Orders, Decorations and Medals

ROYAL NATIONAL LIFEBOAT INSTITUTION, Bronze Medal, Hillary obverse (John Watters, Voted 15th May 1947), in case of issue, together with the original illuminated vellum certificate from the R.N.L.I. voting the medal and an original photograph of the recipient, extremely fine

Extract from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Journal for September 1947:- Bronze Medal for Fowey Coxswain. At 4.10 in the morning of March 23rd, the coastguard rang up Fowey lifeboat station to say that he could see signals of distress in Par Bay, and thirty minutes later the reserve motor lifeboat, 'The Brothers', put out. A whole gale was blowing from the southwest with a very heavy sea, and the night was very dark. The lifeboat was in the charge of Coxswain John Watters. He insisted on going although he had been injured by a fall. He did not know the position of the wreck and searched the bay for her. Just before 5.30, when he was near the Callyvardor Rock, he saw the light of a torch near by. It came from the wreck, the auxiliary motor vessel 'Empire Contamar', of London. He circled round to see how she lay and found that she was fast on the rock. All that he could see of her above water was her bow and poop. Her crew of seven were on the poop. They were up to their waists in water; at times it was coming right over them; and the tide was rising. The coxswain tried to get alongside under her bow, where there was a little shelter from the gale, but the seas were too heavy. He then approached her bow first, in order to fire a line to the men on the poop, and at the second attempt the lifeboat was washed right into the waist of the ship. She was washed out again with her bows damaged. The coxswain then succeeded in getting a line aboard her, and the seven men were hauled through the seas into the lifeboat. The rescue had taken only a short time, and fifty minutes after reaching the wreck the lifeboat had landed the men, but it had been a difficult and perilous rescue in those heavy seas, and the darkness, and the coxswain had handled the lifeboat with much resolution and ability. The Institution made the following awards: To Coxswain John Watters, the bronze medal for gallantry, a copy of the vote of the medal inscribed on vellum and a reward of £2 in addition to the ordinary scale reward of £1. To each member of the crew, £2, in addition to the ordinary scale reward of £1.