AT two in the morning on 13th November, 190 , the No. 2 Life-boat at Caister, Norfolk—the Beauchamp—was launched in a whole gale from N.N.E. with thick rain and a very heavy sea in answer to flares of distress, but she was swept back, flung on to the beach and turned over by the waves. Her masts were broken off and the crew pinned beneath her. Of the twelve men on board only three were saved, and these three by the efforts of James Haylett, ex-Coxswain of the Life-boat, a man of seventy-eight, "and"his]'son Frederick Haylett, who both rushed into the surf and dragged them out. It was one of the most terrible of Life-boat disasters, but made memorable by the heroism of James Haylett, who was awarded the Institution's Gold Medal. Two of his sons and one grandson were among the dead.

One of the nine bodies was carried away by the sea, but the other eight were buried in Caister Cemetery, and a memorial of stone in the form of a broken mast was erected on their grave.

A proposal was recently made that the memorial and the bodies should be removed to allow the widening of a road.

The result of that unfortunate proposal was described by the East Anglian Daily Times and a number of other papers, on 24th January last, in the following words :— " The wreck of the Caister (Norfolk) Life-boat Beauchamp, near Yarmouth, resulting in the loss of nine lives, in November, 1901, was recalled on Monday evening, when an outburst of local feeling caused hundreds of parishioners to invade the Council Hall, where the Burial Committee was in session. The Committee were discussing a roadwidening proposal, which, it was contended, would involve taking a strip of the cemetery and removing the bodies of the men of the Beauchamp, to whose memory a piece of statuary was erected as a national tribute. Relatives of those whose graves would have been affected were invited to attend the meeting of the Committee, but feeling ran high, and it proved impossible to keep out the parishioners. The Committee allowed them to express their views, and every speaker was bitterly hostile. Women keenly opposed the scheme, which was denounced by the men as dishonouring the dead. Resolutions were passed against the scheme, and deploring that it had ever been suggested.".