ON the occasion of the late fearful wreck of the steamer Royal Charter, with the loss of no less than 450 of those on board her, there was one person amongst the few survivors of the catastrophe who has been deservedly held up to public notice.

JOSEPH RODGERS, one of the crew, a Maltese seaman, soon after the doomed ship struck on the rocks, volunteered to swim ashore with a line fast round his body, with a view to effect a communication between the wreck and the persons assembled on the shore, by the instrumentality of which the unfortunate persons on board the former might be conveyed to land.

As is generally known, his attempt was crowned with success, although the sea was breaking with frightful violence on the rocks; and had the vessel herself been able to resist the force of the waves, his daring effort to help his fellows in distress would, without doubt, have been gloriously re- warded by the safe deliverance of most if not all of those who sailed with him in the ship.

It was, however, decreed otherwise, as the ship broke up ere more than a few persons had been able to avail themselves of the means of rescue afforded them by the intrepidjty of the brave man whose act we are recording. Nevertheless, that act is as deserving of admiration as if it had been the means of saving all on board. The extreme risk attending its performance may not have struck every one, yet it would be impossible to exaggerate it. It is known to every person conversant with the effects of a broken sea oh the shore, that even if that shore be of smooth sand or shingle, the force of the falling waves is so great, and their retreating force so almost equally dangerous, as to overcome in most cases the power and skill of the strongest and most skilful swimmers. How much more is the danger enhanced when the infuriated surges dash themselves and all that they bear upon them, with headlong violence, on the sharp and serrated edges of the adamantine rock! Yet still more must the risk be increased when, all around is darkness ; when broken spars, and .pieces of wreck are interspersed amongst the waves ; and when the temperature of the water is so low as to chill the blood and half quench the vital energies of the most vigorous frame. All these sources of danger must have presented themselves to the subject of our notice; yet he heeded them not. True, he was personally interested in reaching the shore, but he could not have thought that the probability of doing so was increased by his carrying a line from the ship, and he might well, have paused ere plunging into the deep, to reflect if the chances of his own destruction did not greatly predominate over those of his reaching the shore alive. And no doubt he would have so reflected, and would have acted on that reflection, had he not yielded himself up to that impulse of a feeling and generous nature which at such a moment will absorb every other, and which, banishing self from the mind, will think only of the object to be effected.

Such was the act of JOSEPH RODGERS, the Maltese seaman of the Royal Charter.

The NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION, in testimony of his heroic conduct, presented him with the gold medal of the Society, and the sum of 51., with an accompanying vote of thanks 'inscribed on vellum, recording the nature of the service for which the medal was awarded. The same was presented to -him at a public meeting at Liverpool, presided over by S. R. GRAVES, Esq., Chairman of the local Marine Board.