NOVEMBER 18TH. - FILEY, YORKSHIRE.

Just after noon the coastguard reported a vessel not under control one and a half miles east of Filey Brig. A fresh northerly wind was blowing, with a rather rough sea. Both coxswains, with other life-boatmen, were out fishing, but ex-Coxswain R. C. Jenkinson took charge, and at 12.38 in the afternoon the motor life-boat The Cuttle was launched.

Twenty minutes later she reached tank landing craft 898, with a crew of twelve on board, riding to an anchor out astern. A mine unseen by the men on the landing craft was floating only two yards from her. The life-boat men shouted instructions, and the men of the landing craft heaved on her cable and cleared the mine. The landing craft was having difficulty with her engines, but after a life-boatman had been put on board to act as pilot she got under way. The life-boat passed a towing rope from her to the minesweeper Ann Vera, but the rope broke. The minesweeper then fired a line to her by rocket, but this also broke. As the landing craft was now drifting towards rocks off Gristhorpe and in great danger, and as the minesweeper could not follow her the lifeboat went in again and again. She succeeded in passing a rope aboard her, hung on, headed eastwards, pulled her clear of the rocks and towed her right into Scarborough.

The officer-in-charge congratulated the lifeboat crew. He said the landing craft would have been wrecked but for their help. The life-boat returned to her station at 6.15 that evening. - Property salvage case..