Barrow, Lancashire.—At eight o'clock on the morning of the 17th of Decem- ber, 1957, the Walney coastguard told the honorary secretary that a man had been seriously injured on board the pilot boat Argus, of Barrow. From a later message it was learnt that the injured man was the assistant mechanic of the life-boat. At 8.15 the life-boat Herbert Leigh was launched, towing a punt, in a choppy sea. There was a gentle south-south-easterly wind, and the tide was ebbing. The life-boat found the Argus aground on Walney bland. Some of the life-boat crew boarded her by means of the punt and learnt that the man had been caught in the propeller shaft while cleaning an obstruction in the bilge pump. He had a broken arm and a broken jaw, and he was suffering from severe shock.

His father, who was in the life-boat crew and had been trained in first aid, treated him, and he was taken ashore on a stretcher to Walney lighthouse.

Meanwhile an ambulance had been directed to the scene, but the man died on the way to hospital. The life-boat reached her station at ten o'clock, and the Argus was refloated on the next tide. Rewards to the crew, £6 5s. ; rewards to the helpers on shore, £2 9s.