OCTOBER 11TH - 12TH. THE MUMBLES, GLAMORGANSHIRE. The frigate Cheboque, of the Royal Canadian Navy, had been torpedoed in the Atlantic eleven hundred miles away, with the loss of one of her crew of forty-three, and severe damage to her stern. She was towed by another ship into the Bristol Channel and anchored in Swansea Bay. Her long peril seemed ended, and the other ship went on her way, but a sudden gale blew up and within a few hours the frigate began to drag her anchors. By now a strong south-westerly gale was blowing, with squalls of hail and heavy breaking seas, and the Cheboque signalled for help. At 7.45 in the evening of October 11th the motor life-boat Edward Prince of Wales was launched and, as the coxswain said, “flew before the gale to the rescue.” She found the Cheboque on the bar off Port Talbot with her stern already aground. It was now pitch dark, with heavy squalls of hail, and the frigate was so smothered in the seas that it was very hard to find her. When the life-boat did find her, the frigate’s captain hailed her and asked if she could take off all his crew of 42 men.

The coxswain shouted back, through the deafening noise of the wind and sea, ”Yes, if they keep their heads.” It was impossible for the life-boat to anchor and drop down on her cable from windward, for it would have fouled the cables of the frigate’s two anchors. It was useless to fire the line-throwing gun, and rig a breeches buoy, for the men of the frigate could never have been hauled safely through that surf. The only thing that the coxswain could do was to take the lifeboat, with that gale behind her, right into the surf, past the frigate, towards the shore, and, turning, come up against the gale alongside her, near enough for the men to jump.

The life-boat could not remain along side for more than a few moments at a time, for the frigate’s bows were swinging to the seas, and the life-boat was one moment high above her forecastle and the next below her waterline.

In those few moments no more than two or three men could jump.

The coxswain circled round and took the life-boat close to the frigate not once but twelve separate times before the last of the 42 men had been rescued. All but three of the men jumped through the darkness and landed safely. Of the other three one fell and broke his leg. The second dropped between the life-boat and the frigate, but the coxswain left his wheel, seized him and dragged him on board before he could be crushed and killed between the two. The third crashed down right on top of the coxswain and bruised him badly against the wheel. It seemed little short of a miracle that that rescue had been carried out without the loss of a single life. The life-boat herself, however, showed how heavily she had been flung by the seas against the frigate, for her chafing rubber, which is a twoinch thickness of tough Canadian Rock Elm, was crushed, splintered or torn away from the side which was nearest the frigate. She also damaged her bow and rudder.

The rescue had taken just an hour and a half, and the life-boat returned to The Mumbles against the gale with the fullest load on board which she could carry in those high and dangerous seas. All the way the coxswain had to nurse her very carefully through them in case any of the men should be washed out of her. The rescued men were landed at The Mumbles, but the life-boat could not be hauled up to her slipway again and there was no shelter where she could lie, so she had to make for Swansea. She arrived there at two in the morning. A quarter of an hour later another call came for her help and she was out again searching for three more hours. When she got to Swansea the second time she had been out during that cold and very stormy night for ten hours, and for the whole of that time Coxswain Gammon himself had been at the wheel.

Shortly afterwards the flag officer-incharge at Cardiff sent the following message : “Please convey to coxswain and crew an expression of my appreciation of what must have been a most exceptionally fine and difficult piece of work.” In a report on the rescue, the naval officer-in-charge at Swansea wrote : “The commanding officer of the frigate and all his officers are unanimous in their admiration of the splendid way in which the life-boat was handled by Coxswain Gammon and say that the whole crew were magnificent.

. . . The way in which the lifeboat crew kept their boat from crushing the officer who fell between the life-boat and the ship’s side, and got him back on board, was little short of miraculous.” It was a rescue carried out with the greatest courage, coolness and skill in terrific conditions of weather, and the achievement of the crew is all the more remarkable since two of the men who endured that bitter and dangerous night were over seventy, two more were in their sixties and the youngest in the crew was forty.

The rescue recalls a disaster of 43 years ago, for the frigate was wrecked near the spot where, in 1901, an earlier life-boat from The Mumbles capsized and six of her crew were drowned. One of the crew which rescued the 42 men from the frigate, C. Davies, had been in that crew which was capsized.

The Institution made the following awards : To COXSWAIN WILLIAM J. GAMMON the gold medal for gallantry, with a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum, and the Miss Maud Smith reward for courage, in memory of John, 7th Earl of Hardwicke, given for the bravest act of live-saving of the year by a lifeboatman ; To WILLIAM G. DAVIES, motormechanic, and THOMAS J. ACE, bowman, each the bronze medal for gallan-try, with a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum ; To CHARLES R. DAVIES, THOMAS A.

DAVIES, WILLIAM JOHN EYNON, ALFRED D. MICHAEL and WILLIAM MICHAEL, life-boatmen, each the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum ; To the coxswain and each member of the crew an additional reward of £5.

Standard rewards to crew and helpers, £34 12s. 9d. ; additional rewards to crew, £40 ; total rewards, £74 12s. 9d..