CRESSWELL.—At 2 A.M. on the 5th January, during a gale at S.E., the steamer Gustaf, of Gothenburg, in Sweden, was wrecked in Dunridge Bay, near Cresswell, on the coast of Northumberland. On the lights of the vessel being observed, the crew of the Life-boat Old Potter promptly proceeded to get their boat ready for service.

Cresswell is a very small fishing hamlet, and every man in it except those infirm from age was required to man the boat; it remained for the women andchildren to run the carriage into the sea, and launch the boat off it. The Old Potter, the gift of THOMAS HACKWOOD, Esq., had been only placed on the station four months previously. The darkness of the night, the violence of the sea, the inadequate strength of the party which had to launch the boat—all combined, together with want of practice on the part of the crew in getting a Life-boat off a lee shore in a gale of wind, to decrease the chances of success. It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that, after getting fairly afloat, the boat was forced astern and ashore again by successive heavy seas. There seemed to be no prospect of saving the crew by the Life-boat; but it was thought that when the tide went down, if a rocket-apparatus were on the spot, a rocket-line might be thrown over the wreck. The nearest rocket-station was at Newbiggin, distant 5 miles. No men could be spared on such an errand.

Three young women—MAEY BROWN, aged fourteen; MABGABET BROWN, whose father and three brothers were drowned off this beach three years ago; and ISABELLAARMSTRONG—started off along the beach, and wading the River Lyne (an impossible feat at some states of tide), reached Newbiggin, alarmed the coastguard, and in due time returned to Cresswell with the rocket-apparatus and brigade.

In the meantime, however, the Lifeboat's crew had not been idle, and a second and successful attempt was made at 4.30 A.M.: they succeeded in reaching the wreck after an arduous struggle, necessitated not so much by the violence of the wind, as by a heavy breaking sea on a lee shore. Fourteen persons, including 3 women, were on board the stranded vessel; they had no boats left, the last having been washed away with 4 men in it, who, strange to say, gained the shore alive.

By 5 A.M. the Life-boat had succeeded in landing the whole of the remaining 14 persons ; the steamer eventually breaking up..