MAY 23RD. - CLACTON - ON - SEA, ESSEX.

At 5.38 in the evening the coastguard reported that two rubber dinghies, with five people on board, which had put out from Jaywick, were drifting helplessly three miles to the southwest.

The motor life-boat Edward Z. Dresden was launched at 5.53. A north-easterly breeze was blowing and the sea was choppy.

The life-boat reached the dinghies in twenty minutes. In the first were a man, his wife, and daughter, who had been afloat for three hours ; in the second, two men. The life-boat took them on board and, with the dinghies in tow, reached her station again at 7.30.- Rewards, £8 19s. 3d..