An exciting scene took place off Blackpool on the 20th of May, owing to the steamer Columbus taking the ground with three hundred passengers on board. Every effort was at once made to get her out other dangerous position, but without sucss.

The heavy seas meanwhile continued to roll over the steamer as she lay broadside on to them. All this time the passengers on board were in a terrible state of confusion, and a good many of them were under no little apprehension as to their personal safety, for almost without an exception they were drenched to the skin with the sea, which found its way on board. The captain, seeing that there was no chance of getting his vesselafloat until the turn of the tide, hoisted a flag of distress, whereupon the Life-boat bell was rung by Mr. Eobert Biokerstafie, the coxswain, and the boatmen ran with all speed to the boat-house. Their zeal and anxiety to get a place in the Robert William Life-boat were so marked that, in their eagerness to get hold of a cork jacket, which enables him who gets it to have an oar during the rescue, the coxswain was hustled up to the far end of the boat. Four horses were stopped on the road and attached to the Life-boat carriage. The force supplied by the efforts of the willing horses was immediately augmented by literally hundreds of strong arms dragging away at the ropes, so that the sands presented a most animated aspect as the Life-boat and the accompanying crowd hurried along under the south pier and on to the north, where the living freight of the Columbus were eagerly awaiting delivery from their unpleasant, if not perilous, position. At about twenty minutes past one the Life-boat was shot off her carriage and dashed into the broken surf amid the lusty cheers of the crowds of bystanders.

Once afloat she was very soon alongside the stranded steamer. By this time several sailing and rowing boats had also got alongside, and in half an hour all the three hundred passengers were once more safe on land again, to their inexpressible satisfaction. The Life-boat made two trips, and brought off sixty-two passengers the first time and seventy-one the second.

The large sailing boats brought off about forty passengers each time. After all the passengers were safely landed the Lifeboat returned to the steamer, and remained alongside her until she floated again at about four o'clock in the afternoon..