FISHING VESSEL ON FIRE Fleetwood, Lancashire.—At 3.0 in the afternoon of the 6th of July, 1947, a message was received from the Wyre Lighthouse that a motor fishing vessel, the Wyvern, of Ramsgate, bound for Fleetwood, was making distress signals in the shallows of Pilling Sands. The motor life-boat Ann Letitia Russell was having her engines overhauled, but she was launched at 3.25 on one engine, in a moderate west-north-west gale, with a heavy sea. The Wyvern''s engine had broken down, she had rapidly drifted into the shallows and there her crew set fire to fishing nets as a distress signal, and in doing so set fire also to their vessel. When the life-boat arrived she found the flames spreading rapidly in the gale, and the three people on board—one of them the owner's wife -—were exhausted. The life-boatmen attempted, without success, to put out the fire, so she rescued the three people and brought them to Fleetwood, arriv- ing at 4.5 that afternoon.—Rewards, £9 12s. 6d..