MARCH 20TH. - COVERACK, CORNWALL.

During the evening the honorary secretary of the station and the coxswain had under observation a steamer which was approaching from the east, as aeroplanes could be heard in the distance apparently coming from the French coast. Two German aeroplanes appeared, passed over the steamer and dropped five bombs on her. She was then three miles south-east of Dolor Point.

As soon as it was seen that she was hit, the motor life-boat The Three Sisters was launched. It was 7.42 in the evening. A light easterly wind was blowing and the sea was choppy. The vessel was the Polish steamer Cieszyn, of Gdynia, bound from Falmouth to Swansea. She had a crew of 25 and two English armed guards. They left the steamer at once and took to the ship’s boat. The aeroplanes then machine- gunned them. The lifeboat reached the ship’s boat just as the steamer herself sank. It was then 8.15. Some of the steamer’s crew were taken on board the life-boat, and one of the life-boat’s crew was put into the steamer’s boat, and it was taken in tow.

A good many of the 27 men rescued had been in the sea, and when they were landed at 8.42 were suffering from wet and cold. Some of them were also injured, two sufficiently seriously to be taken by ambulance to Helston Cottage Hospital. The rest were supplied with dry clothing by the Shipwrecked Mariners Society and sent the same night to Falmouth. - Rewards, £15 8s. 6d.