ON the night of the 25th of October, 1949, a whole northerly gale was blow- ing at Holyhead with violent squalls at forty and fifty miles an hour. The sea was very rough; the night dark with heavy squalls of rain.

A small Liverpool steamer, the May- flower, with a crew of seven, had anchored off Salt Island Point. The gale was then blowing from the north- west, but it flew round to the north- east. The Mayflower was riding to a single anchor and when the wind changed it began to drag. At 1.40 in the morning the coastguard rang up the life-boat station. The Mayflower had gone ashore on Salt Island Point.

At five minutes past two the reserve life-boat M.O.Y.E., on temporary duty at the station, was launched, and in ten minutes she reached the Mayflower and found her on the rocky spit of Salt Island with her stern to the gale. The coastguard at the look-out turned his searchlight on the steamer, and in its light the life-boat moved in to the steamer. The steamer gave her no lee to shelter in, and with the tide ebbing, it was increasingly dangerous so near the rocks, but the coxswain took the life-boat right alongside her, turning the life-boat so that she lay head to wind and held her there while seven of the steamer's crew jumped in her.

The chief engineer of the Mayflower was still drawing his fires, and the master would not leave him. As the tide was falling, and as the coastguard had rigged a breeches buoy on shore, the life-boat did not wait, but left the steamer about a quarter to three, and the master and engineer were rescued later by the coastguard.

It was a rescue carried out with great skill in a heavy gale, and the Institution made the following rewards: To COXSWAIN RICHARD JONES, a clasp to the bronze medal, which he won in 1943, with a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum and framed; To MAcDoNALD HADDOW, reserve motor mechanic, who had been in the service of the Institution only three and a half months and in charge of the engines of this life-boat only one month, the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum; To the coxswain and each member of the crew a special reward of one pound in addition to the reward of one pound on the ordinary scale; ordin- ary rewards: £7 10s.; special rewards, £7; total rewards, £14 10s..