ON the night of 9th December, 1886, three Lancashire life-boats, St. Anne's, Southport and Lytham, were launched to the help of the barque Mexico, of Hamburg, which had gone on the sands between Southport and Formby. A gale was blowing, the tide was setting against the wind, and a very heavy and dangerous sea was running. The Lytham life-boat rescued the crew of the Mexico, but both the St. Anne's and Southport life-boats capsized. The whole of the crew of the St. Anne's boat were drowned, and all but two of the crew of the Southport boat; twenty-seven lives lost.

A fund was immediately opened for the families of the men, to which Queen Victoria, Patroness of the Institution, gave £100, the German Emperor £250, and the port of Hamburg some £1,400.

The Institution voted £2,000 to the fund, and the total subscribed, in a fortnight, was £33,000. Part of this fund has ever since been administered by a committee at St. Anne's and the remainder by a committee at South- port. At the annual meeting of the St. Anne's committee, held on 9th March of this year, it was reported that the last annuitant receiving help from the St. Anne's part of the fund had just died.

The amount originally entrusted to the St. Anne's committee was £13,423, and during the forty-seven years of the fund over £13,000 was obtained from the investment of the money. The amount paid out to those benefiting under the fund was over £17,000, while nearly £1,600 was spent on the erection and maintenance of memorials in the Blackpool cemetery and the Lytham and St. Anne's churchyards, and on the St. Anne's promenade.

Of the fund the sum of £5,244 re- mains, and this is to be handed over to the Institution, which has undertaken to be responsible for the maintenance of the memorials..