FOUR WOMEN AND A DOG TAKEN OFF YACHT Margate, Kent. At 7.47 on the evening of the 8th July, 1962, the coastguard informed the honorary secretary that a yacht had fired two distress signals off Botany Bay. The life-boat North Foreland (Civil Service No. 11) was launched in a moderate east-south-easterly wind and a rough sea. The tide was half ebb.

A helicopter was also summoned and hovered over the yacht until the lifeboat arrived. The life-boat reached the motor yacht Lady Molly of Rochester at 8.25 and found two men, four women and a dog on board her. The yacht had engine trouble and was about two hundred yards from the rocks. She was lying broadside on to the seas, and the yacht's owner asked the coxswain to take his wife and three daughters on board the life-boat as they were very distressed. With difficulty the coxswain brought the life-boat alongside the Lady Molly, and the four women and the dog were taken on board. The life-boat's second coxswain and another member of the crew were put on board the yacht to help the owner to heave his anchor up and connect a tow line. Meanwhile the women, who were suffering from shock, were wrapped in blankets and made comfortable in the life-boat's cabin, and a message was sent by radiotelephone asking for a doctor to meet the life-boat at Ramsgate. The life-boat took the yacht in tow and brought her to Ramsgate, arriving at 9.45. A doctor who was waiting took care of the four women, and the yacht was berthed safely alongside the quay. The life-boat finally reached her station at 3.40 in the morning.