GOLD MEDAL SERVICE AT THE HUMBER FEBRUARY 12TH. - THE HUMBER, YORKSHIRE. During the evening there was bitter winter weather on the Humber. A strong north-north-east wind was blowing on shore, with squalls at gale force. Snow was falling heavily and continuously. The night was pitch dark. It was very cold.

At 6.30 a message reached The Humber life-boat station, through the Donna Nook coastguard, that the Royal Naval Signal Station had seen flares east-south-east of Donna Nook.

The life-boat City of Bradford II was launched. Owing to illness Coxswain Robert Cross had only five men with him in the boat, instead of the usual crew of seven. On such a night these two men could ill be spared.

The coxswain set a course which would take him just outside the Haile Buoy. When he reached the buoy he saw a glimmer of light to the southward, and steering towards it found the steam trawler Gurth, of Grimsby, returning from the fishing grounds with nine men on board. She was drifting rapidly towards the shore.

She struck. The surf swept over her and her stern disappeared.

As the life-boat drew near, the coxswain realised that if he approached the trawler from the starboard side, where he would get a slight lee, the flood tide, which was running across the seas, would carry him on top of her.

On the other hand, if he anchored to windward and dropped down on hiscable before the gale, the tide, running at right angles to it, would carry him off his course. Nevertheless he anchored to windward. He anchored 160 yards away from the trawler: and with his engines working slowly began to move stern first towards her. The seas followed him. When he thought that one would break on the life-boat he called on the mechanic to go full speed ahead to meet it, and rode over it before it broke. The bowman was tending the cable. As the heavy seas made it impossible for him to stand up forward to do this, two tums of the cable were taken round the samson post and two more round the bollard in the foreward cockpit. This enabled the bowman to work the cable from the cockpit.

The seas were breaking continuously over the life-boat. Both cockpits were full to the top of the combing, and the motor-mechanic, standing in the after cockpit at his engine controls, was only just able to keep his chin above water.

Repeatedly the men were thrown down on the deck by the seas. They were bruised and shaken, but, by clinging to the hand-rails, they just succeeded in keeping themselves from being washed overboard.

The coxswain dropped down until the life-boat was almost in the surf.

But the tide had carried her 150 yards down the coast. She was almost as far from the trawler as when she had anchored. The coxswain told the second motor-mechanic to make a line fast to the cable and to bring it to the starboard after bollard. The life-boat was now held fore and aft. The cable itself held her head on to the seas, but by hauling on the quarter line the coxswain could bring her beam on to the seas and head on to the tide, so that she could steam up against the tide towards the wreck. This was a device which Coxswain Cross had often used with great success. These arrangements made, the coxswain told the second-coxswain and the one remaining member of his crew to stand forward and be ready to seize the men on the wreck as the life-boat came along side.

It was now that the two absent members of the crew were most missed.The motor-mechanic was alone at the engine-controls. The coxswain was alone at the wheel. There was not even a man free to work the searchlight.

In pitch darkness the coxswain must watch for his chance to get alongside the wreck It was now 8.15.

By working the engines and by hauling on the cable and on the line, the coxswain succeeded in nosing the bow of the life-boat against the tide up to the forecastle of the trawler.

One of the trawler’s crew was pulled aboard by the two men waiting to rescue them. Then the life-boat had to go astern again. Again and again the coxswain brought her up to the trawler in the same way. Several times the seas, lifting her higher than the trawler, nearly flung her on board, and the coxswain had to go hard astern. to get clear, without rescuing anyone Even when he could get to her, he could only hold the lifeboat there long enough for one man at a time to be taken off. Then the whole thing had to be done over again.

After twenty such attempts, which had taken an hour, six men had been rescued. Then the life-boat’s port engine stopped. A rope had been washed out of the after-cockpit and had got round the propeller.

It was impossible to attempt to clear it, and with only one engine running the coxswain - his confidence unshaken. although the danger was doubled - went on with the work.

There were still three men to be rescued. Several attempts were made before, one by one, they were taken off, and in the course of them the life-host’s bow fender and its iron support were carried away ; the port wale was split ; the stem-head fitting, which carries the cable, was broken.

Then the difficult business began of taking the lifeboat out of the broken water, with only one engine working.

The line attached to the cable was let go and her stern swung towards the shore. Before she could move seawards her stern hit the bottom several times. Her rudder was split and the whole stern post was started ; but the rudder could still be worked. Severely damaged, but under control, the lifeboat moved out to her anchor, whichwas weighed. When she was well clear of the broken water, the scuttle above the port propeller was lifted, and the rope was cut away with a knife which Coxswain Cross himself had invented. It took ten minutes.

With both engines working the lifeboat then made for Grimsby. She arrived there at 10.35. She had been out for three and a half hours and the actual rescue had taken an hour and a quarter. The honorary secretary at Grimsby, who welcomed the two crews, found the life-boatmen much more exhausted than the men rescued from the trawler. They were suffering badly from bruises and exposure. The life-boat herself had not made an inch of water, but outside she looked, as one eye-witness described it, “ like a battle-scarred warrior “.

In the opinion of the Institution the courage, endurance and skill of the coxswain were beyond praise, and the unfailing confidence of his crew in him, and their unhesitating obedience to his every order, enabled them, shorthanded though they were, to carry out successfully one of the most difficult and gallant rescues in the history of the Life-boat Service.

The Institution made the following awards : To COXSWAIN ROBERT CROSS, the gold medal for conspicuous gallantry and a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum ; To J. MAJOR, the motor-mechanic, the silver medal for gallantry and a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum ; To each of the other four members of the crew, SECOND-COXSWAIN W. R.

JENKINSON, the bowman, W. J. T.

HOOD, the second motor-mechanic, S. CROSS, and S. HOOPELL, the bronze medal for gallantry.

The life-boatmen of The Humber are a permanent paid crew, but the Institution made a special award of £10 to each of the six men.

Total rewards to crew and helpers, £60 18s.

Coxswain Cross was also awarded the George Medal..