AT 2.45 in the afternoon of the 3rd of April, 1949, the Pilot House at Irvine, Ayrshire, telephoned to Troon, three and a half miles to the south, that a vessel was ashore on the north side of Irvine Bar. She was the s.s. Christina Dawn, of Gloucester, and was bound from Port Talbot to Irvine with a crew of nine and a cargo of carbide. A strong south-south-west wind was blowing with a heavy sea. As the steamer was entering the harbour she was hit by a squall and blown right over a bank of stones on the north side of the channel.

Her propeller and rudder were torn off, and she grounded in the shallower water on the other side of the bank.

She was holed and making water, and her master decided to abandon her, expecting that the cargo of carbide would explode.

The life-boat, Sir David Richmond of Glasgow, was launched at 3.10 and twenty minutes later reached the steamer. Her coxswain and crew knew when they went of the risk of explosion.

The coxswain anchored and veered the life-boat down on her cable over the bank of stones, taking frequent soundings with a boat hook. Because of the shallow water and the steep seas he could not go under the steamer's lee, but came alongside on the windward side. There the life-boat was rising and falling considerably on the seas, and it was only with difficulty that eight of the nine men jumped into her. The ninth fell into the sea, but was hauled aboard. The life-boat landed the men at Irvine at 4.15 and reached Troon again at five o'clock. Later the steamer's cargo did explode.

It was a rescue very promptly carried out by fine seamanship, and the Insti- tution awarded its thanks inscribed on vellum to Coxswain Arthur Pearce. It also awarded to the coxswain, crew and sliore signalmen £6 6s. The owners of the steamer gave 25 guineas to the Institution..