3-008-612 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The launch of the Ipswich Life-Boat, 1862. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. Dixon Piper. 'It is calculated that from 30,000 to 40,000 persons attended...The life-boat, which has been built with much pains, and with the latest improvements, was drawn on its carriage by eight beautiful horses...through the principal streets, until it found its natural element in the broad stream of the Orwell...Mr. Thomas Baring, M.P., chairman of the institution, then said: This was a bright and encouraging day for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution...It was a source of great satisfaction to find that the people of Suffolk had that day given a magnificent specimen of their additional liberality, and of their good wishes for the success of the Lifeboat Society; and it was no small addition to that satisfaction that the poorer classes had contributed their proportion. He need not enter into statistics of the institution, for what it had done lived everywhere in the grateful recollection of those who were rescued from death, and of many who would to-day be otherwise widows and orphans...We earnestly trust that this noble example of Ipswich on behalf of so philanthropic a cause may be extensively followed in some of our principal cities and towns'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.