NOVEMBER 6TH. - WALMER, KENT. At 7.17 in the morning a message came from the Walmer coastguard that a large steamer was aground on the Goodwin Sands. The lifeboat crew were asked to stand by. This they did all day. At 7.12 in the evening the lifeboat was asked to launch. The ship in distress was the U.S.A. Liberty ship Abraham Baldwin. She was on the western side of the Sands near the head of Trinity Bay, about six miles from Walmer. The motor life-boat Charles Dibdin (Civil Service No. 2) was launched at a quarter to eight, second-coxswain F. Upton taking command, as the coxswain was ill. A strong wind was blowing from the south-west, with a rough sea, and there were frequent and heavy squalls of rain.

As the life-boat got away wind and sea increased. She set her course for the Goodwin Fork Buoy, and when she had sighted it and turned up Trinity Bay she could see the lights of the steamer.

She reached the steamer just before nine o’clock and found her lying with broken water all round her. She went alongside and tied up to her with ropes. One of the lifeboatmen then went aboard up a rope ladder to find out what the steamer’s captain wanted to do. He asked the life-boat to take off all members of his crew whom he did not need to stand by her. The second-coxswain answered that there was no urgency, and he would wait until the tide was flowing. rather than risk running aground himself on an ebbing tide with so many men on board.

Food was then passed to the life-boat from the steamer. The life-boat’s ropes that held her to the steamer were yielding to the strain and the life-boat cast off and hove to.

At one o’clock next morning the secondcoxswain decided to take the men off. The wind had rapidly increased, and was now blowing a hurricane, but it had veered to the west and this gave the. life-boat some shelter under the steamer’s starboard bow. The life-boat was rising and falling heavily alongside the steamer, held by one head rope, with her engines working, and it needed an hour to take off 31 of the American seamen by a rope ladder. All the time this was being done the steamer pumped out fuel oil. Some of it was washed aboard the life-boat and her crew found it very difficult to stand on her deck. It was now close on two in the morning and the life-boat made for home. It was a difficult journey, for the life-boat was so packed with men that the second-coxswain at the wheel could not see ahead, and had to have two look-outs. During the whole passage, head to wind and sea, the life-boat was continuously swept by the seas and she only just missed striking an old wreck. She safely reached Walmer at three in the morning. Four days later the Abraham Baldwin was refloated and went on her way.

The 31 lives taken off her by the life-boat were considered to have been landed and not rescued.

It was a service carried out in difficult conditions with great skill and judgment, and the Institution made the following awards : To Second-coxswain (acting-coxswain) F.

UPTON its thanks inscribed on vellum ; To him and each member of the crew a special reward of £1 in addition to the ordinary scale reward of £2 15s. 6d. Standard rewards to crew and launchers, £35 12s. 6d. ; additional rewards to crew, £8 ; total rewards, £43 12s. 6d.

A letter was also written to the branch specially commending the motor-mechanic, C. P. Cavell, and G. Riley and W. Riley, the two members of the crew who acted as lookouts on the return journey and to whose vigilance it was due that the life-boat just missed striking the wreck.