At 4.12 a.m. on 24th January, 1972, the Flamborough coastguard told Mr. Arthur Dick, the honorary secretary, Bridllngton, that the m.f.v. My Susanne was sending out radio messages requesting life-boat assistance, as her engine was broken down, and even though her anchor was down, it was not holding and the vessel was drifting on to a lee shore.

The maroons were fired at 4.28. At this time a further message was received that the casualty had sent a radio message that she was grounding a quarter of a mile off Sewerby beach.

The Bridlington life-boat William Henry and Mary King, which is a 37-foot Oakley, was launched, the wind being southerly, force 7, causing a rough sea and breakers along the shore-line. She went in a north easterly direction towards Sewerby beach and at 4.45 a.m. the deck lights of the casualty were sighted under the cliffs. The life-boat was brought up in a position off the casualty and rounded head to sea clear of the broken water in which the My Susanne lay.

A parachute illuminating flare was fired so that the situation could be assesed.

The coastline in this position runs in an east south east to west south west direction and the beach shoals very gradually to seaward, consisting of sand, rock outcrops and occasional boulders.

It was seen that the casualty lay with her head in a north by east direction. Bearing in mind that the tide was on the turn and starting to flood and that to attempt to take off the crew by breeches buoy would entail dragging them through shallow tumbling seas, Coxswain John King decided to attempt to tow the boat off before she started to break up, thus saving the crew. It could be seen that the casualty lay too far from the shore for a breeches buoy rescue by the Coastguard.

The life-boat was anchored to seaward and to the eastward of the casualty and veered down towards the casualty on the anchor cable. Wind was from a south by west direction, force 7, with gusts of force 8. The sea was rough and a swell was breaking heavily round the My Susanne and to seaward in the shoal water. The life-boat veered back into the breaking water, pitching violently to the breaking seas which were 7 to 8 feet between trough and crest. Seas were breaking over the bows of the life-boat and the three crew members tending the anchor cable.

When veered to within 100 yards of the casualty a rocket line was fired across My Susanne. At this stage the echo sounder was showing no reading, and the life-boat's keel struck the ground heavily several times. A plaited warp was quickly passed from the fishing boat's starboard bow and made fast on board the life-boat. Then the engines were put ahead. During this time radio contact had been kept with the casualty. She was asked to slack away the towline to allow the life-boat into deeper water.

The towing attempt was made from the bow of the fishing boat owing to the fact that she was deep drafted aft and light drafted forward.

After a short period of towing by the life-boat the casualty's head began to move, and gradually she was towed around to a southerly heading through an easterly heading. At this point the life-boat's anchor began to drag and the life-boat was swept westward by the increasing tide.

Gun lines were attached to the towing warp and then it was slipped, the life-boat proceeding to seaward and relaying her anchor further out, then veering back again. The tow warp was recovered and made fast at 6.47 a.m.

By this time the trawler had broached broadside on to the beach, having been swung round by the tide and sea, and she was lying rolling and grinding her bilges on the rocky bottom, sometimes lying almost on her beam ends.

The casualty was gradually pulled round again until she was heading in a southerly direction, and during this process the skipper of My Susanne expressed concern for the safety of his crew and thought the boat was lost. However, Coxswain King duly reassured him. While being [hove round, the fishing boat was hammered by seas and constantly thrown beam ends on to the sea.

With the casualty's head to seaward and the tide rising, the life-boat now went full ahead in an attempt to free the fishing boat. The casualty by now had been able to start her ownengine, and with this added help, at 7.35 a.m., the life-boat pulled her clear, shortening up her anchor cable as she did so.

With the relief of getting off, the fishing boat kept coming ahead and passed close along the port side of the life-boat, altering course to starboard across her bows. This took the tow rope under the life-boat and fouled her port propeller. The port engine was stopped immediately and the casualty let go her own tow rope.

This move was completely unexpected as it had been arranged by radio that the casualty would wait until the life-boat recovered her anchor and lay to her tow.

The life-boat now weighed anchor and proceeded on her starboard engine. At 7.77 a.m.

My Susanne requested that the life-boat escort her into harbour as her engine was running very roughly and might fail. After seeing her safely into harbour through a confused sea at the harbour entrance, the life-boat returned to the beach at 8.14 a.m. She was re-housed and placed on service just before 9 o'clock that morning.

For this service Coxswain King was awarded a bar to his bronze medal for gallantry. The remainder of the crew received medal service certificates.

No. 4 Life-boat Area Skilful ILB Rescue off Southwold SHORTLY before 10 a.m. on 6th February, 1972, Mr. Patrick Pile, a member of the Southwold inshore life-boat crew, walked to the end of the harbour mouth. The wind was east south east, force 6, and gusting beyond. Visibility was four to five miles. The weather was overcast with rain squalls, and it was two hours after low water. As he walked back from the harbour pier, Mr. Pile saw a small fibre-glass dingy, driven by an outboard motor, heading out of the harbour with four or five people on board.

Having seen the heavy seas breaking across the southern end of the shoal over which he knew they must pass, Mr. Pile decided at once that they were heading for trouble. He returnedquickly to his car and drove to the ILB house a quarter of a mile away to prepare to launch.

On arrival he saw another member of the ILB crew, Mr. Martin Helmer, and told him he thought the inshore life-boat was going to be needed. Mr. Helmer immediately joined him and started to dress for the anticipated launch, while Mr. Pile telephoned the coastguard.

Even as he did so, however, he saw a car approaching at high speed from the direction of the harbour mouth, and, by the time the driver had wound down his window and shouted 'They've turned over', Mr. Pile and Mr. Helmer were launching the ILB. The time was 10.13 a.m.

As they left the river and headed into the sea, Mr. Hclmer stood up in the bows, holding on to the bridle, and searched for the upturned dingy.

He sighted it about 300 yards south east of the harbour and about 300 yards off Walberswick beach. As Mr. Pile steered the ILB in the direction indicated, a body was seen floating face downwards.

He took the ILB alongside and held her head to the sea while Mr. Helmer, with what must have been a super-human effort, managed to heave the unconscious 18-year-old man on board.

As he did so, Mr. Pile, who is a qualified firstaider, leaned forward and punched the victim in the stomach in an effort to induce vomiting.

This appeared to succeed to some extent, but the man remained unconcious in the bottom of the boat as it headed towards the next survivor, who was seen to be floating face upwards 50 yards away. This body, like the first, was apparentlybeing held afloat by air trapped in the anoraktype jacket.

Before they reached him, Mr. Helmer spotted another body lying face down, and so course was altered to recover this one first. Mr. Pile had to leave the tiller to help Mr. Helmer with hauling him in and the boat was left at the mercy of the breaking seas. She turned broadside on to the waves as the two men struggled to get the 16- year-old boy aboard. The ILB shipped much water as they tried to make the boy vomit and start him breathing. As with the first man, some water was emitted but no further sign of life could be produced. The two lay in the bottom of the boat with their faces blue black, to all appearances dead.

Then further attention to the first two had to be abandoned while they turned the ILB back to the casualty who was face upwards in the water. He was pulled in with waves breaking high over the ILB. He was a 13-year-old boy who appeared to be still conscious but unable to speak.

Mr. Pile was not sure how many had been aboard the dinghy although he felt sure it was more than three. He was on the point of deciding to head for the beach to try to save those he had, when another body was sighted 50 yards away, face downwards. He turned the ILB towards it, but a sea broke over the body and it disappeared when the boat still had 15 yards to go. As the ILB turned again for the beach another sea broke and the man's body re-appeared. This man was subsequently estimated to have weighed nearly 18 stone but, in spite of their exhausted condition, Mr. Helmer and Mr. Pile managed to get him aboard.

The boat was now filled to the gunwales with water and it was hardly possible to keep the faces of the victims out of it. In this condition the boat was also sluggish and Mr. Pile was faced with the choice of attempting the comparatively long return to harbour, where help would be plentiful, or of making a run for the nearest beach which he knew meant a delay in the arrival of an ambulance or professional help.

Looking ashore he saw two local fishermen on Walberswick beach and a further glance at the four bodies in the bottom of the ILB confirmed his opinion that this was their only chance. He drove the swamped ILB as fast as she would go for the shore, and she grounded some 12 yards off.

The two Walberswick fishermen, Mr. Dinks Cooper and Mr. Fred Eades, hurried to the assistance of the exhausted ILB crew. They and Mr. Helmer started carrying all four inert bodies through the surf and up the beach, while Mr.

Pile stayed with the boat until the last body was landed. After he left the ILB to climb the beach and start the artificial respiration efforts, the boat was capsized by a heavy breaking sea.Mr. Cooper vas asked to go for more help and the ambulance, while Mr. Eade helped the crew in their attempts to restore life to the victims, all four of whom were still blue black in the face and only one of whom was thought to be still alive.

Neither Mr. Pile nor Mr. Helrner had time to don their full protective clothing, and Mr.

Helmer had at times been working with his head and shoulders under water when recovering the bodies. Both men were thoroughly wet and were now feeling extremely cold in the high wind. Although completely exhausted the pair drove themselves with sheer determination to do all in their power to restore life before they themselves collapsed.

Mr. Pile said he used the Holgcr-Neilsen method to pump the water out of the victims first, as neither had enough breath to give mouth to mouth resuscitation.

The youngest boy responded fairly quickly and the 16-year-old was revived a few minutes later. Mr. Helmer and Mr. Eades followed up Mr. Pile's resuscitation with massage of the extremities to restore circulation. Then Mr.

Eades and Mr. Cooper, who had now returned, carried them up the beach behind the dunes to give them some protection from the wind.

The 18-year-old man was in an even worse condition and repeatedly stopped breathing after he had apparently been restored. The rescuers tore the door off a nearby shed to make a stretcher to carry him up the beach and behind the shelter of the dunes, where they continued their efforts, including cardiac massage. After a half-hour of almost continuous artificial respiration and massage regular breathing was at last resumed. The remaining man, who was the 42-year-old father of the two youngest boys, could not be revived.

The ambulance arrived just as the ILB crew succeeded in restoring regular breathing to the 18-year-old. The crew of the Coltishall R.A.F.

helicopter, which landed on the beach moments later, were told that they could not be sure everyone had been picked up. The helicopter carried out a thorough search but without result.

The four from the dinghy were given oxygen in the ambulance, but the older man was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. There proved to have been five people in the dinghy when it was upset.

None of those recovered was wearing a life-jacket, although some life-jackets were eventually washed ashore with the boat. According to one witness, the survivors attempted to climb on to the upturned hull at first but were quickly swept off by the seas. It is believed, too, that the drowned 42-year-old father spent sometime holding his youngest son afloat before he himself succumbed.

The bronze medal of the R.N.L.I, was awarded to Mr. Pile and Mr. Helmer for their gallantry. Framed letters of thanks signed by the Chairman, Cmdr. F. R. H. Swann, have been sent to Mr. Cooper and Mr. Eades for their part in the rescue.

No. 6 Life-boat Area AMBULANCE CALL WHEN on 16th January, 1972, a Russian fish factory ship, anchored 30 miles west of Guernsey, requested assistance to take off a sick man requiring hospital treatment, the St. Peter Port, Guernsey, life-boat went out.

At 5.30 a.m. the life-boat The Princess Royal (Civil Service No. 7), on temporary duty at the station, slipped her moorings in astrongsoutherly gale and a very rough sea. It was two hours to high water. With a doctor and two St. John Ambulance Brigade members on board, the life-boat met the fish factory vessel Robert Eykhe 12 miles north west of St. Peter Port.

At 6.50 a.m. the life-boat went alongside the vessel but it was evident that the Russians did not want anybody to go aboard. The sick man, suffering from peritonitis, was strapped in a stretcher and lowered on a pallet by the ship's derrick. There was a rise and fall in the tide of about 10 feet but the stretcher was taken off the pallet and put in the life-boat cockpit.

The doctor was then hoisted by the pallet to the Russian vessel for a short talk with the ship's woman doctor. Afterwards the life-boat sailed for St. Sampson's where the sick man was taken by ambulance to hospital. She returned to her station at 7.10 p.m.

No. 6 Life-boat Area TRAPPED ON ROCKS AT 4 p.m. on 27th] May, 1972, Mr. Edmund Philip Le Clercq saw four people trapped by the rising tide in a gully off La Rocque harbour, Jersey.

The wind was westerly, force 8, and the sea was confused. Mr. Le Clercq, accompanied by Centenier Stanley Le Brun, launched a dinghy and pulled out to his 24-foot fishing boat Daddy on a mooring in La Rocque harbour.

It took only a few minutes to make the passage of 600 yards to where two men and a woman were in the water. They were standing on rocks up to their shoulders in swirling water, suffering from exhaustion and in grave danger of being swept away by a combination of a westerly gale and a two knot spring tide.

With difficulty Mr. Le Clercq manoeuvred the Daddy among the rocks and while the three people clung to the side of the boat they were hauled aboard. A few yards away the other missing woman was sighted and she too was hauled aboard to be given immediate artificial respiration.

In the meantime the fire station Zodiac had launched to give assistance and the four survivors were transferred to it in order that they could be landed in the harbour. Unfortunately the last woman recovered failed to respond to treatment.

For his prompt action Mr. Le Clercq has received the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum. A certificate to commemorate his part in the rescue has been sent to Mr. Le Brun.