New Brighton, Cheshire.—At 1.40 on the afternoon of the 16th of February, 1956, the Formby coastguard rang up to say that a message had been received from the port radar station that the M.V. Indus had collided with the Dock Board hopper Mersey No. 24 near New Brighton stage. The collision was seen from the life-boat station, and at 1.50 the life-boat Norman B.

Corlett put out. There was a swell and a light north-easterly breeze, and it was high water. The life-boat found the hopper, which had a crew of eleven, impaled on the stem of the Indus, which kept her afloat. She was nine hundred feet north-east of Tower buoy. The Indus then went astern, and the hopper listed to starboard and began to sink. A tug had rescued five of her crew, and the life-boat went to her and rescued five more. The skipper remained on the sinking hop- per and tried to pass a line to a salvagevessel, but the hopper sank beneath him and he scrambled to the salvage vessel. The life-boat took the men she had rescued to her station, arriving at3.10.—Rewards to the crew, £7 105.; rewards to the helpers on shore, £l 6s..