JANUARY 25TH. - CROMER, NORFOLK.

In the early morning of the 22nd January,the S.S. Meriones, of Liverpool, stranded on the Haisborough Sands three-quarters of a mile east by north of the South Middle Haisborough Buoy. She was a vessel of 9,500 tons, and was bound for Hull to complete loading before sailing for Australia.

She had 101 men on board, crew and stevedores, many of them Chinese. She also had two racehorses on board. The life-boat station knew nothing of this until, at 9 at night on the 24th January, a request came for the coxswain to go to Great Yarmouth to discuss with the chief salvage officer the possibility of salving the vessel. This he did next morning, and with the salvage officer went out in the salvage tug Richard Lee Barber to examine the steamer. With them went the marine superintendent of the China Mutual Steam Navigation Co., the owners of the Meriones. The tug was taking out salvage pumps, as the steamer’s No. 6 hold was full of water. A moderate E.N.E. wind was blowing, with a moderate sea. The weather was overcast and misty, and it was very cold.

As the tug was approaching the sands, the steamer was attacked by German aeroplanes, but they were driven off by other ships in the neighbourhood, and the marine superintendent immediately sent a wireless call from the tug for the Cromer life-boat. This was not the first attack. One had been made at 2.15 in the afternoon, when one of the steamer’s gunners was wounded, and a third was made at four o’clock, but although the bombs fell very near the steamer no damage was done, and no one, besides the gunner, was hurt. Altogether 23 bombs were dropped in three attacks.

The message for help was received at Cromer at 3.16 P.M., and at 3.34 the No. 1 motor life-boat H. F. Bailey was launched with the second-coxswain in command. She reached the Meriones about 6.30 in the evening and at once took on board from the tug her own coxswain. She also took the marine superintendent off the tug and put him on board the steamer. She then stood by. Meanwhile the wind and sea had been increasing, and after some time the Meriones hailed her. It had been decided to abandon ship, for by this time the crew had been washed out of their quarters and the two horse-boxes had broken loose.

There was a rough, broken sea on the sands where the Meriones lay, and through this the life-boat went in the darkness, and got under the steamer’s lee. Ropes were thrown to her to make her fast alongside. They were 4-inch ropes, and in the rise and fall of the seas they broke so often that the life-boat had to wait until two larger ropes were thrown to her, one 6-inch and the other 9-inch. With these the life-boat made fast, and the work of rescue began. Several oil-bags were lowered on the water from the steamer to flatten out the seas, but it was not an unmixed help, for each time a sea broke over the life-boat it coated her decks with oil until it was almost impossible to move about on them.

So, in the darkness, the work of rescue went on until the life-boat had taken off about half the steamer’s crew. She put them on board the naval tug St. Mullion, whichhad anchored outside the sands, returned to the steamer and made fast again. She meant now to take off the remainder of the crew, but when she had got 40 of them on board the 9-inch and 6-inch ropes parted, so she took the men already rescued to the tug Richard Lee Barber, which was anchored inside the sands. Again she made fast alongside, and rescued eight officers who alone remained of the 101 men. Before they left the steamer they shot the two horses. It was then one o’clock in the morning. The lifeboat had now on board, besides her own crew, the eight officers of the Meriones, the ship’s doctor and an injured man on a stretcher. The coxswain set a course for the Cockle Gat, but in the darkness, which was now increased by rain and sleet, the coxswain was not certain of his position, and knowing that a heavy sea was running, both on the shore and on the surrounding sandbanks he thought it more prudent to anchor until daylight. There the life-boat waited, in the bitter cold, for 5 1/2 hours. As the light came the coxswain was able to fix his position as two miles north of Winterton Steeple, and the life-boat made for Yarmouth, where she arrived at 10.15. There the life-boat learned that, as soon as day came, the Meriones had again been attacked from the air and this time had been set on fire, but that afterwards the aeroplane had been shot down by H.M.T. Galvani. After a meal the crew left for Cromer by motor bus, arriving home at 2.15 in the afternoon of the 26th. The easterly swell, which made it impossible for the life-boat to get on her slipway at Cromer, continued for several days, and it was not until the afternoon of January 30th that the life-boat was back again at her station.

The flag officer in command at Great Yarmouth expressed his appreciation of the life-boat’s work. The rescued crew made a collection among themselves and each member of the life-boat’s crew received a gift of money. The Liverpool and London Underwriters, through the owners, made a gift to the Institution of £25 10s.

It was a long and very arduous service, in bad weather and bitter cold, and the Institution made an increase in the usual money reward on the standard scale to each member of the crew. Standard rewards to crew and helpers, £61 6s. 6d. ; additional rewards to crew, £28 ; total rewards, £89 6s. 6d.