On the night of the 18th August, intelligence was received at Lynie Regis that a vessel was in distress, being anchored off a lee-shore in a heavy gale, 15 miles to the eastward of Lyme. At 4 A.M.

on the 19th, the life-boat belonging to the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION was launched, and proceeded to her aid, reaching her at 8 • 30 A.M. : the wind had then mode- rated, but the sea was still heavy. She was found to be the brig Ceres, of Lyme, and having lost her foretopmast, was solely de- pendent on the strength of her anchoring- gear for safety. A portion of the life-boat's crew were placed on board, and the boat remained by her until, at noon, they were enabled, by weighing one anchor and slipping the other, to set sail on her, and, at 7 P.M., get her into Bridport Harbour, 5 miles distant.

Although we do not ordinarily record the services of life-boats, unless they are directly instrumental to save Jives; and although this vessel might possibly have held on at her anchors until the weather had been sufficiently favourable to have enabled her to get into port without other aid than that of her own crew; yet this case is so illustrative of one of the phases of the life-boat work that we think it deserving of notice.; for it often happens that a vessel has a signal of distress flying, and that there is every reason to suppose her in extreme danger, when the life-boat's crew are quickly at their posts, and they go off only to find on arrival at the vessel that, by a change of wind, or other unforeseen cause, she has escaped the danger, and that the services of the life-boat are not required; yet the crew of the latter may have incurred as much risk in going out and returning to the shore through a heavy surf as if they had returned freighted with a shipwrecked crew. Such services indeed are sometimes of the most trying description that the life-boat man is called on to encounter, as all the danger and ex- posure which he may have undergone have been so to no purpose. Yet in such cases it will not do to hang back until it is cer- tain that the wrecked crew are in the last extremity, for it would then too often happen that the far greater disappointment and grief would be experienced, of seeing the vessel and her crew ingulfed, when the means of safety were already on their way, but too late to be of any avail.

In the present instance a vessel was anchored on the verge of a high surf, with, a flag of distress flying, and those on board her anxiously expecting that at any moment a cable might snap and their doom be fixed whilst the nearest life-boat was 15 miles distant.

This was just one of those painfully-doubt- ful cases where the life-boat's crew might, on the one hand, have to encounter much hard- ship and danger before they could return to their homes, and that without rendering any service; or, on the other hand, where, if they decided not to launch, the next intelli- gence brought to them might be that the vessel and crew were lost. It was very properly decided, as in all such cases it should be, to go; and even as it happened, | although the gale had broken up, the life- boat's crew were enabled to render important service by getting the distressed vessel safely into port.