DECEMBER 17TH. - BEMBRIDGE, ISLE OF WIGHT. At 9.12 in the morning a message was received from the naval authorities that a vessel was on the barrage boom.

A southerly gale was blowing and the sea was broken and confused. At 9.40 the motor life-boat Jessie Lumb was launched and the whole of the boom was searched without result. The life-boat returned to Sea View for further information and then found that men were clinging to the top of a line of barrage buoys. These buoys were fitted with iron spikes about two feet long and the mooring chains between them were also protected with spikes. There were six men.

They had been clinging to the buoys for about eight hours, had suffered terribly from exposure and were now too exhausted to do anything to help themselves. It was with great difficulty that the life-boat rescued them. Her coxswain drove her over the chains connecting the buoys, threw ropes to the men and dragged them to the life-boat.

They were the crew of the steam drifter Manora. In the gale and darkness she had been driven off her course, while going to the help of another vessel showing distress signals in Spithead, had ran on the boom, been holed, and had sunk in a few minutes. The life-boat landed the rescued men at Sea View Pier and they were taken to hospital by ambulance. The life-boat returned to her station at 11.50, but could not be re-housed until 4.30, owing to the heavy swell on the slipway. - Rewards, £18 12s..