OCTOBER 24TH. - ST. IVES, CORNWALL.

At 6.22 in the morning the coastguard reported that distress signals had been seen from the auxiliary ketch Minnie Flossie, of Bideford, which had dragged her anchor and was drifting across St. Ives Bay. A gale, with heavy squalls of wind and rain, was blowing from the west-south-west and raising a very rough sea. The motor life-boat Caroline Oates Aver and William Maine was launched at 6.43 and set course for Godrevy Island, searching along the shore as she went.

She then turned to go outside the island and found the ketch at Hell’s Mouth Cove, lying on her beam ends very close inshore. The coxswain could see that she was sinking. Two people could be seen clinging to her.

She might go at any moment. He must act at once, although he knew that he was taking a great risk. Without hesitation. he drove the life-boat straight at the ketch. At the same moment a heavy sea came in. It lifted the life-boat and swept her towards the cliffs, but fortunately it left her just as she was abreast of the ketch and the coxswain was able to turn her alongside the ketch on her weather side. On her lee side there was neither space nor water enough.

The two people clinging to the ketch were the owner and his wife. Lifeboatmen grabbed them and hauled them into the life-boat. The rescue had taken less than five minutes, and it had been completed only just in time. As the coxswain turned the life-boat away from the shore she met an exceptionally heavy sea. It swept over her. It went on and swept over the ketch and when the life-boatmen looked round she had gone. The lifeboat reached St. Ives with the rescued man and woman at 8.15. The coxswain shewed courage, skill, and determination in carrying out the rescue so quickly in exceptionally bad weather.

The Institution made the following awards : To COXSWAIN WILLIAM PETERS the silver medal for gallantry, with a copy of the vote inscribed on vellum.

To HENRY PETERS, second-coxswain, THOMAS S. ANDREWS, bowman, SAMUEL R. VEAL, motor-mechanic, DANIEL ROACH, assistant motor-mechanic, NICHOLAS PHILLIPS, signalman, and WILLIAM J. NINNIS, life-boatman, the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum. - Rewards, £18 6s. 6d..