A terrible calamity overtook two out of three lifeboats which
went off in the night of Thursday week from Southport, St. Anne's, and Lytham to rescue the crew of a barque, 'Mexico,' sailing out of the Mersey, which had dragged its anchor in the gale and gone ashore on the Ainsdale Sands. The Lytham boat, not without great danger to the lives of the crew, effected the rescue, and brought off the captain and all the crew of the shipwrecked barque. But both the Southport and the St. Anne's lifeboats capsized, and while thirteen of the sixteen men in the Southport lifeboat were drowned, the whole of the crew of the St. Anne's boat perished. These boats ought to have righted themselves, and the men in them had the utmost confidence that they would do so, but from some unexplained cause they did not.
One of the three survivors of the Southport boat attributed the capsizing of that boat to the captain's having turned her round so that the sea broke almost broadside on, his intention being to let go the anchor, since they had almost reached the wreck. But whether the management of the boat was in fault or not, we shall now hardly know, the captain of it being amongst the drowned. Of the causes of the capsizing of the St. Anne's boat we can hardly get even a glimpse, as there is not a single survivor. That the Lytham boat was in imminent danger, though it succeeded in its work, we have the most ample evidence.
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