DECEMBER 21ST. - SWANAGE, AND WEYMOUTH, DORSET. At 10.27 in the morning the Swanage coastguard telephoned that the naval officer in charge at Poole wished the Swanage life-boat to go to the help of an escort vessel which had capsized three miles south of Durleston Head. A strong and increasing south-west wind was blowing, with a heavy sea, and visibility was very poor at times. The Swanage motor life-boat ThomasMarkby was launched at 10.45 and reached the vessel half an hour later. She found her to be Chasseur 5, a chaser of the French naval forces. She had been escorting a submarine when she capsized, and the submarine was standing by. Three of the chaser’s crew were clinging to the keel, two of them exhausted.

It was only by skilful seamanship that they were rescued. Four more were rescued by the submarine, but others of the crew of twenty-three were trapped in the vessel. They could be seen looking through an open porthole. In that heavy sea and with no tools to break into the chaser the life-boat could do nothing to help them. She returned to Swanage, first arranging with the submarine to pump oil on the sea. She landed the rescued men at noon, and put out again at 12.52, with saws and axes, but she arrived to find that the submarine was under way. The chaser had sunk at 12.55.

The life-boat station at Weymouth had also been informed, and after consultation with the coastguard the honorary secretary sent out the William and Clara Ryland at one o’clock, but recalled her by wireless and she returned to her station again at 2.45.

The Commander-in-Chief of the French Naval Forces in the United Kingdom thanked the Swanage life-boat crew, and the flag-officer-in-charge at Portland expressed appreciation of the work of the crews of both life-boats. - Rewards, Swanage, £12 5s. ; Weymouth, £5 14s.

In 1946 the French Government awarded medals to Coxswain R. C. BROWN, A. CHINCHEN, mechanic, W. E. NINEHAM, bowman, and life-boatmen F. POND, A. DYKE.

and C. BROWN ; the French Life-boat Society awarded a silver gilt medal to the coxswain, and bronze medals to the mechanic and bowman ; and the Academy of Political and Moral Science, Institut de France, Paris, presented 1,000 francs each to the coxswain, mechanic and bowman, and to Sir Godfrey Baring, Bt., chairman of the Institution, the medal of the Berthault Foundation..