MEN OF GREAT VALOUR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 52, Issue 150, 6 April 1932, Page 8

MEN OF GREAT VALOUR

HEROIC WORK IN THE DARK. CREAV RESCUED DURING STORM. Every year British lifeboatmen perform .prodigies of valour and every year it is hard to decide which crew stands first on the list of honour. The Board of Trade Shield for the Best AVreck Service of 1931 has gone to Collieston, in Aberdeenshire. On the night of December 2, in the course of a south-easterly gale, the steam trawler Nairn went ashore at Broadhaven. The coastguards saw her distress signals and fired maroons to summon the Oollieston Lite-Saving Apparatus Company. A 7 ery quickly the men were assembled on a cliff .abreast of the wreck, trying to get a rope to the Naim by means of a, rocket; but this failed owing to the tremendous force of the wind.

District Officer Smailes very courageously went down the cliff and found a ledge. There lie was joined by four other men, Shelley, Walker, Henderson and Robertson, who took the rocket gear and a powerful lamp. Because there was so little room it was difficult, even dangerous, work to set up the rocket apparatus, but it was done, and the rocket fired, which safely reached the wreck. Now came a fresh difficulty. As the shipwrecked crew began to- haul in the life-saving gear it fouled the rocks between cliff ancl wreck. Down scrambled the district officer and.three others, and cleared it, though violenl seas were breaking over the rocks, the wind: was tremendous, and it was hard to keep a footing on the slippery rocks in the darkness.

The men were in great peril of being swept away and battered to death on the rocks. Twice more the gear fouled the rocks, and each time they went down again to clear it. Meanwhile, Shelley, the fifth man, was bravely going up and down the cliff, in gale and darkness, bearing messages from those on the rocks to those on the top of the cliff. Thanks to such courage all the 10 men of the Nairn got safely to shore.