JANUARY 17TH. - WELLS, NORFOLK.

At 3.53 P.M. the coastguard reported a small tug disabled and drifting in the Wash. A fresh N.W. wind was blowing, with a rough sea, and the weather was described as ”arctic.” The motor life-boat Royal Silver Jubilee - 1910-l935 was launched at 4.45 P.M, and on reaching Wisbech Channel at 9.30 P.M. searched all likely places but found nothing. Actually the tug was then known to be safe, but efforts to recall the life-boat had been unsuccessful. By an arrangement already made the life-boat then put into King's Lynn to refuel, but the ice was so thick that she could not reach Lynn Dock.

She had to be beached two miles away, and the coxswain walked to King’s Lynn to get the petrol. By this time ice an inch thick had formed all over the life-boat. The coxswain returned with the petrol, only to find that she was fast in the ice and that they could not get out to sea. Instead the life.

boat was carried up the river, in the ice, by the flowing tide, until a tug helped to tow her clear. The life-boat did not reach her station again until 2.45 P.M. on the 18th, twenty-two hours after she had put out.

During all that time her crew had had no food and all were suffering from slight frost bite.

An increase in the usual money award on the standard scale was granted to each member of the crew. - Standard rewards to crew and helpers, £35 15s. ; additional rewards to crew, £14; total rewards, £49 15s.