Despite being equipped with direction finding equipment and an echo sounding device Mount Ida ran aground on a sandbank. At 0625 hrs the coastguard told the coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat, Henry Blogg, that the Mount Ida was aground and asked that the lifeboat be sent to assist her. Since the outbreak of the Second World War a month earlier, RNLI lifeboats had been under the control of the naval authorities, and this was only the second rescue effort by the Cromer lifeboat under this arrangement.