APRIL 5TH. - ST. ABBS, BERWICKSHIRE.

At nine at night a message was received from the St. Abbs Head signal station that a vessel appeared to have struck a mine. There was a light north-west wind and the sea was calm. At 9.8 the motor life-boat Annie Ronald and Isabella Forrest was launched. She found the S.S. Gasray, of London, either mined or torpedoed, and picked up sixteen of her men from rafts about two miles north of St. Abbs Head. As the men were almost without clothes, and suffering from shock and exposure, members of the life-boat crew gave some of their own clothes to them. The life-boat searched, but found no more survivors, and returned to her station, arriving at 10.30. A doctor and ambulance were waiting. One man who had a fractured leg was taken to hospital. The villagers of St. Abbs took in the others, and the Eyemouth branch of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society, and the naval depot at Leith fitted out the men with clothing.- Rewards, £13 5s..