The foregoing Objects are carried out by the Secretary in London, and upwards of 1,000 Honorary Agents of the Society, stationed on every part of the Coast, of the United Kingdom, with others Inland, Abroad, and in the Colonies, by whom, on an average, between 11,000 and 12,000 persons are annually relieved.

On all occasions of Shipwreck, immediate relief, with prompt medical aid, is afforded to the Sufferers-by taking them up at the place of wreck, supplying them with every necessary, and conveying them to their homes, or, if foreigners, to their nearest Consuls. In the performance of this duty the Society acts on the broadest basis of Christian Charity-the foreigner as well as the native being equally cared for.

In addition to this recognition of Distress and Destitution as the paramount claim, the Society, with a view to the encouragement of moral and provident habits, amongst our Seafaring Men, extends assistance-according to a fixed scale, and irrespective of any afforded at the time of the Shipwreck-to Mariners, Fishermen, and all persons occupied on the Sea or Rivers, subscribing the regulated yearly payments to its Funds, to help them to make good the loss or damage at sea of their Clothes or Boats; while, in the event of their death, the necessitous Widows and Orphans, or Aged Parents, are at once relieved.

The Society, further, specially provides for the annual grant of small sums, on a graduated scale, to Widows of Mariners and Fishermen, having been yearly Subscribers, left in want with young Children—this valued relief now embracing all such Widows and Orphans, and including also Widows themselves, above 60 years of age, in needy circumstances.

THE SOCIETY'S PROCEEDINGS.

THE subjoined letter appeared in The Times of Wednesday, November 3, 1880, in reference to the very grievous distress resulting from the terrific gales of the week ending October 30, and the further affliction and misery which must be expected inevitably to succeed every one of the many storms of winter :

THE RELIEF OF SHIPWRECKED SEAFARING MEN AND THEIR

SIR,-In your columns, tale has been following quickly upon tale of storm, and shipwreck, and loss, on sea and coast, till the sympathetic heart of this great maritime nation has been thrilled to the core by the long story of disaster and woe. Nor is it possible, at present,

even to surmise what further tidings, of still unknown mishap to ship and sailor, may yet have to be broken to our people.

In the face of this terrible chronicle of calamity and death, with all the consequent distress among seafaring men and their families, the one urgent question arises in many breasts-What is being done to succour the rescued, or alleviate the sudden desolation of the widow and orphan?

In response to such a question, at so special a moment, will you, in the cause of benevolence, permit me to speak a pleading word on behalf of the one national Society which, through the tempestuous winters of more than forty years, has been the beneficent medium of the nation's charitable aid to the shipwrecked sailor himself, or to his sorrow-stricken dependents?

As the lifeboat nobly saves crew after crew of helpless men from a watery grave, so is it. THE SHIPWRECKED MARINERS' SOCIETY which, on the spot, takes over those thus saved, with numbers otherwise cast upon its hands from the deep, and immediately tending the injured, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and housing the friendless, forthwith consigns each one to his then most desired haven-the embraces and the joy of a well-nigh bereft kindred and home.

The season of invariably the greatest hazard and the greatest distress, in each year, has indeed but too disastrously commenced, and will, for certain, month by month, if not week by week, become more and more calamitous. Already, as the instant result of the recent gales, the Society's central office here has daily been literally besieged by shipwrecked crews, in transit through London to their various ports and homes; and these sufferers represent but a mere fraction of the numbers relieved and sent on direct, without being passed through the metropolis, by the honorary agents of the Society stationed on every part of the coast of the United Kingdom. Alas! too, the long roll of widows and orphans, and aged parents, all needing the promptest care and assistance, will at once most unfailingly follow.

If any of your readers would do the Society's executive the favour of paying a personal visit to this office, and for themselves see those for whose help I plead, and listen to the heart-rending details which it is our lɔ to hear, I doubt if the scene would be quitted with dry eyes, or without feelings of peculiar thankfulness that, amid England's many noble benevolent institutions, these sea-girt isles possessed such an one, above all, as THE SHIPWRECKED MARINERS' SOCIETY.

I have the honour to be, Sir, your faithful servant,

W. R. BUCK, Secretary to the Shipwrecked Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society. Central Office-Hibernia Chambers, London Bridge, S.E., November 1, 1880.

FROM THE TIMES," &c., NOVEMBER 26, 1880.

SHIPWRECKED MARINERS' SOCIETY.-At each of the last three weekly meetings of the committee of this Society, being those held since the recent most disastrous gales, the number of applications on behalf of shipwrecked seafaring men and distressed widows and orphans, and the amount of relief necessarily granted in aid thereof, were reported to be wholly without parallel in the Society's annals during the forty years of its existence. These urgent claims upon the charity, indeed, were in their full extent so unforeseen, as well as so unprecedented, that the committee found it imperative to make adequate provision for the pressing need by specially realising a portion of the Society's invested funds, to the detriment of its other operations; and this, too, notwithstanding the numerous contributions received in response to the letter from the Secretary, in The Times of the 3rd November. At the same committee meetings, the Society's framed testimonials, in recognition of gallant and humane exertions to save life at sea, were unanimously voted to John Edwards, master of the William and Isabella, for rescuing the crew of the fishing boat Rose, near Lossiemouth, in July last; and to Lieutenant John T. Bragg, R.N.R., master of the steamship Antenor, for having rescued the 953 pilgrims abandoned on board the Jeddah, off Cape Guardafui, on the 8th of August. In furtherance of this particular feature of the Society's work, the sum of nearly £700 has just been received by the Committee of Management, in trust, as a gift from a philanthropic French gentleman, M. Emile Robin, of Paris, the funded annual value of which is to be expressly awarded to the captain and chief officer of the British vessel which may, in each year, be adjudged to have incurred the greatest risk in saving from imminent peril the crew of any other vessel, British or foreign. It is worthy of special note that the generous donor of this "Emile Robin " Life-saving Reward, for English seamen, has, in like manner, founded a precisely similar reward for the seamen of France, Italy, and Holland, in their respective countries.

THE "EMILE ROBIN" LIFE-SAVING REWARDS.

The following is the text of the terms and conditions attaching to the administration of the Trust Fund, in respect of these Rewards, as specially vested in the Committee of Management of THE SHIPWRECKED FISHERMEN AND MARINERS' SOCIETY, in accordance with the notification made in The Times, &c., under date of November 26, 1880:

"1. At or within a reasonable time after each Annual General Meeting of the Society, the Society shall pay the income of the said Trust Fund, for the year

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immediately preceding such Annual Meeting, to the Captain and Chief Officer (they respectively being natural born or naturalised British subjects) of such a British "vessel as, in the opinion of the Committee of Management of the said Society, shall during such year have saved the whole or principal part of the crew of a vessel, "whether British or Foreign, from imminent peril; or, if more than one such "vessel shall during such year have saved the whole or principal part of a crew "from imminent peril, then to the Captain and Chief Officer respectively (they respectively being such subjects as aforesaid) who, or whose vessel or crew, in the opinion of the Committee, shall have incurred the greatest peril in effecting "such rescue. The said income to be paid as to four equal fifth parts thereof (£16) to such Captain, and as to the remaining one equal fifth part (£4) to such Chief "Officer,-provided always that, if either the Captain or the Chief Officer of the “ vessel having made such rescue as aforesaid shall be an unnaturalised Foreigner, "and the other of them shall be such subject as aforesaid, then and in such case "the Captain or Officer who shall be such subject as aforesaid shall also be en"titled to receive his proportion of the said income, and the remaining portion "shall be disposed of as hereinafter directed with reference to the entire income of any year during which no award may be made thereof.

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2. If in any year or years there shall, in the opinion of the Committee, not "have occurred any case of rescue of sufficient importance to warrant the award "of the said annual income under the last preceding clause, then and in every such year the said income shall be invested in the name of the Society, and either 'shall be permanently added to the capital of the Trust Fund and be held upon "the trusts herein declared concerning the same, or (at the discretion of the Committee) may, in any subsequent year during which, in their opinion, more cases "of rescue than one coming within the scope of the last preceding clause shall "have happened, be paid as prizes, in the proportions hereinbefore mentioned, to "such Captain and Chief Officer having effected such rescue, being respectively eligible for such prizes by virtue of these presents (other than those respectively "to whom the income of such year shall have been awarded), as, in the opinion of "the Committee, shall deserve or (as the case may be) most deserve the same.

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"3. The decision or award of the Committee as to the disposal of the annual "income of the Trust Fund, for each year, shall be announced at the Annual "General Meeting of the Society held on the expiration of such year.

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"4. Every decision of the Committee, as to whether or not any case of rescue coming within the scope of the foregoing trusts has happened in any year or years, and as to the persons to whom respectively the annual income of any year or years should be paid under the foregoing trusts, shall be final and conclusive; "it being the intent of the parties hereto, and of these presents, that the decision "of the matters aforesaid shall rest solely with the Committee, and shall not be questioned by any person or persons whomsoever."

THE SOCIETY'S WORK.

UNDER each of the subjoined headings, numbered I, II, III, and IV,— answering respectively to the four General Objects of the Society, as already detailed at page 60 of this Magazine—will be found the interesting, and, in many respects, touching record of the Society's benevolent operations since the issue of the last Quarterly Statement.

During the period in question, the numbers directly succoured by the Society's Executive in London, and by the Honorary Agents in all parts of the United Kingdom, with the total amount of relief administered-which, subsequently to the calamitous storms of October, reached the unprecedented sum of upwards of a thousand pounds a week-were as follows:—

Total Number of Persons relieved.......
Total Pecuniary Amount of Relief

3,771. £6,756.

Of the numerous Agencies from which the more distressing claims embraced

within these figures were received, the following, with the amounts allotted to each, may be specially mentioned, viz.: Hull £79, Liverpool £93, Hartlepool £96, North Shields £265, London £353, South Shields £475, and Sunderland £508-giving a total of £1,869 issued at these seven seaports alone.

I. RELIEF TO SHIPWRECKED CREWS.

The Crews of Vessels, wrecked on various parts of the Coast, or foundered at Sea, have been boarded, lodged, clothed, and forwarded to their homes by the Society, between the issue of the last Quarterly Statement and the 31st December, 1880, as follows:

Number of Vessels, of all Classes, whose Shipwrecked Crews were relieved......

.......

368

1,857

Number of Shipwrecked Seamen, &c., thus relieved, (members of the Society-779, and non-members-1,078) It is to be noted that no small proportion of the casualties, represented by the figures given above, were occasioned through the exceptionally disastrous gales at the end of October last, as already referred to in the preceding pages. On the 26th of that month, a cable message was received at the London office of the New York Herald from its Weather Bureau, which ran as follows: "A dangerous storm is crossing North of lat. 45, and will arrive on the British and Norwegian, possibly affecting the North French coasts, between the 27th and 29th, attended by strong South winds, veering to North-West gales, rain and snow in North." This prediction, even to the appearance of snow in considerable quantities, was fulfilled, whether accidentally or otherwise, almost to the letter. On the night of the 27th the storm broke over the Southern and Western portions of our coasts, rushed along the course of the English Channel to the Eastward, and then appears to have veered to NorthEast and North in the North Sea, with the violence of a hurricane, and continued throughout the whole of the 28th and 29th. On one day as many as 130 losses were posted at Lloyd's, while the accumulated casualties reported occupied some 44 columns of the current number of the Maritime Register. The principal line of the destruction of life and property extended from the Land's End to Pentland Firth, on this side of the Channel, and over the North Sea and Continental seaboard from Ushant to Copenhagen. Since that of December, 1876, this gale was the worst experienced on our East coasts, the sea being fearfully high, and the force of the wind so great that people were lifted off their feet. Indeed, so sudden and so violent a visitation has seldom been experienced in these latitudes.

It would be impossible to give any detailed list of the many ships and disasters brought under the Society's notice throughout the past quarter; but the following particulars, regarding some few of the more notable cases in which succour was afforded by the Society, will not be without interest.

The Marys, a brig, of Whitby, with salt, from Weston Point for Newcastle, during the heavy easterly gale that raged on the night of Oct. 28, sprang

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a leak, and the pumps becoming choked, the captain decided on running for harbour, and failing to make Plymouth Sound, went on to Falmouth.