3-008-418 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Southwold Life-boat making for the rescue of a ship's crew on the outer shoal, 1862. View of '...a very gallant and prompt service rendered on the 28th January by the Southwold life-boat, belonging to the National Life-boat Institution, to a shipwrecked crew. "On the morning of that day (writes Lieutenant Simmons, R.N.) the life-boat put off and took five men and a dog from a small boat outside the outward shoal. There was a tremendous sea running at the time, so that none of the open boats could have got off, neither could the shipwrecked men have landed in their own boat through the heavy surf. They had left their vessel at two o'clock in the morning. She had sunk on Sizewell Bank, full of water, and proved to be the Princess Alice, of Ipswich. The little boat had been drifting about in the midst of fearful perils until the life-boat took the crew out and brought them safely on shore"...The number of lives saved by the life-boats of the society [the National Life-boat Institution] and other means since its formation is upwards of 12,200'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.