FOREIGN LIFEBOATS.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 418, 25 October 1861, Page 3

FOREIGN LIFEBOATS.

The Spanish Government has sent an order to Messrs. Forrest, of Limehouse, for six additional powerful lifeboats for the coast of Spain, on the plan of those of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution of England. Two of the boats are to be 35 feet long, nd four 32 feet. Last year Spain had similar boats built at Limehouse, and eight smaller ones on the institution's plan, to be carried on board gunboats. Such provision to save life from shipwreck reflects great credit on the humanity ofthe Spanish Government, and will, it is hoped, be imitated by all maritime nations.

Lifeboats on the plan of the National Institution of England have already been built for Russia, Prussia, Portugal, South £,u4Ualia, New South Wales* Yer* Qjns,

Ceylon, Mauritius, Columbia, and the Danube I and some of these boats have been more than once instrumental in saving many a poor fellow from a watery grave. It is to be regretted that France is the only maritime country in Europe that continues stationary in this work of humanity. While the Royal National Lifeboat Institution has on the coasts of the British Isles the largest life-saving fleet (consisting of 112 boats) the world has ever seen, in France an armada ofthe kind continues to be unknown and unthought of. Yet France has a seaboard of nearly 1000 miles in extent, on which lamentable wrecks occur, and as yet scarcely any provision is to be found there to save life. The subject is one which concerns not only the maritime population of France, but also the mariners of all nations who visit the French coast. A very large proportion of the lives rescued by English lifeboats are those of foreigners. To provide means to save life from shipwreck is surely a subject that well merits the earnest and immediate attention of the Emperor of the French. It is at least 'an idea' susceptible of being thoroughly, practically, and, above all, humanely worked out; and he would endear himself, now and in future times, to the maritime population of his own country, as well as to those of other nations, by giving this 'idea' immediate effect.