Coxswain Charles Edward Ward, of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, who died at the beginning of July in his eighty-sixth year, had served as an officer of the Aldeburgh life-boat for thirty-three years. He was second coxswain from 1876 until 1882, and then coxswain until 1885. He then left the life-boat crew, but rejoined it seven years later, serving as bowman from 1892 to 1914, when he retired. He was awarded the Institution's silver medal in 1894 for general services, and in 1900 a second-service clasp to his medal for his gallantry when in command of the life-boat on service on 7th December of that year, in a gale. She was struck by a breaker, capsized, and drifted ashore with her crew pinned beneath. Six of them lost their lives, but Coxswain Ward, who was washed up the beach, went straight back into the sea, and at great risk to him- self rescued two of the crew. As second coxswain he also took part in the launch of the Aldeburgh life-boat in January, 1881, to the barque Indian Chief, wrecked on the Long Sand off the mouth of the Thames. When the life-boat reached the wreck, twenty- five miles away, the survivors of the crew had already been rescued by the Ramsgate life-boat. She put back to Harwich to find that the Harwich life-boat was out on service and that another wreck was reported on the Maplin Sands. Exhausted though the Aldeburgh crew were, they at once put out again, to find that the crew of the barque on the sands had just been rescued by the Clacton life-boat. They then made for Aldeburgh. Although they had saved no lives, they had taken part in a feat of endurance with few equals in the history of the Institution.

They had been at sea for nearly thirty hours in an open pulling and sailing life-boat, in a bitterly cold easterly gale, with snow squalls, and had travelled 120 sea miles..