DECEMBER 15TH. - KIRKCUDBRIGHT.

At five in the afternoon the Ross Lighthouse reported by telephone that a vessel appeared to be drifting, but was not showing any distress signals. A south-easterly gale was blowing, with a very rough sea, and it was very dark. The air-sea rescue base at Gibbhill was asked whether it could send a boat out to warn the vessel, which was coming up the estuary towards the bar. As the base was unable to do this, it sent an officer by car to signal to the vessel. It was then learned that she needed help, and at 8.30, when the tide allowed, the motor life-boat Morison Watson was launched. A quarter of an hour later she reached the vessel which was then about one hundred yards off shore near Torrs Point. She was the auxiliary schooner Mary B. Mitchell, of Dublin, with a crew of eight, bound, laden with burnt ore, from Dublin to Silloth. The life-boat rescued her crew and, as she could not be re-housed in that rough weather, went up the river to the quay at Kirkcudbright, where she arrived at ten that night. She intended to put the men on board the schooner again next morning, but found that she had drifted across the bay during the night and had been wrecked. It was reported that the Mary B. Mitchell had been a “ Q ” ship in the war of 1914-1918 and later had been used for taking films at sea. - Rewards, £23 3s..