FRENCH TRAWLER TOWED OFF ROCKS St. Ives, Cornwall. At 6.17 on the morning of the 4th January, 1962, the coastguard informed the honorary secretary that the motor trawler Gai Floreal of Dieppe was in difficulties three miles west of St. Ives Head. The life-boat Edgar, George, Orlando and Eva Child was launched at 6.45 in a light north-easterly wind and a slight swell. The tide was half ebb. The lifeboat went alongside the trawler, which was ashore on rocks at Porthzennor Cove, at 7.20. The trawler's master declined to leave his ship, and the lifeboat stood by. Soon afterwards the shore life-saving apparatus teams arrived, and seven of the trawler's crew of sixteen were taken off by them, one man injuring his leg.

As the floodtide made, the trawler drove further on to the rocks, and when she was almost afloat the lifeboat coxswain laid out one of the trawler's anchors as a kedge, but this did not hold and the trawler drifted further inshore. The coxswain again laid out a kedge anchor, and this second attempt to heave the trawler off was also unsuccessful. A further attempt was made to tow the trawler off, but by this time she had drifted half her length further inshore and her propeller was foul of the rocks and could not be used.

After a quarter of an hour the life-boat managed to tow the trawler clear, and she was able to proceed under her own power to St. Ives with a member of the life-boat's crew on board to act as pilot.

The life-boat reached her station at 3.30 in the afternoon..