Bronze Medal Service at Aberdeen.

ON the evening of Christmas Day, the Aberdeen trawler, George Stroud, with a crew of five, was steaming up the channel into Aberdeen harbour.

When about 200 yards inside the end of the North Pier, she got a little to the northward of the channel, grounded, swung round, and remained fast. The night was very dark. A strong south- easterly wind was blowing, and though there was not a great deal of sea in the channel, there was a very heavy run of broken water along the inside wall of the North Pier. It was in this broken water that the trawler lay. She was about 50 feet off the wall of the pier, with a list of about 50 degrees. She was labouring heavily, with heavy seas breaking continually over her.

It was at 8.5 P.M. that the trawler struck. The motor life-boat, Emma Constance, and the North Pier and Torry rocket life-saving apparatus (both maintained by the Institution) were at once called out. The North Pier apparatus was out of its house at 8.10, and at 8.15 was abreast of the wreck, on the pier, over which the seas were breaking. The line-throwing gun was fired and the trawler's crew caught the line, but they refused to haul aboard the rope and breeches-buov, and shouted : " Send us the life-boat! " Alongside in Eight Minutes.

The life-boat had left her moor- ings at 8.12. By 8.20 she had got alongside the trawler on her lee side, the higher out of the water, between her and the wall of the pier ; ropes had been thrown, and these the trawler's crew had made fast. But then, instead of jumping aboard the life-boat, the five men took refuge in the trawler's wheel-house.

The crew of the life-boat called to them again and again to jump, and at last one man came down from the wheel-house. A line was thrown to him, but before he had made it fast the bowman had seized him and dragged him aboard the life-boat. Then a heavy sea struck the life-boat, broke her adrift from the wreck and flung her against the foundations of the pier, along which she was washed for about a hundred feet.

She returned alongside, and again threw lines aboard the trawler, but no one would come out of the wheel-house to make them fast. A few minutes later a very heavy sea broke over the trawler, carried away the upper part of the wheel-house, washed the life-boat once more against the founda- tions of the pier, and carried her astern.

Rescued by the Rocket Apparatus.

A man was then seen to be clinging to the trawler's bridge. Another line was fired to him from the pier by the life-saving apparatus. He seized it, drew the breeches-buoy on board, made fast the rope, and was hauled on to the pier. But he was the only one of the four to be saved. Four times the life- boat returned to the trawler and each time was carried away again by the heavy run of sea. She played her searchlight on the bridge. She cruised about for an hour. But of the other three men nothing could be seen. They must all three have been carried away and drowned by the wave which smashed the wheel-house.

The whole service lasted over two hours, and the coxswain handled the life-boat with courage, determina- tion and skill, returning again and again to the rescue in the narrow space between the wreck and the pier. It was the tragedy of the service that all five men, instead of only two, could have been rescued, either by the life- saving apparatus or the life-boat, had they seized the opportunity when it was offered them instead of taking refuge in the wheel-house.

To COXSWAIN THOMAS SINCLAIR, the Institution has awarded its bronze medal for gallantry, accompanied by a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum, and to him and the crew an increased money award of £2 17*. 6d. to each man. The total awards to the life- boat's crew and the crews of the two life-saving apparatus were £43 7s. 6d.

The day after the service the coxswain broadcast an account of it.