Margate, Kent.—At 7.27 on the even- ing of the 29th of August, 1953, the coastguard rang up to say that three men in a boat were in difficulties off Foreness Point and were drifting out to sea. At 7.30 the life-boat North Foreland, Civil Service No. XI was launched in a choppy sea, with a fresh south-westerly breeze blowing and heavy rain. She found the local motor boat Atta Boy a mile north of North Foreland. The three men, one of whom was seventy, were exhausted by trying to pull the boat to the shore, so the life-boat rescued them and gave them rum. The life-boat then towed the Atta Boy to Walpole Bay, where the two younger men, helped by the life-boatmen, took the boat ashore.

The elderly man was still exhausted, and the life-boat took him to Margate, reaching her station again at 9.15.—• Rewards, £8 16s..