BRITAIN’S LIFEBOATS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 January 1941, Page 7

BRITAIN’S LIFEBOATS

50 LIVES A WEEK SAVED. AN ITALIAN'S GRATITUDE. On the day that Italy declared war on Britain, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution received a gift of £26 5s from Mr Achille Lauro, a shipov. net of Naples, in gratitude for the help of the Great Yarmouth and Gorleston lifeboat when his steamer Amelia Lauro was bombed by German aircraft and set on fire on March 7. The lifeboat brought ashore 29 men three of whom were seriously injured The work took them nine hours. Fifty lives a week are being saved by British lifeboats. That is the average over the first nine months of the war. The average over 1914-1918 was 21 lives rescued every week. There has never been so many launches or lives rescued. Lifeboats have been launched to vessels in distress 88(i times since the war began; 1,981 fives have been saved Cromer lifeboat went to the help of an Italian steamer sunk by enemy action. She took the Italian crew on board while the German aeroplane circled overhead and th«-n bombed .• nearby trawler The lifeboat went to the trawler's aid. The coxswain went on board find the captain injured, the engines out of action. He gave first aid and towed the trawler for three hours The same nigh’. Cromer was out

again t<> rescue an English tanker Sh<took off 40 of the cn-w When day br> ke she saw a convoy approaching and half a mile away, a mine driftin;.’ in its path. She signalled the ships and they altered course. So her day and night’s score was one steamer. one trawler, one tanker- and a convoy The /Xrbroath lifeboat ■.'.ent to the hj-lp of a hopper barge attacked by two German aeroplanes They passed a few feet above the lifeboat and droppeil 10 bombs s<> cfiee to her that they "sevmi-d to lift the lifeboat out of the water am! made all the air cases ms),',, her rattle ' But she went strai;;!:*, -e: :o'.d • cued seven men from the barge Twhad been killed. •