THE portrait on the cover is of Coxswain John Boyle, of Arranmore, on the west coast of Ireland. He has been cox- swain since October, 1928, and is one of the seven coxswains who won the gold medal for conspicuous gallantry during the war of 1939. He won it in December, 1940, when he went out twenty-five miles in a full Atlantic gale to the help of a Dutch steamer.

She was one of a convoy from America, had lost her rudder as the convoy approached the Irish coast, and had been flung on a reef..