RESCUES BY HELICOPTER AND PILOT CUTTER Lytham-St. Anne's, Lancashire. At 3.47 on the afternoon of the 22nd August, 1962, the coastguard informed the motor mechanic that a motor vessel had capsized on the Kibble bar. At 4.12 the life-boat Sarah Townsend Porritt was launched with the second coxswain in command in a westerly gale and a very rough sea. It was one hour before high water. When the life-boat reached the position given she found that the motor vessel Druid of Glasgow had broached to in a heavy following sea at the entrance to the Ribble estuary. Her whole crew of six had been washed overboard.

One man had managed to climb into a life-raft and had been picked up by the Preston pilot cutter. A helicopter from Warton airport had rescued two men who had been clinging to a lifebuoy and had flown them to Warton, where they were taken to hospital. A fourth man had been rescued by another helicopter from the R.A.F. station at Valley, Anglesey.

A fifth man was picked up by the Warton helicopter, which had returned to the position, but as he was unconscious he was lowered into the lifeboat, where artificial respiration was applied by the life-boat crew. In the meantime the life-boat coxswain with a crew of two and a doctor on board had put out in the boarding boat to meet the life-boat. The doctor examined the man who had been lowered by helicopter to the life-boat, but found he was dead. His body was taken ashore in the boarding boat while the life-boat, with the coxswain now in command, continued to search for the sixth man. He was not found, and when darkness fell the life-boat returned to her station, arriving at nine o'clock..