Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D. C.

Sir:
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AWARDS OF MEDALS.

During the year three life-saving medals of the first class and
two of the second class have been awarded under the provisions of
the act of June 20, 1874. The medals of the first class were (p. 445)
bestowed upon Messrs. Lucien M. Clemons, Hubbard M. Clemons,
and A. J. Clemons, of Marblehead, Ohio, three brothers, who
displayed the most signal gallantry in saving two men from the
wreck of the schooner Consuelo, about two miles north of that
place, on May 1, 1875. It appears from the evidence of the
transaction that the schooner, which was heavily laden with
blocks of stone, was seen by a number of spectators on the shore
laboring in apparent distress in the passage between Kelley's
Island and Marblehead, the sea at the time being tremendous and
the wind blowing a gale from the northeast, when her cargo of
stone blocks, which had been left upon rollers, thereby causing
the disaster, suddenly shifted, and the vessel at once capsized
and went down. Five of her crew immediately perished; but the
remaining two succeeded in getting a hold in the cross-trees of
the mainmast, which were above water, where they clung for nearly
an hour. It was then that the three heroic brothers took a small
flat-bottomed skiff, twelve feet long, three feet wide, and
fifteen inches deep, the only boat available on the coast, and
leaving their weeping wives and children, who formed a part of
the watching group of forty or fifty persons on the shore, went
out in this frail shell to the rescue. The venture was, in the
judgment of the lookers-on, several of them old sailors,
hazardous in the extreme, but after nearly an hour's hard
struggle with the waves, the Clemons brothers gained the wreck
and delivered the two exhausted men from their perilous position
in the rigging. With the added burden in their skiff they were
then unable to make the shore, but remained for a long time
tossing about upon the high sea in momentary danger of
destruction, when fortunately they were descried by a steam-tug
at Kelley's Island, which came to their assistance. Under these
circumstances the medals of honor awarded them must be considered
justly due to their sel