3-065-774 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Russian marriage festivities: procession of life-boats at St. Petersburg - sketched by our special artist, 1874. Depiction of '...the setting forth of a procession from near the quay of the Admiralty, to escort to the railway station, for conveyance to a remote destination in the provinces, the two life-boats which had been provided by a subscription raised among the members of leading societies, under princely and noble patronage, at the metropolis of the Russian Empire. Her Imperial Highness the Czarevna, during her visit to England last summer, graciously showed her particular interest in the arrangements for saving life at sea and upon the coast, which have been made so efficient by the Royal National Life-Boat Institution of London. This has led to the forming of a Russian Society for Aid to the Shipwrecked, with a special additional object - that of furnishing the means of rescue for lives endangered amidst the breaking ice of rivers and other inland waters of that vast country...There was something appropriate, in the public gift of life-boats, to the wedding of the Grand Duchess with an English Sailor Prince'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.