MEN OF GREAT VALOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

MEN OF GREAT VALOUR.

HEROIC WORK IN THE DARK. CREW 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 Wreck 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 Collies ton Life-Saving Apparatus Company. Very quickly the men were assembled on a cliff abreast of the wreck, trying to get. a rope to the Nairn 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 he was joined by four other men, Shelley, Walker, Henderson and Robertson, who took the rocket gear and a powerful larup. Because there was so little room it was difficult, even dangerous, work to set up the rocket apparatus, but it. was done, and a 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 and wreck. Down scrambled tlie district officer and three others, and cleared it, though violent 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, m gale and darkness, bearing messages from (hose on the rocks to those on fhe top of the clift. Thanks to such courage all the ten men of the Nairn got safely to shore.