out she was brought up by
it. The crew, meanwhile, having on lifebelts, regained the boat, got
into her by means of the lifelines hung round her sides, cut the cable,
and returned to the shore in safety!

The means by which the self-righting is accomplished are--two large
air-cases, one in the bow, the other in the stern, and a heavy iron
keel. These air-cases are rounded on the top and raised so high that a
boat, bottom up, resting on them, would be raised almost quite out of
the water. Manifestly, to rest on these pivots is an impossibility; the
overturned boat _must_ fall on its side, in which position the heavy
iron keel comes into play and drags the bottom down, thus placing the
boat violently and quickly in her proper position. The simple plan here
described was invented by the Reverend James Bremner, of Orkney, and
exhibited at Leith, near Edinburgh, in the year 1800. Mr Bremner's
aircases were empty casks in the bow and stern, and his ballast was
three hundredweight of iron attached to the keel.

This plan, however, was not made practically useful until upwards of
fifty years later, when twenty out of twenty-four men were lost by the
upsetting of the _non-self-righting_ lifeboat of South Shields. After
the occurrence of that melancholy event, the late Duke of
Northumberland--who for many years was one of the warmest supporters and
patrons of the Lifeboat Institution--offered a prize of 100 pounds for
the best self-righting lifeboat. It was gained by Mr Beeching, whose
boat was afterwards considerably altered and improved by Mr Peak.

The self-emptying principle is of almost equal importance with the
self-righting, for, in every case of putting off to a wreck, a lifeboat
is necessarily fille