A STRONG south-westerly gale was blowing on the Sussex coast on the morning of Sunday, the 8th of August. The sea was very rough and there was a heavy swell.

Just after half past eight the coastguard at Shoreham Harbour saw a yacht three miles out at sea. Her sails were torn and the gale was driving her eastwards along the coast, out of control.

At 8.42 the coastguard rang up the life-boat station, and at 9.15 the motor life-boat Rosa Woodd and Phyllis Lunn was launched. She crossed the bar in heavy breaking seas, and then, hoisting sail to help her engines, settled down to a long, hard chase. The yacht was the Gull, of about fourteen tons.

She had on board three men, two women and a boy.

A Long Chase The chase continued for fourteen miles, until the yacht reached Newhaven.

The wind had now backed to the south and was blowing dead on shore. When the Gull reached the western arm of Newhaven Harbour she was about five hundred yards out at sea, with the pursuing life-boat lying about a hundred yards behind her. She made a desperate attempt to enter the harbour, but, as she gybed, the seas washed right over her. They left her a waterlogged wreck, and she drifted eastwards of the harbour entrance into shallow, broken water. Here she managed to anchor, but the «able parted.

Nothing could now save her from being driven ashore.

The seas were tremendous; the risk of the life-boat herself striking in that shallow water were great; but the coxswain took her straight into the surf.

As he did so a sea smothered the lifeboat and he thought that he had lost half his crew. But they came safely through, and he laid her along the weather side of the Gull. Lifeboatmen seized and dragged aboard five of the six on board. There was still one man left. The life-boat went in a second time and rescued him. It had been done in the nick of time, for the crew of the yacht could not have long survived the pounding of the seas.

" A Pretty Piece of Work " Many people at Newhaven were anxiously watching the rescue. Among them was the honorary secretary of the Newhaven station. He saw it all through his binoculars and wrote of the coxswain: "His timing and approach were wonderful to watch, and the whole job, carried out as it was in severe conditions in a bad position with very little water, was indeed a pretty piece of work." The life-boat landed the six rescued people at Newhaven, and arrived back at Shoreham Harbour at 3.30 in the afternoon. She had been out for seven hours.

The owner of the yacht made gifts of £25 to the crew and £25 to the funds of the Institution "as a small tribute to the services rendered by the Institution and to the skill and courage of the life-boat crew." The Shoreham Bonfire Association presented the coxswain and each of the seven members of the crew with £5.

For this very skilful and gallant rescue the Institution awarded to COXSWAIN JAMES UPPERTON a bar to the silver medal which he won during the war for rescuing twenty-one lives from a mine-sweeper, and its thanks on vellum to each of the other seven members of the crew.—Rewards, £15 13s. 6d..