ON 10th June the motor life-boat at Port St. Mary, Isle of-Man, was launched on exercise at low 'water. The life- boat and carriage had been lowered down the slipway to the limit of the wire, and chocks had been placed under the wheels, while additional wire was shackled on. These chocks were removed, to let the boat run slowly down and take up the slack of the wire. In a yard or two they were replaced, but boat carriage and chocks skidded down the wet slipway until brought up suddenly when the end of the wire was reached. Four men were working the winch, and when the life- boat was pulled up by the wire, the winch handles flew round and flung two of them a distance of twelve feet.

They were badly injured and were rushed to hospital. One of them, John Evans, died the next morning of a fractured skull. The other, James Crebbin, a man seventy years old, was found to have a compound fracture of the left shoulder and arm, and the arm had to be amputated.

In the case of John Evans, whose weekly wages as a labourer were two guineas, the Institution has paid the funeral expenses and the cost of a gravestone. He was unmarried, but was the sole support of his mother, who is blind, and whose only income was an Old Age Pension. Under the Institution's pension scheme, which is the same as the. scheme for men in the Navy, Army and Air Force, killed in action, the mother would receive ten shillings a week. In the special circumstances, the Institution has made her a weekly pension of twenty-five shillings as from the day of the accident.

In the case of James Crebbin, the Institution has paid his medical ex- penses, given him a gratuity of £50, and made him an allowance of one pound a week for life, this being the average amount of his weekly earnings..