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Heroes of the Goodwin Sands

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Title: Heroes of the Goodwin Sands

Author: Thomas Stanley Treanor


        
Release date: February 25, 2008 [eBook #24685]
                Most recently updated: January 3, 2021

Language: English

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HEROES OF THE GOODWIN SANDS

by

THE REV. THOMAS STANLEY TREANOR, M.A.

Chaplain, Missions to Seamen, Deal and the Downs

Author of "The Log of a Sky Pilot," "The Cry from the Sea and the
Answer from the Shore."

With Coloured and Other Illustrations







[Frontispiece: A Perilous Escape]


[Illustration: Title page]



London
The Religious Tract Society
4 Bouverie Street & 65 St. Paul's Churchyard
1904




PREFACE

For twenty-six years, as Missions to Seamen Chaplain for the Downs, the
writer of the following chapters has seen much of the Deal boatmen,
both ashore and in their daily perilous life afloat.  For twenty-three
years he has also been the Honorary Secretary of the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution for the Goodwin Sands and Downs Branch; he has
sometimes been afloat in the lifeboats at night and in storm, and he
has come into official contact with the boatmen in their lifeboat work,
in the three lifeboats stationed right opposite the Goodwin Sands, at
Deal, Walmer, and Kingsdown.  With these opportunities of observation,
he has written accurate accounts of a few of the splendid rescues
effected on those out-lying and dangerous sands by the boatmen he knows
so well.

Each case is authenticated by names and dates; the position of the
wrecked vessel is given with exactness, and the handling and
manoeuvring of the lifeboat described, from a sailor's point of view,
with accuracy, even in details.

The descriptions of the sea--of Nature in some of her most tremendous
aspects, of the breakers on the Goodwins--and of the stubborn courage
of the men who man our lifeboats are far below the reality.  Each
incident occurred as it is related, and is absolutely true.

The Deal boatmen are almost as mute as the fishes of the sea respecting
their own deeds of daring and of mercy on the Goodwin Sands.  It is but
justice to those humble heroes of the Kentish coast that an attempt
should be made to tell some parts of their wondrous story.

T. S. T.

DEAL, 1904.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I.  THE GOODWIN SANDS
   II.  THE DEAL BOATMEN
  III.  THE AUGUSTE HERMANN FRANCKE
   IV.  THE GANGES
    V.  THE EDINA
   VI.  THE FREDRIK CARL
  VII.  THE GOLDEN ISLAND
 VIII.  THE SORRENTO, S.S.
   IX.  THE ROYAL ARCH
    X.  THE MANDALAY
   XI.  THE LEDA
  XII.  THE D'ARTAGNAN AND THE HEDVIG SOPHIA
 XIII.  THE RAMSGATE LIFEBOAT




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


A PERILOUS RESCUE . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

THE LAUNCH OF THE LIFEBOAT

THE GOODWIN SANDS

A WRECK ON THE GOODWINS

THE BOOM OF A DISTANT GUN

SHOWING A FLARE

HOOKING THE STEAMER

A FORLORN HOPE

POSITION OF THE GANGES ON THE SANDS

DANGEROUS WORK

THE ANCHOR OF DEATH (_from a photograph_)

DEAL BOATMEN ON THE LOOK OUT FOR A HOTEL

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN ISLAND

CLOVE-HITCH KNOTS

JARVIST ARNOLD

THE KINGSDOWN LIFEBOAT

SCENE ON DEAL BEACH, FEBRUARY 13, 1870

POSITION OF THE SORRENTO

THE SORRENTO ON THE GOODWIN SANDS

ALL HANDS IN THE LIFEBOAT

THE LIFEBOAT BRADFORD AT THE WRECK OF THE INDIAN CHIEF

LEAVING RAMSGATE HARBOUR IN TOW




[Illustration: The Launch of the Lifeboat.  From a photograph by W. H.
Franklin.]




CHAPTER I

THE GOODWIN SANDS


  'Would'st thou,' so the helmsman answered,
  'Learn the secrets of the sea?
  Only those who brave its dangers
  Comprehend its mystery.'


The Goodwin Sands are a great sandbank, eight miles long and about four
miles wide, rising out of deep water four miles off Deal at their
nearest point to the mainland.  They run lengthwise from north to
south, and their breadth is measured from east to west.  Counting from
the farthest points of shallow water around the Goodwins, their
dimensions might be reckoned a little more, but the above is
sufficiently accurate.

Between them and Deal lies thus a stretch of four miles of deep water,
in which there is a great anchorage for shipping.  This anchorage, of
historic interest, is called the Downs--possibly from the French _les
Dunes_, or 'the Sands,' a derivation which, so far as I know, was first
suggested by myself--and is sheltered from the easterly gales to some
extent by the Goodwins.

The Downs are open to the north and south, and through this anchorage
of the Downs runs the outward and homeward bound stream of shipping of
all nations, to and from London and the northern ports of England,
Holland, Germany, and the Baltic.

A very large proportion of the stream of shipping bound to London
passes inside the Goodwins or through the Downs, especially when the
wind is south-west, inasmuch as if they went in west winds outside the
Goodwins, they would find themselves a long way to leeward of the Gull
buoy.

The passage here, between the Gull buoy and the Goodwin Sands, is not
more than two miles wide; and again I venture to suggest that the Gull
stream is derived from the French _la Gueule_.

Though there are four miles of deep water between the Goodwin Sands and
the mainland, this deep water has rocky shallows and dangerous patches
in it, but I shall not attempt to describe them, merely endeavouring to
concentrate the reader's attention on the Goodwin Sands.  Inside the
Goodwins and in this comparatively sheltered anchorage of deep water,
the outward bound shipping bring up, waiting sometimes for weeks for
fair wind; hence Gay's lines are strictly accurate,

  All in the Downs the fleet was moored.


The anchorage of the Downs is sheltered from west winds by the mainland
and from east winds by the dreaded Goodwins.  They thus form a natural
and useful breakwater towards the east, creating the anchorage of the
Downs.

In an easterly gale, notwithstanding the protection of the Goodwins,
there is a very heavy and even tremendous sea in the Downs, for the
Goodwin Sands lie low in the water, and when they are covered by the
tide--as they always are at high water--the protection they afford is
much diminished.

The 'sheltered' anchorage of the Downs is thus a relative term.  Even
in this shelter vessels are sometimes blown away from their anchors
both by easterly and westerly winds.

In 1703 thirteen men-of-war were lost in the Downs in the same gale in
which Winstanley perished in the Eddystone Lighthouse of his own
construction, and I have seen vessels in winds both from east and west
driven to destruction from the Downs.  Even of late years I have seen
450 vessels at anchor in the Downs, reaching away to the north and
south for nearly eight miles.

Their appearance is most imposing, as may be judged from the engraving
on page 95, in which, however, only twenty-five ships are visible in
the moonlight.  Almost all the ships in the engraving are outward
bound, and some, it may be, are on their last voyage.

Outside, and to the cast of this great fleet of vessels, lies the great
'shippe-swallower,' the Goodwin Sands.  The sands are very irregular in
shape, and are not unlike a great lobster, with his back to the cast,
and with his claws, legs, and feelers extended westwards towards Deal
and the shipping in the Downs.  Far from the main body of the sands run
all manner of spits and promontories and jaws of sand, and through and
across the Goodwins in several directions are numbers of 'swatches,' or
passages of water varying in depth from feet to fathoms.

No one knows, or can know, all the swatches, which vary very much month
by month according to the prevalence of gales or fair weather.  I shall
never forget the sensation of striking bottom in one of those swatches
where I expected to find, and had found recently before in the same
state of the tide, a depth of six feet.  The noise of broken water on
each side of us, and the ominous grating thump of our boat's keel
against the Goodwins, while the stumps of lost vessels grinned close
by, gave us a keen sense of the nearness of real peril.  We were bound
to the East Goodwin lightship, and in the path of duty, but we were
glad to feel the roll of deep water under our boat's keel outside the
Goodwins.

No one therefore knows, or can know, by reason of the perpetual
shifting of the sands, all the passages or swatches, either as to
direction or depth, of the Goodwins; but two or three main swatches are
tolerably well known to the Deal and Ramsgate lifeboatmen.

There is a broad bay called Trinity Bay in the heart of the Goodwins,
out of which leads due north-east the chief swatch or passage through
the Sands.  It is four or five fathoms deep at low water, and from
about three-quarters to a quarter of a mile wide, and it is called the
Ramsgate Man's Bight.  Close to the outer entrance of this great
passage rides, about twelve feet out of water, the huge north-east
Whistle buoy of the Goodwins, which ever moans forth in calmest weather
its most mournful note.

Sometimes when outside the Goodwins on my way from the North Goodwin to
the East Goodwin lightship, we have passed so close to this great buoy
that we could touch it with a boat-hook, and have heard its giant
breathing like that of some leviathan asleep on the surface of the sea,
which was dead calm at the time.  I have also heard its boom at a
distance of eight miles.

I have said this great swatch leads north-east through the
Goodwins--but north-east from what, and how is the point of departure
to be found on a dark night?  If you ask the coxswain of the Deal
lifeboat, who probably knows more, or at least as much about the Sands
and their secrets as any other living man, he will tell you to 'stand
on till you bring such a lightship to bear so and so, and then run due
north-east; only look out for the breakers on either side of you.'  It
is one thing to go through this swatch in fair weather and broad
daylight, and another thing in the dark or even by moonlight, 'the sea
and waves roaring' their mighty accompaniment to the storm.

There are other swatches, one more to the southward than the preceding,
and also running north-east, through which the Deal men once brought a
ship named the Mandalay into safety after protracted efforts.

Another swatch too exists, opposite the East Goodwin buoy, being that
in which we struck the dangerous bottom.  And yet another, just north
of the south-east buoy, leads right across the tail of the monster, and
so into the deep water of the Downs.

Looking at a chart or reading of these passages, they seem easy enough,
but to find and get through them safely when you are as low down as you
are in a boat, near the sea level, is very difficult, and as exciting
as the escape of the entangled victims from the labyrinths of
old--unmistakable danger being all around you, and impressed on both
eyes and ears.

The whole of the Goodwin Sands are covered by the sea at high water;
even the highest or north part of the Sands is then eight or ten feet
under water.  At low water this north part of the Goodwins is six feet
at least above the sea level, and you can walk for miles on a rippled
surface cut into curious gulleys, the miniatures of the larger
swatches.  Wild and lonely beyond words is the scene.  The sands are
hard when dry--in some places as hard as the hardest beach of sand that
can be named.  Near the Fork Spit the sand is marvellously hard.  On
the north-west part of the Goodwins, which is that given in the
engraving, it is hard, but not so hard as elsewhere.  In all cases it
is soft and pliable under water, and sometimes in wading you sink with
alarming rapidity.

Recently attempting in company with a friend to wade a very
peculiar-looking but shallow swatch--to right and left of us being blue
swirls of deeper water, the 'fox-falls' on a smaller scale of another
part of the Sands, and exceedingly beautiful--I suddenly sank pretty
deep, and struggled back with all my energies into firmer footing from
the Goodwins' cold and tenacious embrace.

The Sands reach round you for miles, and the greater swatches cut you
off from still more distant and still more extensive reaches of sand.
In such solitudes, and with such vastness around you, of which the
great lonely level stretch makes you conscious as nothing ashore can
do, you realise what an atom you are in creation.

[Illustration: The Goodwin Sands.]

Here you see a ship's ribs.  This was the schooner laden with
pipe-clay, out of which in a dangerous sea the captain and crew escaped
in their own boat, as the lifeboat advanced to save them.  Far away on
the Sands you see the fluke of a ship's anchor, which from the shape
when close to it we recognise to be a French pattern.

With me stood the coxswain of the celebrated Deal lifeboat, Richard
Roberts.  Intently he gazed at the projecting anchor fluke--shaft and
chain had long been sucked down into the Goodwins--and then, after a
good long look all round, taking the bearings of the deadly thing, at
last he said, 'What a dangerous thing on a dark night for the lifeboat!'

Just think, good reader!  The lifeboat, close reefed, flies to the
rescue on the wings of the storm into the furious seas which revel and
rage on the Goodwins.  Her fifteen men dauntlessly face the wild
smother.  She sinks ponderously in the trough of a great roller, and
the anchor fluke is driven right through her bottom and holds her to
the place--for hold her it would, long enough to let the breakers tear
every living soul out of her!

Under our feet and deep in the sand lie vessels one over another, and
in them all that vessels carry.  Countless treasures must be buried
there--the treasures of centuries.  Witness the Osta Junis, a Dutch
East Indiaman, which, treasure-laden with money and other valuables to
a great amount, ran on the Goodwin Sands, July 12, 1783.  The Deal
boatmen were quickly on board, and brought the treasures ashore, which,
as it was war time, were prize to the Crown, and were conveyed to the
Bank of England[1].  That merchandise, curiosities, and treasures lie
engulfed in the capacious maw of the Goodwin Sands is very probable,
although we may not quite endorse Mr. Pritchard's statement that 'if
the multitude of vessels lost there during the past centuries could be
recovered, they would go a good way towards liquidating the National
Debt.'

From its mystery and 'shippe-swallowing' propensities, the word
'monster' is peculiarly appropriate to this great quicksand, which
still craves more victims, and still with claws and feelers
outstretched--Scylla and Charybdis combining their terrors in the
Goodwins--lies in ambush for the goodly ships that so bravely wing
their flight to and fro beyond its reach.  But it is only in the storm
blast and the midnight that its most dreadful features are unveiled,
and even then the lifeboatmen face its perils and conquer them.

Independently of the breakers and cross-seas of stormy weather, the
dangers of the Goodwin Sands arise from the facts that they lie right
in the highway of shipping, that at high water they are concealed from
view, being then covered by the sea to the depth of from ten to
twenty-five feet, varying in different places, and that furious
currents run over and around them.

Add to this that they are very lonely and distant from the mainland,
and, being surrounded by deep water, are far from help; whilst, as an
additional and terrible danger, here and there on the sands, wrecks,
anchors, stumps, and notably the great sternpost of the Terpsichore,
from which a few months ago Roberts and the Deal lifeboatmen had
rescued all the crew, stick up over the surface.  And woe be to the
boat or vessel which strikes on these!

On September 12, 1891, on my way to the North Sandhead lightship,
which, however, we failed to reach by reason of the strong ebb tide
against us and the wind dropping to a calm, we revisited this sternpost
of the Terpsichore.  We got down mast and sails and took to our oars.
The light air from the north-east blew golden feathery cloud-films
across the great blue arch above our heads, and for once in the arctic
summer of 1891 the air was warm and balmy.  Starting from the
North-west Goodwin buoy, we soon rowed into shallow water, crossing a
long spit of sand on which, not far from us, a feathery breaker raced.
Again we get into deep water, having just hit the passage into an
amphitheatre in the Goodwins of deep water bordered by a circle or
ridge of sand about three feet under water, over which the in-tide was
fiercely running and rippling, and upon which here and there a breaker
raised its warning crest.

We reached the great sternpost of the lost Terpsichore at 9.22 a.m.,
just two hours before low water at the neap tides, and found it
projected five feet nine inches above the water, which was ten feet six
inches deep in the swilly close to it, but nowhere shallower than eight
feet within a distance of fifty yards from the stump.  Underneath in
the green sea-water there lay quite visible the keel and framework of
the vessel; and again I heard the story from Roberts, the coxswain of
the Deal lifeboat, who was with me, of the rescue of the crew of this
very vessel at 2.15 a.m. on the stormy night of the preceding November
14.

As we held by the green sea-washed stump, it was hard to realise the
sublime story of that awful night: the mighty sea warring with the
furious wind, and the dismantled, beaten ship--masts gone overboard and
tossing in mad confusion of spars and cordage along her side--into
which most black and furious hell the lifeboatmen dared to venture the
Deal lifeboat, and out of which she and her gallant crew came, by God's
mercy, triumphant and unscathed, having saved every soul on board, and
also, with a fine touch of humanity often to be found in a brave
sailor's heart, the 'harmless, necessary cat' belonging to the vessel.
I can assure my readers that poor pussy's head and green eyes peering
out of the arms of one of the storm-battered sailors as they struggled
up Deal beach was a beautiful and most touching sight.

Having lingered and examined this wreck as long as we dared, we now
tried to get out of the great circle in which we were enclosed.  With
one man in the bows and another steering, we tried to cross the
submerged ridge of sand which encircled us and over which the tide
raced; but we struck the sand, and then were turned broadside on by the
furious current and swept back into the circle.  Cautiously we rowed
along, when, not twenty yards off, I saw an object triangular and not
unlike a shark's fin just above the water.  'Hard-a-starboard!' at the
same moment cried the man in the bows, and then in the same breath,
'Port, sir, quick!  Hard-a-port!'  For to right of us stuck up out of
eight feet of water, beautifully clear and green, the iron pump-work of
a submerged wreck, the iron projection being not more than six inches
out of water; and then, a few yards further on to the left of the boat,
out of deep water, a rib, it may be, of the same forgotten and it may
be long-buried vessel.

Had not the water been calm and clear, the place would have been a
regular death-trap.  With increased caution we felt our way all round
the great circle into which we had entered.  South of us rose a smooth
yellow-brown bank of sand, and upon this sunny shore tripped hundreds
of great white seagulls.  So warm, so silent, so lonely was the place
that it might have been an island in the Pacific; and upon the same
yellow sandbank there basked, quite within view, a great, large-eyed
seal.

At last we found our way out of the heart of the Goodwins, and got into
the deep, wide swatchway called the Ramsgate Man's Bight.  Away to the
north-east we saw the Whistle buoy, and toward the east the East buoy,
both of which mark the outer edge of the Goodwins.

In the deep centre of this swatch rolled the mast of another wreck,
somehow fast to the bottom, and having gazed at this weird sight, we
landed, amidst the wild screams of protesting sea-birds, and explored
all round for a mile the edges of this sandbank, which was of singular
firmness and yellowness, and upon which, in rhythmic cadence, plashed a
most pellucid sea.

With change of tide and rising water we got up sail and at last reached
the Gull lightship, on whose deck we met old friends, and where we had
Divine Service as the evening fell in.  Need it be said that that which
we had just seen on the Goodwins, the memories of the lost ships, and
of the gallant seamen who lie buried there, served to point a moral and
to raise all our hearts to that good land where 'there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more
pain, for the former things are passed away.'  One of the hymns in that
service was suggested by the scene we had left, and began thus,

  Jesus!  Saviour!  Pilot me.


But not every boat that visits the mysterious quicksand escapes as
readily.  Skilled and hardy boatmen are sometimes lost even in fine
weather.

About twenty years ago a Deal galley punt, and four men, Bowbyas,
Buttress, Erridge, and Obree, skilled Deal boatmen, landed on the
Goodwins to get some coal from a wrecked collier.  All that is
certainly known is that they never returned, and that they had been
noticed by a passing barge running to and fro and waving, which the
bargemen thought, alas! was only the play of some holiday-keepers on an
excursion to the Goodwins.  They went to the Goodwins in a light
south-west breeze and smooth sea.  While there the wind shifted to
north-east and a tumble of a sea got up, and it is supposed that it
then beat into and filled their laden boat, despite the efforts which
they are believed to have made to float her or get her ride to her
anchor and come head to wind.  If this be so, how long and desperate
must their struggle have been to save their boat from wreckage, and to
pump out the water and heave out the coal.  Their anchor and cable,
found on the sands and let go to full scope, favours this idea.

On the other hand, the fact that they were seen wildly running to and
fro looks as if some sudden catastrophe had occurred, as if they had
struck on some stump in the water close to the very edge of the
Goodwins.

The very day on which the photographs were taken which have been used
to illustrate this chapter, we were shoving off the steep northern face
of the Goodwin Sands, when we saw, not ten yards from the precipitous
edge of the dull red sands, in about twenty-five feet of water, and
just awash or level with the surface, the bristling spars and masts of
a three-masted schooner, the Crocodile, which had been lost there
January 6, 1891, in a fearful snowstorm, from the north-east, of that
long winter.  Had we even touched those deadly points, we too should
have probably lost our boat and been entrapped on the Goodwin Sands.
The coxswain of the Deal lifeboat was with us, and told how that at
three o'clock on that terrible January morning, or rather night,
wearied with previous efforts, he had launched the lifeboat and beat in
the face of the storm and intense cold ten miles to windward, toward
the burning flares which told of a vessel on the Sands.

Just when within reach of the vessel, this very wreck, they saw the
Ramsgate tug and lifeboat were just before them, and taking the crew
out of the rigging of the wreck.  In sight of the whole company, for
their lanterns and lights were burning, the poor exhausted captain of
the schooner, in trying to get down from the rigging, in which he was
almost frozen to death, fell into the stormy sea and was lost in the
darkness, while the remainder were gallantly rescued by the Ramsgate
lifeboat.

[Illustration: A wreck on the Goodwins.]

It was on the dangerous stumps and masts of this vessel, to save the
crew of which the Deal and Ramsgate men made such a splendid effort,
that we so nearly ran; and an accident of this kind perhaps sealed the
fate of the four boatmen above mentioned.

On this north-west part of the Goodwins, on which hours of the deepest
interest could be spent, you can walk a distance of at least two miles,
but you are separated by the great north-east swatch of deep water from
getting to the extensive north-east jaw on the other side of the
swatch, which is also full of wrecks, and round and along the edges of
which, on the calmest day, somehow the surf and breakers for ever roar.
The southern part of the Goodwins is also full of memories, and of
countless wrecks.  The ribs of the Ganges, the Leda, the Paul Boyton,
the Sorrento, all lie there deep down beneath the Sands, excepting when
some mighty storm shifts the sand and reveals their skeletons.  Deep,
too, in the bosom of the Goodwins, masts alone projecting, is settling
down the Hazelbank, wrecked there in October, 1890; but this southern
part at lowest tide is barely uncovered by the sea, and only just awash.

At high water the depth is about three fathoms, varying of course in
patches, over this southern part or tail of the sea-monster.  It is
clear that, being thus, even at low tide, nearly always covered with
water, and as the sand when thus covered is much more 'quick' and
movable, the southern part of the Goodwins is an exceedingly awkward
place to explore.  If you made a stumble, as the sands slide under your
feet, it might, shall I say, land you into a pit or 'fox-fall,'
circular in shape, and very deep.  The stumps of forgotten wrecks are
also a real danger to the boat which accompanies the investigator.

As to the depth of the great sandbank, borings have been made down to
the chalk to a depth of seventy-eight feet--a fact which might have
been fairly conjectured from the depth of water inside the Goodwins,
down to the chalky bottom being nine or ten fathoms, while the depth
close outside the Goodwins, where the outer edge of the sands is sheer
and steep, is fifteen fathoms, deepening a mile and a half further off
the Goodwins to twenty-eight fathoms.

The ships wrecked on the Goodwins go down into it very slowly, but they
sometimes literally fall off the steep outer edge into the deep water
above described.

One still bright autumn morning I witnessed a tragedy of that
description.  On the forenoon of November 30, 1888, I was on the deck
of a barque, the Maritzburg, bound to Port Natal.  I had visited the
men in the forecastle, and indeed all hands fore and aft, as Missions
to Seamen chaplain; and to them all I spoke, and was, in fact, speaking
of that only 'Name under heaven whereby we must be saved,' when my eyes
were riveted, as I gazed right under the sun, by the drama being
enacted away to the southward.

There I saw, three miles off, our two lifeboats of Kingsdown and
Walmer, each in tow of a steamer which came to their aid, making for
the Goodwins, and on the outer edge of the Goodwins I beheld a hapless
brig, with sails set, aground.  I saw her at that distance lifted by
the heavy sea, and at that distance I saw the great tumble of the
billows.  That she had heavily struck the bottom I also saw, for
crash!--and even at that distance I verily seemed to hear the
crash--away went her mainmast over her side, and the next instant she
was gone, and had absolutely and entirely disappeared.  I could not
believe my eyes, and rubbed them and gazed again and yet again.

She had perished with all hands.  The lifeboats, fast as they went,
were just too late, and found nothing but a nameless boat, bottom
upwards, and a lifebelt, and no one ever knew her nationality or name.
She had struck the Goodwins, and had been probably burst open by the
shock, and then, dragged by the great offtide to the east, had rolled
into the deep water outside the Goodwins and close to its dreadful edge.

What a sermon!  What a summons!  There they lie till the sea give up
its dead, and we all 'appear before the judgment seat of Christ.'

The origin of the Goodwin Sands is a very interesting question, and is
discussed at length in Mr. Gattie's attractive _Memorials of the
Goodwin Sands_.  There is the romantic tradition that they once, as the
'fertile island of Lomea,' formed part of the estates of the great Earl
Godwin, and that as a punishment for his crimes they 'sonke sodainly
into the sea.'  Another tradition, given by W. Lambard, tells us that
in the end of the reign of William Rufus, 1099 A.D., there was 'a
sodaine and mighty inundation of the sea, by the which a great part of
Flaunders and of the lowe countries thereabouts was drenched and lost;'
and Lambard goes on to quote Hector Boethius to the effect that 'this
place, being sometyme in the possession of the Earl Godwin, was then
first violently overwhelmed with a light sande, wherewith it not only
remayneth covered ever since, but is become withal (_Navium gurges et
vorago_) a most dreadful gulfe and shippe-swallower.'

The latter phrase of 'shippe-swallower' being only too true, has stuck,
and there does seem historic ground to warrant us in believing that in
the year named there was a great storm and incursion of the sea; but
whether the Goodwin Sands were ever the fertile island of Lomea and the
estate of the great earl seems to be more than uncertain.

But there is no doubt whatever that the theory that the inundation of
the sea in A.D. 1099, which 'drenched' the Low Countries, withdrew the
sea from the Goodwins and left it bare at low water, while before this
inundation it had been more deeply covered by the ocean, is quite
untenable, for the sea never permanently shifts, but always returns to
its original level.  When we speak of the sea 'gaining' or 'losing,'
what is really meant is that the land gains or loses, and therefore the
idea of the Goodwins being laid bare and uncovered by the sea water
running away from it and over to Flanders is absurd.

In all probability the origin of the Goodwin Sands is not to be
ascribed to their once having been a fertile island, or to their having
been uncovered by the sea falling away from them, but to their having
been actually formed by the action of the sea itself, ever since the
incursion of the sea up the Channel and from the north made England an
island.

There are great natural causes in operation which account for the
formation of the mighty sandbank by gradual accumulation, without
having recourse to the hypothesis that it is the ruined remains of the
fabulous island of Lomea, fascinating as the idea is that it was once
Earl Godwin's island home.

The two great tidal waves of different speed which sweep round the
north of England and up the English Channel, meet twice every day a
little to the north of the North Foreland, where the writer has often
waited anxiously to catch the ebb going south.

Eddies and currents of all kinds hang on the skirts of this great
'meeting of the waters,' and hence in the narrows of the Channel, where
the Goodwins lie, the tide runs every day twice from all points of the
compass, and there is literally every day in the year a great whirlpool
all round and over the Goodwin Sands, deflected slightly perhaps, but
not caused by those sands, but by the meeting of the two tidal waves
twice every twenty-four hours.

This daily Maelstrom is sufficient to account for the formation of the
mighty sandbank, for the water is laden with the detritus of cliff and
beach which it has taken up in its course round England, and, just as
if you give a circular motion to a basin of muddy water, you will soon
find the earthy deposit centralised at the bottom of the basin, so the
great Goodwins are the result of the daily deposit of revolving tides.

That the tides literally 'revolve' round the Goodwins is well known to
the Deal men and to sailors in general, and this revolution is
described in most of the tide tables and nautical almanacks used by
mariners, _e.g._ 'The Gull Stream about one hour and ten minutes before
high water runs N.E. 3/4 N., but the last hour changes to E.N.E. and
even to E.S.E., and the last hour of the southern stream changes from
S.W. 1/2 S. to W.S.W. and even to W.N.W[2].'  Here the reader will
distinctly see recorded the great causes in operation which are
sufficient in the lapse of centuries to produce and maintain the
Goodwin Sands.  But how they came to be called the Goodwin Sands we
know not, and can only conjecture.  Those were the days of Siward and
Duncan and Macbeth, and, like them, the imposing form of the great Earl
of Kent is shrouded in the mists and the myths of eight centuries.

He was evidently placed, in the first instance by royal authority or
that of the Saxon Witan, in some such position as Captain of the Naval
forces of all Southern England, and it is certain that he gathered
round himself the affections of the sailors of Sandwich, Hythe, Romney,
Hastings, and Dover.

When he sailed from Bruges against Edward, 'the fort of Hastings opened
to his coming with a shout from its armed men.  All the boatmen, all
the mariners far and near, thronged to him, with sail and shield, with
sword and with oar.'  And on his way to Pevensey and Hastings from
Flanders he would seem to have run outside, and at the back of the
Goodwins, while the admirals of Edward the Confessor, Rodolph and Odda,
lay fast in the Downs.

He appears, by virtue of his semi-regal position--for Kent with Wessex
and Sussex were under his government--to have been the Commander of a
Naval agglomeration of those southern ports which was the germ, very
probably, of the subsequent 'Cinque Ports' confederation, with their
'Warden' at their head; but at any rate he swept with him in this
expedition against Edward all the 'Buscarles' (boat-carles or seamen)
of those southern ports, Hythe, Hastings, Dover, and Sandwich.  His
progress towards London was a triumphant one with his sons.  'All
Kent--the foster-mother of the Saxons,' we are told, on this occasion
'sent forth the cry, "Life or death with Earl Godwin!"'

Crimes may rest on the name of Earl Godwin, despite his oath to the
contrary and his formal acquittal by the Witan-gemot, and dark deeds
are still affixed to his memory, but 'there was an instinctive and
prophetic feeling throughout the English nation that with the house of
Godwin was identified the cause of the English people.'  With all his
faults he was a great Englishman, and was the popular embodiment of
English or Saxon feeling against the Normanising sympathies of Edward.

In legend the Godwin family, even in death, seem to have been connected
with the sea.  There is the legend of Godwin's destruction with his
fleet in the Goodwin Sands, and there is the much better authenticated
legend of Harold's burial in the sea-sand at Hastings.  The Norman
William's chaplain records that the Conqueror said, 'Let his corpse
guard the coasts which his life madly defended.'

  Wrap them together[3] in a purple cloak,
  And lay them both upon the waste sea-shore
  At Hastings, there to guard the land for which
  He did forswear himself.


Tenterden Steeple is certainly not the cause of the Goodwin Sands, and
the connection supposed to exist between them seems to have first
occurred to some 'aged peasant' of Kent examined before Sir Thomas More
as to the origin of the Goodwin Sands.  But, as Captain Montagu
Burrows, R.N., mentions in his most interesting book on the Cinque
Ports, Tenterden Steeple was not built till 1462, and 'was not in the
popular adage connected with the Goodwin Sands, but with Sandwich
Haven.  It ran thus--

  Of many people it hath been sayed
  That Tenterden steeple Sandwich haven hath decayed.'


Godwin's connection with Tenterden Steeple seems, therefore, to be as
mythical as his destruction in the Goodwin Sands with his whole fleet,
and we are driven to suppose that the connection of his family name
with the Goodwin Sands arose either from Norman and monkish detestation
of Harold and Godwin's race, and the desire to associate his name as
infamous with those terrible quicksands; or that these Sands had some
connection with the great earl and his family which we know not of,
whether as having been, according to doubtful legend, his estate, or
because he must often have victoriously sailed round them, and hard by
them often hoisted his rallying flag; or that these outlying, but
guarding Sands received from the patriotic affection of the valiant
Kentish men the title of 'the Goodwin Sands' in memory of the great
Earl Godwin and of Godwin's race[4].



[1] See Pritchard's interesting _History of Deal_, p. 196.

[2] Jefferson's _Almanack_, 1892.

[3] Edith and Harold.

[4] I am reminded by the Rev. C. A. Molony that Goodnestone next
Wingham or Godwynstone, and Godwynstone next Faversham, both referred
to in _Archaeologia Cantiana_, are localities which probably
commemorate the name of the great Earl of Kent.  Hasted mentions that
the two villages were part of Earl Godwin's estates, and on his death
passed to his son Harold, and that when Harold was slain they were
seized by William and given to some of his adherents.  Mr. Molony
mentions a tradition at Goodnestone near Wingham, that both that
village and Godwynstone near Faversham were the lands given by the
crown to Earl Godwin to enable him to keep in repair Godwin's Tower and
other fortifications at Dover Castle.




CHAPTER II

THE DEAL BOATMEN

  Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands,
  They claim the danger.


Ever since fleets anchored in the Downs, the requirements of the great
number of men on board, as well as the needs of the vessels, would have
a tendency to maintain the supply of skilled and hardy boatmen to meet
those needs.  Pritchard, in his _History of Deal_, which is a mine of
interesting information, gives a sketch of events and battles in the
Downs since 1063.  Tostig, Godwin, and Harold are noticed; sea fights
between the French and English in the Downs from 1215 are described;
the battles of Van Tromp and Blake in the Downs, and many other
interesting historical events, are given in his book, as well as
incidents connected with the Deal boatmen.

With the decay and silting up of Sandwich Haven the Downs became still
more a place of ships, and thus naturally was still more developed the
race of Deal boatmen, who were, and are to the present time, daily
accustomed to launch and land through the surf which runs in rough
weather on their open beach; and whose avocation was to pilot the
vessels anchoring in or leaving the Downs, and to help those in
distress on the Goodwin Sands.

[Illustration: The boom of a distant gun.  From a photograph by W. H.
Franklin.  James Laming, _Coxswain, Kingsdown Lifeboat_, R. Roberts,
_Coxswain, North Deal Lifeboat_, John Mackins, _Coxswain, Walmer
Lifeboat_.]

Like their descendants now, who are seen daily in crowds lounging round
the capstans, the night was most frequently their time of effort.  In
the day they were resting 'longshore' fashion, unless, of course, their
keen sailor sight saw anywhere--even on the distant horizon--a chance
of a 'hovel.'  Ever on the look-out in case of need, galleys, sharp as
a shark, and luggers full of men, would rush down the beach into the
sea in less time than it has taken to write this sentence.

But until the necessity for action arose a stranger, looking at the
apparently idling men, with their far-away gazings seaward, would
naturally say, 'What a lazy set of fellows!' as has actually been said
to me of the very men who I knew had been all night in the lifeboat,
and whose faces were tanned and salted with the ocean brine.

Justly or unjustly, in olden times the Deal boatmen were accused of
rapacity.  But the poor fellows knew no better--Christian love and
Christian charity seem to have slept in those days, and no man cared
for the moral elevation of the wild daring fellows.  True indeed, they
were accused of lending to vessels in distress a 'predatory succour'
more ruinous to them than the angry elements which assailed them.  In
1705 a charge of this kind was made by Daniel Defoe, the author of
_Robinson Crusoe_, and was sternly repelled by the Mayor and
Corporation of Deal; and Mr. Pritchard mentions that only one charge of
plundering wrecks was made in the present century, in the year 1807;
and the verdict of 'Guilty' was eventually and deservedly followed by
the pardon of the Crown.

With the increase of the shipping of this country, and the naval wars
of the early part of the nineteenth century, the numbers and fame of
the Deal boatmen increased, until their skill, bravery, and humanity
were celebrated all over the world.  In those times, and even recently,
the Deal boatmen, including in that title the men of Walmer and
Kingsdown, were said to number over 1000 men; and as there were no
lightships around the Goodwin Sands till the end of the eighteenth
century, there were vessels lost on them almost daily, and there were
daily salvage jobs or 'hovels' and rescues of despairing crews; and
what with the trade with the men-of-war, and the piloting and berthing
of ships, there were abundant employment and much salvage for all the
boatmen.

The dress of the boatmen in those days, _i.e._ their 'longshore
toggery'--and there are still among the older men a few, a very few
survivals--was finished off by tall hats and pumps; and in answer to my
query 'why they formerly always wore those pumps?' I was told, ''Cos
they was always a dancin' in them days'--doubtless with Jane and Bess
and black-eyed Susan.

There was smuggling, too, of spirits and tobacco, and all kinds of
devices for concealing the contraband articles.  Not very many years
ago boats lay on Deal beach with hollow masts to hold tea--then an
expensive luxury, and fitted with boxes and lockers having false
bottoms, and all manner of smuggling contrivances.

It was hard to persuade those wild, daring men that there was anything
wrong in smuggling the articles they had honestly purchased with their
own money.

'There's nothing in the Bible against smuggling!' said one of them to a
clerical friend of mine, who aptly replied: 'Render therefore unto
Caesar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God the things that be
God's.'

'Is it so? you're right,' the simple-minded boatman replied; 'no more
smuggling after this day for me!'  And there never was.

But that which has given the Deal boatmen a niche in the temple of fame
and made them a part and parcel of our 'rough island story,' is their
heroic rescues and their triumphs over all the terrors of the Goodwin
Sands.

There was no lightship on or near the Goodwin Sands till 1795, when one
was placed on the North Sand Head.  In 1809 the Gull lightship, and in
1832 the South Sand Head lightships, were added, and the placing of the
East Goodwin lightship in 1874 was one of the greatest boons conferred
on the mariners of England in our times.

It is hard even now sometimes to avoid the deadly Goodwins, but what it
must have been in the awful darkness of winter midnights which brooded
over them in the early part of this century is beyond description.

Nor was there a lifeboat stationed at Deal until the year 1865.  Before
that time the Deal luggers attempted the work of rescue on the Goodwin
Sands.  In those days all Deal and Walmer beach was full of those
wonderful sea-boats hauled up on the shingle, while their mizzen booms
almost ran into the houses on the opposite side of the roadway.  The
skill and daring of those brave boatmen were beyond praise.  Let me
give in more detail the incident alluded to in the account of the
Ganges.

Fifty-two years ago, one stormy morning, a young Deal boatman was going
to be married, and the church bells were ringing for the ceremony, when
suddenly there was seen away to the southward and eastward a little
schooner struggling to live in the breakers, or rather on the edge of
the breakers, on the Goodwins.  The Mariner lugger was lying on the
beach of Deal, and there being no lifeboat in those days a rush of
eager men was made to get a place in the lugger, and amongst them,
carried away by the desire to do and to save, was the intended
bridegroom.

By the time they plunged into the awful sea on the sands the schooner
had struck, and was thumping farther into the sands, sails flying
wildly about and the foremast gone.  The crew, over whom the sea was
flying, were clustered in the main rigging.  It was a service of the
most awful danger, and the lugger men, well aware that it was a matter
of life and death, put the question to each other, 'What do you say, my
lads; shall we try it?'  'Yes!  Yes!' and then one and all shouted,
'Yes!  We'll have those people out of her!' and they ran for the
drifting, drowning little Irish schooner.  They did not dare to
anchor--a lifeboat could have done so, but for them it would have been
certain death--and as they approached the vessel and swept past her
they shouted to the crew in distress, 'Jump for your lives.'

They jumped for life, as the lugger rose on the snowy crest of a
breaker, and not a man missed his mark.  All being rescued, they again
fought back through the broken water, and when they reached Deal beach
they were met by hundreds of their enthusiastic fellow townsmen, who by
main force dragged the great twenty-ton lugger out of the water and far
up the steep beach.  The interrupted marriage was very soon afterwards
carried out, and the deserving pair are alive and well, by God's mercy,
to this day.

The luggers are about forty feet long and thirteen feet beam, more or
less.  The smaller luggers are called 'cats.'  There is a forecastle or
'forepeak' in the luggers where you can comfortably sleep--that is, if
you are able to sleep in such surroundings, and if the anguish of
sea-sickness is absent.  I once visited in one of these luggers, lost
at sea with two of her crew on November 11, 1891, the distant Royal
Sovereign and Varne lightships, and had a most happy three days' cruise.

There is a movable 'caboose' in the 'cats' right amidships, in which
three or four men packed close side by side can lie; but if you want to
turn you must wake up the rest of the company and turn all together--so
visitors to Deal are informed.  These large boats are lugger-rigged,
carrying the foremast well forward, and sometimes, but very rarely,
like the French _chasse-marées_, a mainmast also, with a maintopsail,
as well, of course, as the mizzen behind.  The mainmast is now hardly
ever used, being inconvenient for getting alongside the shipping, and
therefore there only survive the foremast and mizzen, the mainmast
being developed out of existence.

The luggers are splendid sea-boats, and it is a fine sight to see one
of them crowded with men and close-reefed cruising about the Downs
'hovelling' or 'on the look out' for a job in a great gale.  While
ships are parting their anchors and flying signals of distress, the
luggers, supplying their wants or putting pilots on board, wheel and
sweep round them like sea-birds on the wing.

[Illustration: Showing a flare.]

As I write these lines, a great gale of wind from the S.S.W. is
blowing, and it was a thrilling sight this morning at 11 a.m. to watch
the Albert Victor lugger launched with twenty-three men on board, in
the tremendous sea breaking over the Downs.  Coming ashore later, on a
giant roller, the wave burst into awful masses of towering foam, so
high above and around the lugger that for an instant she was out of
sight, overwhelmed, and the crowds cried, 'She's lost!' but upwards she
rose again on the crest of the following billow, and with the speed of
an arrow flew to the land on this mighty shooting sea.

Just at the same moment as the lugger came ashore the bold coxswain of
the North Deal lifeboat launched with a gallant crew to the rescue of a
despairing vessel, the details of which service are found below.

There is no harbour at Deal, and all boats are heaved up the steep
shingly beach, fifty or sixty yards from the water's edge, by a capstan
and capstan bars, which, when a lugger is hove up, are manned by twenty
or thirty men.  When hauled up thus to their position the boats are
held fast on the inclined plane on which they rest by a stern chain
rove through a hole in the keel called the 'ruffles.'  This chain is
fastened by a 'trigger,' and when next the lugger is to be launched
great flat blocks of wood called 'skids,' which are always well
greased, are laid down in front of her stem, her crew climb on board,
the mizzen is set, and the trigger is let go.  By her own impetus the
lugger rushes down the steep slope on the slippery skids into the sea.
Even when a heavy sea is beating right on shore, the force acquired by
the rush is sufficient to drive her safely into deep water.  Lest too
heavy a surf or any unforeseen accident should prevent this, a cable
called a 'haul-off warp' is made fast to an anchor moored out far, by
which the lugger men, if need arise, haul their boat out beyond the
shallow water.  The arrangements above described are exactly those
adopted by the lifeboats, which are also lugger-rigged, and being
almost identical in their rig are singularly familiar to Deal men.  The
introduction of steam has diminished greatly the number of the luggers,
as fewer vessels than formerly wait in the Downs, and there is less
demand for the services of the boatmen.

There was formerly another class of Deal boats, the forty-feet
smuggling boats of sixty or seventy years ago.  The length, flat floor,
and sharpness of those open boats, together with the enormous press of
sail they carried, enabled them often to escape the revenue vessels by
sheer speed, and to land their casks of brandy or to float them up
Sandwich River in the darkness, and then run back empty to France for
more.  In the 'good old times' those piratical-looking craft would pick
up a long thirty-feet baulk of timber at sea--timber vessels from the
Baltic or coming across the Atlantic often lose some of their
deck-load--and when engaged in towing it ashore would be pounced upon
by the revenue officers, who would only find, to their own
discomfiture, amidst the hearty 'guffaws' of the boatmen, that the
latter were merely trying to earn 'salvage' by towing the timber ashore.

A little closer search would have revealed that the innocent-looking
baulk of timber was hollow from end to end, and was full of lace,
tobacco, cases of schnapps, 'square face,' brandy, and silks.  There is
little or no smuggling now, and the little that there is, is almost
forced on the men by foreign vessels.

Perhaps four boatmen have been out all night looking for a job in their
galley punt.  At morning dawn they find a captain who employs them to
get his ship a good berth, or to take him to the Ness.  Perhaps the
captain says--and this is an actual case--in imperfect English, 'I have
no money to pay you, but I have forty pounds of tobacco, vill you take
dat?  Or vill you have it in ze part payment?'  The boatmen consult;
hungry children and sometimes reproachful wives wait at home for money
to purchase the morning meal.  'Shall we chance it?' say they.  _They_
take the tobacco, and the first coastguardsman ashore takes _them_,
tobacco and all, before the magistrates, and I sometimes have been sent
for to the 'lock-up,' to find three or four misguided fellows in the
grasp of the law of their country, which poverty and opportunity and
temptation have led them to violate.

At present a large number of galley punts lie on Deal beach.  These
boats carry one lugsail on a mast shipped well amidships.  These boats
vary in size from twenty-one feet to thirty feet in length, and seven
feet beam, and as the Mission boat which I have steered for thirteen
years, as Missions to Seamen Chaplain for the Downs, is a small galley
punt, I take a peculiar interest in their rig and behaviour.

The galley punts are powerful seaboats; when close reefed can stand a
great deal of heavy weather, and are the marvel of the vessels in
distress which they succour.

All the Deal boats, the lifeboats of course excepted, are clinker built
and of yellow colour, the natural elm being only varnished.  And it is
fine to see on a stormy day the splendid way in which they are handled,
visible one moment on the crest and the next hidden in the trough of a
wave, or launched or beached on the open shingle in some towering sea.

I have been breathless with anxiety as I have watched the launch of
these boats into a heavy sea with a long dreadful recoil, but the
landing is still more dangerous.

If you wait long enough when launching, you can get a smooth, or a
comparatively smooth, sea.  I have sometimes waited ten minutes--and
then the command is given 'Let her go,' and the boat is hurled into the
racing curl of some green sea.

Sometimes the sea is too heavy for landing, and the galley punts lie
off skimming about for hours.  Sometimes if the weather looks
threatening it is best to come at once, and then, supposing a heavy
easterly sea, you must clap on a press of sail to drive the boat.  You
get ready a bow painter and a stern rope, and the boat, like a bolt set
free, flies to the land.  Very probably she takes a 'shooter,' that is,
gets her nose down and her stern and rudder high into the air, and, all
hands sitting aft, she is carried along amidst the hiss and burst of
the very crest of the galloping billow.  Fortunate are they if this
wave holds the boat till she is thrown high up the beach, broadside on,
for at the last minute the helm must be put up or down, to get the boat
to lie along the shore, but only at the very last minute--otherwise
danger for the crew!  I have known a boat landing, to capsize and catch
the men underneath, and I have been myself tolerably near the same
danger.

Three or four men man these galley punts, and the hardships and perils
they encounter in the earning of their livelihood are great.  The men
are sometimes, even in winter time, three days away in these open
boats, sleeping on the bare boards or ballast bags and wrapped in a
sail.

They cruise to the west to put one of their number on board some
homeward-bound vessel as 'North Sea pilot,' or they cruise to the north
and up the Thames as far as Gravesend, a distance of eighty miles, to
get hold of some outward-bound vessel with a pilot on board, which
pilot is willing to pay the boatmen a sovereign for putting him ashore
from the Downs, and they are towed behind the vessel, probably a fast
steamer, for eighty miles to Deal and the Downs.  I have done this--and
it is a curious experience--in summer, but to be towed in the teeth of
a north-easterly snowstorm from Gravesend to the Downs is quite another
thing; but it is the common experience of the Deal boatmen.  And every
day in winter they hover off Deal in their splendid galley punts,
rightly called 'knock-toes,' for the poor fellows' hands and feet are
often semi-frozen, to take a pilot out of some outward-bound steamer
going at the rate of ten or fifteen knots an hour.  It means at the
outside about 5_s_. per man; perhaps they have earned nothing for a
week, and hungry but dauntless they are determined to get hold of that
steamer, if men can do it.  On the steamer comes full speed right end
on at them.  The Deal men shoot at her under press of canvas, haul down
sail, and lay their boat in the same direction as the flying steamship,
which often never slackens her speed the least bit.  As all this _must_
be done in an instant, or pale death stares them in the face, it is
done with wonderful speed and skill.  While a man with a boat-hook, to
which a long 'towing-line' is attached, stands in the bow of the galley
punt and hooks it into anything he can catch, perhaps the bight of a
rope hung over the steamer's side, the steersman has for his own and
his comrades' lives to steer his best and to keep his boat clear of the
steamer's sides, and of her deadly propeller revolving astern, while
the bowman pays out his towing-line, and others see it is all clear,
and another takes a turn of it round a thwart.

[Illustration: Hooking the steamer.]

The steamer is 'hooked,' and, fast as she flies ahead, the galley punt
falls astern, this time, thank God, clear of the 'fan,' into the
boiling wake of the steamer, and at last she feels the tremendous
jerk--such a jerk as would tear an oak tree from its roots--of the
tightening tow-rope.

Then the boat, with her stem high in the air, for so boats tow best,
and all hands aft, and smothered in flying spray, is swept away with
the steamer as far perhaps as Dover, where the pilot wants to land.
Then the steam is eased off and the vessel stopped, but hardly ever for
the Deal men.

This 'hooking' of steamers going at full speed is most dangerous, and
often causes loss of life and poor men's property--their boats and
boats' gear--their all.  Sometimes a kindly disposed captain eases his
speed down.  I have heard the boatmen talking together, as their keen
eyes discerned a steamer far off, and could even then pronounce as to
the 'line' and individuality of the steamer: 'That's a blue-funnelled
China boat--she's bound through the Canal: he's a gentleman, he is; he
always eases down to ten knots for us Deal men.'

Even at ten-knot speed the danger is very great, and it is marvellous
more accidents do not occur, in spite of the coolness and skill of the
boatmen.  Accidents do occur too frequently.  The last fatal accident
happened to a daring young fellow who had run his boat about six feet
too close to a fast steamer; six feet short of where he put her would
have meant safety, but as it was, the steamer cut her in two and he was
drowned with his comrade, one man out of three alone being saved.  Just
half an hour before he had waved 'good-bye!' to his young wife as he
ran to the beach.

Another boat has her side torn out by a blow from one of the
propeller's fans, and goes down carrying the men deep with her; one is
saved after having almost crossed the border, and I shall long remember
my interview with that man just after he was brought ashore, appalled
with the sense of the nearness of the spirit land, and just as if he
had had a revelation--his gratitude, his convulsive sobs, his
penitence.  Another man has his leg or his arm caught by the tow-rope
as it is paid out to the flying steamer; in one man's case the keen axe
is just used in time to cut the line as it smokes over the gunwale
before the coil tears his leg off; in another's case the awful pull of
the rope fractured the arm lengthways and not by a cross fracture, and
the bone never united after the most painful operations.

Owners and captains and officers of steamships, for God's sake, ease
down your speed when your poor sailor brethren, the gallant Deal
boatmen who man the lifeboats, are struggling to hook your mighty
steamships!  Ease down a bit, gentlemen, and let the men earn something
for the wives and children at home without having to pay for their
efforts with their precious lives!

The very same men who work the galley punts I have just described are
the 'hovellers' in the great luggers when the tempest drives the
smaller boats ashore, and they also are the same men who, in times of
greater and extremer need, answer so nobly to the summons of the
lifeboat bell.

Pritchard's most interesting chapter, in which the best authorities are
quoted at length, is convincing that the word 'hoveller' is derived
from _hobelier_ (_hobbe_, [Greek] _hippos_, Gaelic _coppal_) and
signifies 'a coast watchman,' or 'look-out man,' who, by horse
(_hobbe_) or afoot, ran from beacon to beacon with the alarm of the
enemies' approach, when, 'with a loose rein and bloody spur rode inland
many a post.'  Certainly nothing better describes the Deal boatmen's
occupation for long hours of day and night than the expression so well
known in Deal, 'on the look-out,' and which thus appears to be
equivalent to 'hovelling.'

In 1864 the first lifeboat of the locality was placed in Walmer by the
Royal National Lifeboat Institution.  In 1865 another lifeboat was
placed in North Deal, a cotton ship with all hands having been lost on
the southern part of the Goodwins in a gale from the N.N.E., which
unfortunately the Walmer lifeboat, being too far to leeward, was unable
to fetch in that wind with a lee tide.

This splendid lifeboat was called the Van Cook, after its donor, and
was very soon afterwards summoned to the rescue for the first time.

It was blowing 'great guns and marline-spikes' from the S.S.W. with
tremendous sea on Feb. 7, 1865, when there was seen in the rifts of the
storm a full-rigged ship on the Goodwin Sands.  The lifeboat bell was
rung, a crew was obtained, and the men in their new and untried
lifeboat made her first, but not their first, daring attempt at rescue.
A few moments before the Deal lifeboat, there launched from the south
part of Deal one of the powerful luggers which lay there, owned by Mr.
Spears, who himself was aboard; and the lugger was on this occasion
steered by John Bailey.  The Walmer lifeboat also bravely launched, and
the three made for the wrecked vessel.

The lugger, being first, began the attempt, and in spite of the risk
(for one really heavy sea breaking into her would have sent her to the
bottom) went into the breakers.  But the lugger, rightly named
England's Glory--and the names of the luggers are admirably chosen, for
example, The Guiding Star, Friend of All Nations, Briton's Pride, and
Seaman's Hope--seeing a powerful friend behind her in the shape of the
lifeboat, stood on into the surf of the Goodwins to aid in saving life,
and also for a 'hovel,' in the hope of saving the vessel.

It was dangerous in the extreme for the lugger, but, as the men said,
'They was that daring in them days, and they seed so much money
a-staring them in the face, in a manner o' speaking, on board that
there wessel, that they was set on it.'

And when Deal boatmen are 'set on it,' they can do much.

When the lugger fetched to windward of the vessel she wore down on her
before the wind.  She did not dare to anchor; had she done so, she
would have been filled and gone down in five minutes, so hauling down
her foresail to slacken her speed, she shot past the vessel as close as
she dared, and as she flew by, six of the crew jumped at the rigging of
the wreck, and actually caught it and got on board.  The Walmer
lifeboat sailed at the vessel and tried to luff up to her, hauling down
her foresail, but the lifeboat had not 'way' enough, and missed the
vessel altogether, being driven helplessly to leeward, whence it was
impossible to return.

In increasing storm and sea, more furious as the tide rose, on came the
Deal lifeboat, the Van Cook, Wilds and Roberts (the latter now coxswain
in place of Wilds) steering.  They anchored, and veering out their
cable drifted down to the wreck; then six of the lifeboatmen also
sprang to the rigging of the heeling wreck, and the lifeboat sheered
off for safety.

The wreck was lying head to the north and with a list to starboard.
Heavy rollers struck her and broke, flying in blinding clouds of spray
high as her foreyard, coming down in thunder on her deck, so that it
seemed impossible that men could work on that wave-beaten plane.  She
was also lifted by each wave and hammered over the sand into shallower
water, so that the drenched and buffeted lifeboatmen had to lift anchor
and follow the drifting vessel in the lifeboat, and again drop anchor
and veer down as before.  All this time three powerful steam-tugs were
waiting in deep water to help the vessel, but they dared not come into
the surf where the lifeboat lay.

To stop the drift of the wrecked Iron Crown was her only chance of
safety, and it would have probably ruined all had they dropped anchors
from the vessel's bows, as she would have drifted over them and forced
them into her bottom.  The Deal men, therefore, with seamanlike skill
and resource, swung a kedge anchor clear of the vessel high up _from
her foreyard_, and as the vessel drifted the kedge bit, and the bows of
the vessel little by little came up to the sea, when her other anchors
were let go, and in a few minutes held fast; then with a mighty cheer
from the Deal men--lifeboatmen and lugger's crew all together--the Iron
Crown half an hour afterwards was floated by the rising tide on the
very top of the fateful sands; her hawser was brought to the waiting
tug-boats, and she was towed--ship, cargo, and crew all saved--into the
shelter of the Downs.

The names of this the first crew of the Deal lifeboat are given
below[1], and their gallant deed was the forerunner of a long and
splendid series of rescues, no less than 358 lives having been saved,
including such cases as the Iron Crown, by the North Deal lifeboat and
her gallant crew, and counting 93 lives saved by the Walmer lifeboat
Centurion, and 101 lives saved by the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabina, a
total of 552 lives have been saved on the Goodwin Sands.

The next venture of the Deal lifeboat was not so fortunate.  It was
made to the schooner Peerless, wrecked in Trinity Bay, in the very
heart of the Goodwins.  The men were lashed in the rigging, and the sea
was flying over them, or rather at them; but all managed to get into
the lifeboat except one poor lad who was on his first voyage.  He died
while lashed on the foreyard, and was brought down thence by Ashenden,
who bravely mounted the rigging and carried down the dead lad with the
sea-foam on his lips.  Among the rescuers of the Peerless crew were
Ashenden, named above, Stephen Wilds (for many years my own comrade in
the Mission Boat), brave old Robert Wilds, Horrick, Richard Roberts,
and ten others.

I have told of the first rescue effected by the Deal lifeboat--let me
describe one of the last noble deeds of mercy done on November 11,
1891, during an awful gale then blowing.  In the morning of the day two
luggers launched to help vessels in distress, but such was the fury of
the gale, and so mountainous was the sea, that the luggers were
themselves overpowered, and had to anchor in such shelter as they could
get.

At 2 p.m., tiles flying in the streets, and houses being unroofed, it
was most difficult to keep one's feet; crowds of Deal boatmen in
sou'-westers and oilskins were ready round the lifeboat, and in the
gaps of the driving rain and in the smoking drifts of the howling
squalls which tore over the sea, they saw that a small vessel which had
anchored inside the Brake Sand about two miles off the mainland had
parted her anchors, and, being helpless and without sails, was drifting
towards and outwards to the Brake.

[Illustration: A forlorn hope]

Then the Deal lifeboat was off to the rescue, and with eighteen men in
her, three being extra and special hands on this dangerous occasion,
launched into a terrible sea, grand but furious beyond description.
Hurled down Deal beach by her weight, the lifeboat was buried in a wild
smother, and the next minute was left dry on the beach by the ghastly
recoil.  The coming breaker floated her, and she swung to her haul-off
warp.

Then they set her close-reefed storm foresail and took her mizzen off.
Soon after an ominous crack, loud and clear, was heard in her foremast,
and such was the force of the gale that Roberts--the same brave man
who, having been second coxswain and in the lifeboat in the rescue of
the Iron Crown above described in 1865, on this perilous day in 1891
again headed his brave comrades as coxswain, with his old friend and
brother in arms, so to speak, E. Hanger, as second coxswain--hauled
down the foresail and set the small mizzen close-reefed on the
foremast, and even then the great lifeboat was nearly blown out of the
water.

With unbounded confidence in their splendid lifeboat, under this sail,
and indeed they can only work their weighty lifeboat under sail, they
literally flew before the blast into the terrific surf on the Brake
Sand, six men being required to steer her!

By this time the little vessel named The Thistle had struck the Sand,
but not heavily enough to break her in pieces, and hurled forwards by a
great roller, she grated and struck, and then was hurled forwards
again, seas breaking over her and her hapless crew.  So thick was the
air with the sea spray carried along in smoking spindrifts that the
Deal men lost sight of the wreck while they raced into the surf of the
Brake.

In that surf--which I beheld from the end of Ramsgate Pier, being
called there by imperative business, and thus deprived of the privilege
of being with the men--the lifeboat was apparently swallowed up.  She
was filled over and over again, and sometimes there was not a man of
the crew visible to the coxswain, who stood aft steering in wind which
amounted to a hurricane, and, according to Greenwich Observatory,
representing a velocity of eighty miles an hour.

At this moment I was witness of the fine sight of the Ramsgate tug and
lifeboat steaming out of Ramsgate Harbour, brave coxswain Fish steering
the lifeboat, which plunged into the mad seas behind the tug, while
blinding clouds of spray flew over the crew.  Those splendid 'storm
warriors' also rescued the crew of the Touch Not, wrecked that day on
the Ramsgate Sands; but just while they were steaming out of Ramsgate,
away on the horizon as far as I could bear to look against the fury of
the wind and rain, struggling alone and unaided in the surf of the
Brake Sand, I beheld the Deal lifeboat engaged in the rescue of The
Thistle.

There indeed before my eyes was a veritable wrestle with death for
their own lives and those of the wrecked vessel's crew.  The latter had
beaten over the Brake Sand, and was anchored close outside it, the
British ensign hoisted 'Union down,' and sinking.  Sinking lower and
lower, and only kept afloat by her cargo of nuts, her decks level with
the sea which poured over them.  In the agony of despair her crew of
five had taken to their own small boat, being afraid, from signs known
to seamen and from the peculiar wallowing of their vessel, that she was
about to make her final plunge to the bottom.

But now the great blue lifeboat rode like a messenger from heaven
alongside them, and their brave preservers dragged them over her sides
into safety from the very mouth of destruction.

Amidst words of gratitude and with praise on their lips to a merciful
God, the utterly exhausted crew saw the Deal men set sail and fight
their way again through the storm landwards.

Looking back for an instant, all hands saw the appalling sight of the
vessel they had left turn on her side and sink to the bottom of the sea.

With colours flying, with proud and thankful hearts they reach
Broadstairs, whence I received the coxswain's telegram--'Crew all
saved; sprung foremast.  R. Roberts.'

This gallant rescue was effected under the leadership of R. Roberts and
E. Hanger, the very same men who were foremost in the saving of the
Iron Crown.  Their names should not be passed over in silence, nor
those of the brave fellows who back up with their skill, their
strength, and their lives the efforts of their coxswains.

In very truth the Deal boatmen (Deal, Walmer, and Kingsdown all
included) as a class of men are unique.  As pilots, boatmen, and
fishermen they, with the Ramsgate men, stand alone, in their perils
around and on the great quicksand which guards their coast, and they
must always be of deep interest to the rest of their fellow-countrymen
by reason of their hardships, their skill, and their daring, and above
all by reason of their generous courage, consistent with their ancient
fame.  Faults they have--let others tell of them--but it seems to me
that these brave Kentish boatmen are worthy descendants of their Saxon
forefathers who rallied to the banners of Earl Godwin and died at
Senlac in stubborn ring round Godwin's kingly son.

To them, the lifeboatmen and coxswains of Deal, Walmer, and Kingsdown,
friends and comrades, I dedicate these true histories of splendid
rescues wrought by them, the 'Heroes of the Goodwin Sands.'



[1] Crew of the Deal lifeboat on her first launch to the rescue of the
Iron Crown:--R. Wilds, R. Roberts, E. Hanger, G. Pain, J. Beney, G.
Porter, E. Foster, C. Larkins, G. Browne, J. May, A. Redsull, R.
Sneller, T. Goymer, R. Erridge.




CHAPTER III

THE AUGUSTE HERMANN FRANCKE

          A brave vessel,
  Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her
  Dashed all to pieces!  Oh, the cry did knock
  Against my very heart!  Pool souls! they perished.


All day long April 20, 1886, it had been blowing a gale from the
north-east, and a heavy sea was tumbling on the beach at Deal.  On the
evening of that stormy day I was making my way to the Boatmen's Rooms,
at North Deal, where the boatmen were to assemble for the usual evening
service held by the Missions to Seamen chaplain.

On my way I met a boatman, a valued comrade on many a rough day in the
mission-boat.  Breathless with haste, he could at first only say, 'Come
on, sir, quick!  Come on; there's a man been seen running to and fro on
the Goodwins!'

Seeing that immediate help was needed, it appeared that the coxswain of
the lifeboat proposed signalling a passing tug-boat, and wanted my
sanction for the measure.  Had she responded to the signal, she would
have towed the lifeboat to the rescue of the mysterious man on the
Goodwins in an hour or so.  As Hon. Secretary of the Lifeboat Branch, I
at once authorised the step, and a flag was dipped from Deal pierhead,
and blue lights were burned; but all in vain.  The tug-boat went on her
way, taking no notice of the signals, which it is supposed she did not
understand.

It was plain some disaster had taken place, but what had happened on
those gruesome sands I could only conjecture until I reached the
Boatmen's Rooms.  Outside the building I found in groups and knots a
crowd of boatmen and pilots, and also Richard Roberts, the coxswain of
the Deal lifeboat.

Roberts had that evening, about five p.m., been taking a look at the
Goodwins with his glass, a good old-fashioned 'spy-glass.'  After a
long steady search--'Why,' said he to the men round him, 'there's a new
wreck on the sands since yesterday!'  The gale of the morning part of
the day had been accompanied by low sweeping clouds of mist and driving
fog, and as soon as the curtain of thick vapour lifted, Roberts noticed
the new wreck.

The other boatmen then took a look, and they all went up to the high
window of the lifeboat-house to gain a better view of the distant
Goodwins.

The point where the wreck, or the object they saw lay, was the outer
part of the Goodwin Sands towards the north, and was quite eight miles
distant from the keen-eyed watchers at Deal.

'That's a wreck since yesterday,' said one and all.

Roberts, gazing through his glass, now cried out, 'There's something,
man or monkey, getting off the vessel and moving about on the sand!'

'Let's have a look, Dick,' said another and another, and then all cried
out,

'Yes; it's a man!  He's waving something--it's a flag!'

'No, 'tis n't a flag,' said Roberts, 'it's more like a piece of canvas
lashed to a pole; it blows out too heavy for a flag.'

Just about the same time, watchers at Lloyd's office had seen through a
powerful glass the same object on the Goodwins, and they sent word to
the coxswain of the lifeboat that there was a man in distress on the
Goodwin Sands, and wildly running to and fro.

The wind, however, being north-east, and the tide having just commenced
to run in the same direction as the wind, thus producing what is called
a lee tide, it would have been worse than useless for the Deal lifeboat
to have launched.  No boat of shallow draft of water, such as a
lifeboat is, can beat to windward over a lee tide, and had she been
launched, the Deal lifeboat would have drifted farther at each tack
from the point she aimed at.

As before explained, the Deal lifeboat was unable to attract the
attention of the passing tugboat, and it was therefore decided to wire
to Ramsgate to explain that Deal was helpless, and ask the Ramsgate
lifeboat to go to the rescue.

By an extraordinary combination of misfortunes the Ramsgate lifeboat
and tugs were also helpless, and having been suddenly disabled were
laid up for repairs.  We then anxiously discussed every alternative,
and it was sorrowfully decided that nothing more could be done until
the lee tide was over, which would be about 10.30 p.m.

It was now dark, and the hour had come for the boatmen's service which
I was to hold.  The men as usual trooped in, and the room was crowded;
the scene was a striking one.  Fine stalwart men to the number of sixty
were present--free rovers of the sea, men who never call any one
master, with all the characteristic independence and even dignity of
those who follow the sea.  There was present the coxswain of the
lifeboat, and there were present also most of the men who manned the
lifeboat a few hours afterwards.  In every man's face was written the
story of dangers conquered, and a lifelong experience of the sea, on
which they pass so much of their lives, and on whose bosom a large
proportion of them would probably meet death.

On all occasions and at all times those meetings are of overwhelming
interest, by reason of the character and histories of each man among
that unique audience, and also it may be added on account of their rapt
attention to the 'old, old story,' which, 'majestic in its own
simplicity,' is invariably set before them.  But, on this occasion, add
to the picture the distant and apparently deserted figure just seen
through the rifts in the mist, 'wildly running to and fro on the
Goodwins,' the eager and sympathetic faces of the boatmen in their
absolute helplessness for a few long hours--hours that seemed centuries
to all of us.  Observe their restrained but impatient glances at the
clock, and listen to their deep-throated responses to the impassioned
petitions of the Litany of the Church of England.

I am only recording the barest facts when I say that the response of
'Good Lord, deliver us,' following that most solemn of all the
petitions of the Litany, was touching beyond the power of words to
describe.  In the midst of the service I stopped and said, 'Has any man
another suggestion to offer?  Shall we telegraph for the Dover tug?'
It was seen after a short discussion that this would be unavailing, and
the service went on.

The hymns sung at that service were three in number, and perhaps are
familiar to those who read this story:--

  Light in the darkness, sailor!
  Day is at hand,

being the well-known 'Life-boat' hymn;

  Rescue the perishing;

and then

  Jesu, lover of my soul.


No man present could fail to think at each part of the service, and as
each hymn was sung, of the poor forlorn figure seen on the Goodwins,
and now in the most dire need of help.  Nor do I think that service
will ever fade from the memories of those present on that Tuesday
evening.

Service over, we all went to the front of the lifeboat-house, and the
coxswain and myself once more consulted.  We stood just down at the
water's edge, where the white surf showed up against the black night,
and fell heavily on the shingle, resounding.

We asked, 'Had Ramsgate gone to the rescue?'

'Why was there no flare burning if there were any one or any vessel on
the Goodwins?'

'Why the dull oppressive silence and absence of all signs of signals of
distress?'

Looking up the beach we saw the black mass of boatmen all gathered
round the door of the lifeboat-house, and we heard their shouts, 'Throw
open the doors!'  'Let us have the key!'  'Why not give us the
life-belts now?'

Finally we decided to launch at exactly nine o'clock.  I went home to
dress for the night, having arranged to go in the lifeboat.  Meantime
the bell was rung, and the usual rush was made to get the life-belts.
So keen were the men that the launch was made before the time agreed
upon, and the lifeboat rushed down the beach just as I got in sight of
her--to my great and sore disappointment--and soon disappeared in the
night.

They stood on till they reached the inner edge of the Goodwins, along
which they tacked, being helped to windward, and swept towards the
north by the weather-tide, which they met about eleven o'clock.  As
they worked their way into Trinity Bay, a sort of basin in the very
heart of the Goodwins, the coxswain felt sure they were drawing near
the spot where the wreck had been seen, but it was absolutely dark.
They could see nothing, no flare, no light, and they could hear nothing
but the hollow thunder of breaking surf.

Roberts now decided to run the lifeboat right through the breakers
which beat on the outer part of the sands, and thoroughly to search
that part of the Goodwins.

Some said, 'The Ramsgate lifeboat has been here and taken the man off.'

Others, 'If there are people alive on the wreck, why is there no light
or flare?'

And then they ran her, in that pitchy blackness, into the surf; she
went through it close hauled, and beyond it into the deep sea the other
side, and searched the outside edge of the sands, but to no purpose.
Then, having shouted all together and listened, they stood back again
through the surf, running now before the wind.

The broken and formidable sea raged round the lifeboat like a pack of
wolves.  It broke on both sides of the lifeboat right into her, and
literally boiled over her as she flew before the gale and the impulse
of the swell astern.  Nothing could be seen in this stormy flight
except the white burst of the tumultuous waves, and all around was
midnight blackness.

Some were of opinion, after the prolonged search, that the wreck had
disappeared; but Roberts carried all hearts with him when he said,
'We're not going home till we see and search that wreck from stem to
stern!'

Then they anchored in Trinity Bay in four fathoms of water.  They each
had a piece of bread, a bit of cheese, and a smoke; and with every
faculty of sight and hearing strained to the utmost, they longed for
the coming of the day.

We may now return to the wrecked vessel, and describe the fate of her
captain and crew.  She was a Norwegian brig, the Auguste Hermann
Francke, bound from Krageroe to sunny San Sebastian with a cargo of
ice.  She had a crew of seven all told, and the captain's name was
Jargersen.

He had been running his vessel that morning before the gale, and at
eight o'clock in the forenoon struck on the Goodwins, having either
failed in the thick weather to pick up the lightships or the Foreland
as points from which to take a safe departure, or being carried out of
his course altogether by the strong tides which run around and over the
Goodwins, and which, if not allowed for, are a frequent cause of
disaster.  It was on the shallower northern part of the Goodwins that
the Norwegian brig struck in a north-easterly gale.

The brig struck the Goodwins about high water with a terrific crash,
and was lifted up by successive billows and thumped down and hammered
on the hard sand.  Contrary to the popular idea, ships sink but slowly
in the sand, which is practically very hard and close.  When she took
the ground the crew rushed to the main rigging and the captain to the
fore rigging.  The sea beat in clouds high over the vessel, and the
seven men lashed themselves in the rigging to prevent themselves being
shaken into the sea by the shocks.  Again and again the heavy vessel
was lifted up and thumped down; while the weather was so thick that
neither could she be seen from the nearest lightship or the land, nor
could they on the vessel see the land, or form the least idea as to
where they were; conjecturing merely that they were aground on the
Goodwins.

At last the mainmast went by the board, carrying with its ruin and
tangle of sails, spars and cordage, six of the crew into the terrible
billows.  As each man unlashed himself he was carried away by the sea
before the eyes of the captain.  The last of the crew was the ship's
boy, who, just as he cast off the fastenings by which he was lashed to
the rigging, managed to seize the jib sheet, which was hanging over the
side, and called piteously to the captain to save him.  A great wave
dashed him against the ship's side, and his head was literally beaten
in.  He too was carried away, and the captain was left alone.

The foremast shortly afterwards gave way, but the captain saw the crash
coming, and lashed himself to the windlass, where, drenched and half
drowned, he was torn at by the waves which were hurled over the ship
for hours.

At last the tide fell, and still, owing to the thick driving mist, no
one knew of the tragedy that was being enacted on the Goodwins.

Alas! many similar disasters take place on the Goodwins, the details of
which are covered by the black and stormy nights on which they occur,
and nothing is ever found to reveal the awful secret but, perhaps, a
few fishermen's nets and buoys, or a mast, or a ship's boat.

With the falling tide the sands round the wrecked vessel became dry for
miles, and the captain, half-crazed with grief and terror, climbed down
from the wreck and ran wildly about the sands.  His first thought was
not to seek for a way of escape or help, but to find the bodies of his
crew, and to protect them from the mutilations of the sea.

But he found none of them, and then he walked and wildly ran and ran
for miles, and waved his hands to the nearest but too-distant
lightship.  Sick at heart, he then fastened on the wreck a pole with a
piece of canvas lashed to it, and, as we know, he was seen by God's
mercy about that time at Deal.

As the tide again rose, evening came on, and again the captain had to
return to his lonely perch, and to lash himself again as before on the
little platform, barely three feet square, over which the sea had
beaten so fiercely a few hours before.  What visions--what fancies,
what terrors may have possessed his soul as the cruel, crawling sea
again lapped against the vessel's sides in the darkness of that awful
night!

Even now a gleam of mercy shone on him, for though the cold waves again
tumbled over and around him, they did not break up the little square
platform upon which he stood, and upon the holding together of which
his chance of living through the night depended.  None may tell of the
workings of that man's mind during that long night.  It is said that in
moments of great peril sometimes the whole course of the past life,
past but not obliterated, is summoned up in the most vivid minuteness.
Thrice blessed is the man who in that dread moment can trust himself
wholly to Him who is 'a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from
the tempest.'

And yet, though he knew it not--though hope and faith itself may have
burned low, nay, been all but quenched in that poor wearied Norwegian
seaman's breast, though grim despair may have shouted in his ears,
'Curse God and die,' all that long night the lifeboat was close to him.
The dauntless coxswain and crew, though wearied, drenched and buffeted,
were 'determined to see the wreck before they went home.'  To use their
own simple words, 'They hollered and shouted both outside and inside
them breakers, but you won't hear anything--not out there--the way the
sea was a roarin'.'

At last morning broke.  When the wind is easterly you can always see
the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the
sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey
dawn stole over the horizon in the east.

The weather was clearing fast and 'fining down' when the coxswain
roused all hands to 'get up the anchor.'  The foresail was set, and
then a man in the bows cried out, 'I can see something there--there's
the wreck!'--and, indeed, there it was, not more than four hundred
yards distant.

Now the sky was lighted up a rosy red, so fast came on the 'jocund morn
a tiptoe' over the waves.

'There's a man running away from the wreck!' said the coxswain.

He had descried the bright blue lifeboat with the red wale round her
gunwale, and was running to meet her in the direction she was heading.
But the lifeboat was making short tacks to windward, and the coxswain
taking off his sou'-wester waved it to the running figure to come back
and follow the lifeboat on the other tack.

Back again came the solitary man, and then at last was given the final
order from the coxswain, 'Run straight into the surf to meet him!' and
the lifeboat, carried on by a huge roller, grounded on the sands.

Running, staggering, pressing on, the rescued man came close to the
lifeboat, and then fell forwards on his knees with face uplifted to the
heavens, and his back to the lifeboat.

'They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the
deep. . . .  Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He
bringeth them out of their distresses. . . .  Oh that men would praise
the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children
of men!'

Now rose the glorious sun, darting his golden javelins high up into the
blue majestical canopy; and cheerily into the water, now burnished by
the sunbeams, sprang Alfred Redsull, danger and hardship all forgotten,
with a line round his waist, to guide and help the exhausted man away
from the deadly 'fox-falls,' which were full of swirling water, and at
last into the lifeboat.  Then with bated breath they learned the
story,--that all the rest were gone, and that the captain himself was
the solitary survivor.  His hands were in gloves; they cut those off,
and also his boots, so swelled were hands and feet.  They gave him a
dry pair of long stockings and woollen mittens, and they let down the
mizzen and made a lee for him under its shelter, for he was half
perished with the cold of that bitter night.  After a few minutes he
insisted on again searching the sands for his lost crew, and the
coxswain and others of the lifeboatmen went with him.

The lifeboat was by this time high and dry, for the water was falling
with great rapidity, and there was a mile of dry sand on each side of
her.  The company of men now searched the sands, and a long way off the
coxswain saw a dark object.

'What's that?' he said.

That's my ship's rudder,' replied the captain, 'and I walked round it
yesterday evening when death was staring in my face.'

Then they came to the wreck; her decks were gone, every atom of what
had once been on board her was swept clean out of her: she was split
open at her keel, and lay in halves, gaping.

Inside this wrecked skeleton ship lay her foremast, and so crushed and
flattened out was the vessel that the men stepped from the sand at once
into the hollow shell--and there they saw, still holding together, the
little spot of planking, ten feet above them, on which the rescued man
had stood, and where he had been lashed: and they took down and brought
away as a memento the piece of canvas which he had fastened to the
pole, and which had caught the eyes of the boatmen at Deal; but the
bodies of the drowned crew were never seen again.

When the tide rose the lifeboat got up anchor and made for home.
Crowds were assembled at the beach, expecting, as the British ensign
was hoisted at the peak, to find a rescued crew 'all saved' on board;
but, alas! only one wearied, overwrought man struggled up the beach.

I led him to get some hot coffee and to give him a few minutes' repose;
but he could eat nothing, and he laid his head on his arms and sobbed
as if his heart would break for the friends that were gone, and
overwhelmed by the mercy of his own preservation.

All honour to the brave coxswain and his lifeboat crew who sought and
searched for him through and through that dreadful midnight surf, and
stuck to their task with determined resolution, and who found and
rescued this poor Norwegian stranger from the very grasp of death!

All honour to the brave![1]



[1] The crew of the lifeboat on this occasion were--Richard Roberts
(coxswain), Alf. Redsull, W. Staunton, H. Roberts, W. Adams, E. Hall,
P. Sneller, W. Foster, W. Marsh, Thomas May, J. Marsh, T. Baker, R.
Williams, G. Foster.




CHAPTER IV

THE GANGES

  I've lived since then in calm and strife,
  Full fifty summers, a sailor's life;
  And Death whenever he come to me
  Shall come on the wide unbounded sea.


The rule that gales of wind prevail at the equinoxes is certainly
proved by the exceptions, but October 14, 1881, was an instance of a
gale so close to the autumnal equinox that it belonged rather to the
rule than to the exception.  It had been blowing from the west all that
day, and the Downs was full of ships.  Others were running back from
down Channel under lower fore top-sails, all ready to let go their
anchors.

Sometimes in stress of weather a ship bringing up will lose her anchors
by not shortening sail sufficiently before she lets them go.  She
preserves too much 'way' through the water, and she snaps the great
chain cable by the force of her momentum as if it had been a
pack-thread.

The wind reached the force of a 'great gale,'--the entry I find in my
diary of that date.  The boatmen say to the present day that it was
blowing a 'harricane,' and, according to the report of the coxswain of
the lifeboat, 'it was blowing a very heavy gale of wind.'  There was,
therefore, no mere capful of wind, but a real, whole, tremendous gale.
Old salts are always ready to pity landsmen, and to overwhelm them with
'Bless you's!' when they venture to talk of a 'storm'; but the harsh,
steady roar of the wind on this day made it plainly and beyond doubt a
storm.

Long lines of heavy dangerous rollers broke on Deal beach, and only the
first-class luggers could launch or live in the Downs, so great was the
sea.  These splendid luggers being of five feet draught, and having
therefore a deeper hold of the water, could do better than a lifeboat
in the deep water of the Downs.  They could fight to windward better,
and would not be so liable to upset under sail as a lifeboat; but this
only applies to the deep water.

Put the best Deal lugger that ever floated alongside the present Deal
lifeboat, the Mary Somerville, in a furious sea of breakers on the
Goodwin Sands, and the whole state of affairs is altered.  The lugger
would be swamped and overwhelmed in five minutes, while the lifeboat
would empty herself and live through it successfully.

The fortunes of the vessels in the Downs on that day were varied.  Some
were manfully riding out the gale; others were holding on to their one
remaining anchor, signalling for help, and as sorely in need of fresh
anchors and chains as ever was King Richard of a horse.  Some had lost
both anchors and were drifting out to destruction; destruction meaning
the Goodwin Sands, on which a fearful surf was raging about two miles
under their lee.

One of those driving vessels was the Ganges.  She had run back from the
Channel to the Downs for shelter, and dropped her anchors running
before a strong tide and a heavy gale; having thus too much 'way' on
her, both the long chain cables parted, snapping close to the anchors,
and trailed from her bows.  Her head was thus kept up to the wind,
while there was no sufficient check to her drift astern and outwards
towards the Goodwins.

Efforts, but ineffectual efforts, were made to get rid of the trailing
cables, and therefore the vessel's head could not be got before the
wind, and she could not be steered, but drifted out faster and faster.
It is supposed that there was another anchor on the forecastle head,
which had somehow fouled, or, at any rate, could not be got loose from
some cause or other.

In the confusion, the sails of the great vessel--for she was a
full-rigged ship--having been either neglected or imperfectly furled,
were torn adrift and blew to ribbons.  These great strips of heavy
canvas cracked like monstrous whips with deafening noise, thrashing the
masts and rigging, and rendering any attempt to furl them or cut them
away, perilous in the extreme.

The crew consisted of thirty-five hands 'all told,' of whom the
captain, mates, petty officers, and apprentices were English, while the
men before the mast were Lascars.  Now I think my readers will agree
with me in believing that 'Jack,' with all his faults, is a more
reliable man to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with in time of danger
than Ali Mahmood Seng, the Lascar.  In cold and storm and peril most of
us would prefer 'our ain folk' alongside of us.

Some years ago a Board of Trade report contained a quotation from the
remarks of a firm of shipowners, to the effect that they largely
employed foreign sailors on board their vessels, because they were
(_a_) more sober, (_b_) more amenable to discipline, and (_c_) cheaper
than British sailors; but they added, 'we always keep a few Englishmen
among the crew to lead the way aloft on dark and stormy nights.'

What a heart-stirring comment on the character of the British sailor is
there in the passage above quoted!  Is there no remedy, and no
physician for the frailties and degradations of poor Jack, who,
whatever be his faults, 'leads the way aloft on dark and stormy
nights?'  'If the constituents of London mud can be resolved, if the
sand can be transformed into an opal,' to use the noble simile of a
great living writer, 'and the water into a drop of dew or a star of
snow, or a translucent crystal, and the soot into a diamond such as

  On the forehead of a queen
  Trembles with dewy light,--

if such glorious transformations can be wrought by the laws of Nature
on the commixture of common elements, shall we despair that
transformations yet more glorious may be wrought in human souls now
thwarted and blackened by the malice of the devil, when they are
subjected to the far diviner and far more stupendous alchemy of the
Holy Spirit of God?'

The moral to be drawn from these pages surely must be this--that there
is splendid material to work upon, the most undaunted heroism and the
noblest self-sacrifice, among the seafaring classes of our island.

On this dark, tempestuous night, be the cause what it may, preventible
or otherwise, the Ganges drifted helplessly to her fate.  A powerful
tug-boat got hold of her, but the ship dragged the tug-boat astern with
her, towards the Goodwins, until at last the tug-boat snapped her great
15-inch hawser, and then gave up the attempt and returned to land.

The Ganges now burned flares and blue lights for help.  Noting her
rapid approach to the Goodwins, on which an awful sea was running, and
the helpless and dishevelled condition of the vessel, the Gull
lightship fired guns and rockets at intervals of five minutes.

This is the proper and recognised summons to the lifeboats, but long
before the lightship fired her signal, the Deal boatmen saw the peril
of the vessel; and one of their number, Tom Adams, ran to the coxswain
of the Deal lifeboat with the news: 'Tug's parted her, and she'll be on
the Goodwins in five minutes!'  'Then we'll go,' said the coxswain, and
he rang the bell and summoned a crew.

As it was one of the wildest nights on which the Deal lifeboat was ever
launched, the very best men on Deal beach came forward to the struggle
for a place in the lifeboat, and out of their number a crew of fifteen
was got.

R. Roberts, at this time the second coxswain, was afloat in his lugger,
putting an anchor and chain on board the Eurydice, and in his absence
Tom Adams helped the coxswain to steer the lifeboat, which literally
flew before the blast, to the rescue.

The squalls of this tempest were regular 'smokers,' a word which
signifies that the crests of the waves were blown into the astonished
air in smoking clouds of spray; and the lifeboat was stripped for the
fight, reefed mizzen and double-reefed storm foresail.  I should say
that running out before the wind the mizzen was not set, and they
frequently had to haul down the reefed foresail, and let her run under
bare poles right away from the land into the hurricane.

No one can appraise the nature of this dangerous task who has not run
before a gale off shore for five or six miles to leeward, and then
tried to get back home dead to windwards.  No one who has ever tried
it, and got back, will ever forget it, if his voyage, or rather his
escape from death, has been effected in an open boat.

Nor can any one realize how furious and terrible is the aspect of the
sea in a gale off shore, and especially in the surf of the Goodwins,
who has not been personally through such an experience.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution pay the men who form the
lifeboat crew on each occasion generously and to the utmost limit their
funds will admit.  No one who knows the facts of the case and the
management of this splendid Institution can have any doubt on this
subject.  Each man is paid L1 for a night service, and 10_s_. for
service in the daytime.  If he be engaged night and day, he is paid
30_s_.  This single launch cost L18--that is, L15 to the fifteen men
who formed the crew, and L3 to the forty helpers who were engaged in
launching and heaving up the lifeboat on her return.

But no money payment could compensate the men for the risk to their
lives--lives precious to women and children at home; and no money
payment could supply the impulse which fired these men and supported
them in their work of rescue.

One of the men in the lifeboat on this occasion, Henry Marsh, and his
name will end this chapter, was the man referred to in Chapter II, who
had on the day he was going to be married, many years before, rushed
into a lugger bound to the rescue of a ship's crew on the Goodwins.

Notwithstanding the splendid services of the Deal lifeboatmen in many a
heart-stirring rescue, they seem utterly unconscious of having done
anything heroic.  This is a remarkable and most interesting feature in
their character.  There is no boasting, no self-consciousness, and not
the faintest word of self-praise ever crosses their lips.  The noblest,
the purest motives and impulses that can actuate man glow within their
breasts, as they risk their lives for others, and they nevertheless are
dumb respecting their deeds.  They die, they dare, and they suffer in
silence.

A lifeboat rescue killed poor Robert Wilds, the coxswain of the Deal
lifeboat.  The present second coxswain of the same lifeboat, E. Hanger,
was struck down after a rescue by pneumonia.  J. Mackins, the coxswain
of the Walmer lifeboat, was also seized by pneumonia after a splendid
service across the Goodwins, when his lifeboat was buried thirty times
in raging seas; S. Pearson, once coxswain of the Walmer lifeboat, died
of Bright's disease, the result of exposure; and on the occasion of the
rescue of the Ganges, one of the crew, R. Betts, had his little finger
torn off.  The Lifeboat Institution gave him a generous donation.  But
the rescues by the Deal lifeboatmen are done at the risk, and sometimes
at the cost, of their health, their limbs and their lives.

There is a Kentish proverb that 'there are more fools in Kent than in
any other county of England,' because more men go to sea from Kent than
from any other county in England, Devon coming next; but Kent on this
wild night need not have blushed for the folly of her sailor sons,
until it be proved folly to succour and to save.

The Ganges had by this time struck on the middle part of the Goodwins,
and the sea was breaking mast-high over her.  Her lights and flares had
gone out, and the lifeboat had the greatest difficulty in finding her.
Just when the lifeboatmen were in perplexity, she again burned blue
lights, and these guided the advancing boat.  When they came close to
the wreck they found her head was lying about north, so that the great
wind and sea were beating right on her broadside, and a strong tide was
also running in the same direction right across the ship.

Just before the arrival of the lifeboat, in the bewilderment of terror,
one of the boats of the wrecked vessel was lowered, and one English
apprentice and four Lascars sprang into it.  In the boiling surf which
raged alongside, the boat was upset in an instant, and with the
exception of one Lascar, who grasped a chain-plate, all were lost,
their drowning shrieks being only faintly heard as they were swept into
the caldron of the Goodwins to leeward.  There can be no doubt that a
merciful insensibility came soon to their relief.  To swim was
impossible in raging surf, and there would be little suffering in the
speedy death of those poor fellows.  I once heard a sailor say to
another one moonlight night in the Mediterranean, 'Death is nothing, if
you are ready for it;' and if there be a good clear view of the country
beyond the river, and of the King of that land, as Shepherd, Saviour,
Friend, the writer firmly holds with his sailor friend, long since lost
at sea, and now with God, that 'Death is nothing, if you are ready for
it.'

The position of the lifeboat had to be now chosen with reference to
tide, wind and sea.  Had the lifeboat anchored close outside the
vessel, there would have been the fearful danger of falling masts; and,
besides this, the tide would have swept her completely away from the
wreck, and would have prevented her getting back, had she once been
driven to leeward; hence, as shown in the diagram, they were driven to
anchor to windward of the vessel, or right between her and the land.

[Illustration: Position of the Ganges on the Sands.]

They first tried to get to the stern of the vessel, but they found this
position unsuitable, and being baffled, they hauled up to their anchor
with great trouble, and approached the bows of the wreck, having veered
out their cable again.

There was, be it remembered, an enormous sea, which during all the
struggles of the men broke with fury over the lifeboat, and kept her
full to her thwarts all the night, bursting in clouds of spray, and of
course drenching the lifeboatmen.

They now got to the bows of the wreck, where the strong off-tide
drifted them right under the jib-boom and bowsprit.  Looking up, they
could just dimly see the jib-boom and bowsprit covered with men, who
had, in their terror, swarmed out there to drop into the lifeboat.

As they were hoisted up on the crest of a great breaker, which also
filled them, the great iron martingale or dolphin striker of the
vessel, pointed like an arrow, came so near the lifeboat that the men
saw that a little heavier sea would have driven the spear head of the
martingale through the lifeboat.  One of the crew had a very narrow
escape of being impaled.  This novel danger drove them back again
therefore to their anchor, to which they had with great difficulty
again to haul the lifeboat; and in reply to the imploring cries and
shouts of those on the jib-boom, they shouted back, 'We're not going to
leave you!'

The lifeboat now lay to windward of the vessel, in the full blast of
the tempest, and exposed to the full sweep of the breakers.  The
official report of the coxswain was: 'We succeeded in getting alongside
after a long time and with great difficulty, through a very heavy sea
and at great risk of life, as the sea was breaking over the ship.'

As the lifeboat rode to windward of the wreck, the shouts of those on
board were inaudible, and their gestures and signs in the dim lantern
light could not be understood by the lifeboatmen.  Having thrown their
line to the vessel, a weightier line was now passed and made fast on
board the Ganges, and in order to remedy the confusion and give the
necessary directions to save the lives of the distressed sailors, one
of the lifeboatmen, Henry Marsh, volunteered to jump into the sea with
a line round his waist, to be dragged through the breakers on board the
wreck.  Heavy seas were bursting on the broadside and breaking over the
vessel, so that it was a marvel he escaped with his life.

He fastened a jamming hitch round his waist and then with a shout of
'Haul away!' sprang into the midnight surf.  Some said, 'He's mad!'
others said, 'He's gone!' and then, 'Haul away, hard!'  He fought
through the sea, he struggled, he worked up the ship's side, against
which he was once heavily dashed, and he gained the deck, giving
confidence to all on board: the brave fellow being sixty-five years of
age at the time.

The vessel was during this event thumping and beating out over the
Goodwins, and was at last, when finally wrecked and stuck fast, not
more than one hundred yards from safety and deep water, having thumped
for miles across the Sands.  The lifeboat had to follow her on her
awful journey and almost to the outer edge of the Goodwins.

Her masts had stood up to this time, and she had been listing over to
the east, or away from the wind and the sea, but now all over and
within the ship were heard loud noises of cracking beams and the sharp
harsh snap of timbers breaking.  The crew of the wreck, in dread of
instant death, now again burned blue lights.  Just before the lifeboat
approached, as if in a death-throe, the ship reeled inwards, and her
tottering masts leaned to port, or towards the lifeboat and against the
wind--thus adding great peril to the work of rescue.

By the directions of the coxswain and the lifeboatmen the exhausted
crew were at last got down life-lines into the lifeboat, seventeen in
number, including the captain, mates and apprentices; while twelve
Lascars got into the Ramsgate lifeboat, which had about this time
arrived to help in the work of rescue.

One of the features of this terrible night which perhaps impressed the
memories of the lifeboat crew most of all, was the noise of the torn
sails above their heads as they fought the sea below.  Just before
shoving off with the rescued crew, the words of the lifeboatmen were,
'We'll all go mad with that awful noise.'

At last all were on board, thirty-two souls in all, and at two o'clock
a.m. the lifeboat got up sail for home, which lay seven miles off dead
to windward.

The canvas they set will give some idea of the nature of the
struggle--a reefed mizzen and two reefs in the storm foresail.  Thus
reefed down, they struggled to get hold of the land, which they finally
did at four o'clock on that dark wintry morning, landing the rescued
men on Deal beach, when boatmen generously took them to their houses[1].

Not the faintest publicity has ever before been given to the details of
this gallant achievement, which I now rescue from obscurity and
oblivion.

I cannot refrain from recording a previous gallant deed of Henry Marsh,
before mentioned.  On February 13, 1870, there was a furious tempest
blowing, with the wind from E.N.E.  All the vessels at anchor in the
Downs had been, with one exception, blown ashore and shattered into
fragments.

A Dutch brig, sugar-laden, went ashore in the afternoon opposite Deal
Castle, and was broken up and vanished in ten minutes; others went
ashore at Kingsdown, and late in the evening, opposite Walmer Castle,
another brig came ashore, also sugar-laden--a French vessel with an
English pilot on board.

The gale was accompanied with snow squalls, and Marsh, hearing of the
wrecks along Deal and Walmer beach, determined to go and see for
himself.  His wife, as is the manner of wives, repressed his rash and
impulsive intentions, and said, 'Don't you go up near them!'  But Marsh
said, 'I'll just take a bit of bread and cheese in my pocket, and I'll
take my short pipe with me, and I'll be back soon.'  He laid great
stress and emphasis on having 'his short pipe' with him, probably
reserving a regular long-shanked 'churchwarden' for home use.

He found the beach crowded with spectators, and the sea breaking blue
water over the French brig.  Her rigging was thick with ice, and the
snow froze as it fell.  She was rocking wildly in and out, exposing her
deck as she swung outwards to the full sweep of the tremendous easterly
sea.  Between her and the beach there were about ten feet deep of
water, which with each giant recoil swept round her in fury.

Marsh asked, 'Are all the people out of that there brig?'  'All but
two,' said the bystanders, 'and we can't get no answer from them.
They're gone, they are!'

Said Marsh, 'Won't nobody go to save them?'

'Which way are you going to save them?' said one; and all said the
same.  'I'm a-going,' said Marsh.  'Harry, don't go!' cried many an old
sailor on the beach.  'Here, hold my jacket!' said Marsh.  And I verily
believe he was thinking chiefly of the preservation of his short pipe.
'Don't you hold me back!  I'm a-going to try!  Let go of me!' and
seizing the line which led from the rocking brig to the shore, Marsh
rushed neck deep in a moment into the surf.  Swept the next instant off
his feet, on, hand over hand, he went; swayed out under her counter,
back towards the shore, still he lives!  Dashed against the ship's
side, while some shout 'He's killed,' up he clambers still, hand over
hand; and as the vessel reels inwards, down, down the rope Marsh slips
into the water and the awful recoil.  'He is gone!' they cry.  No! up
again! with true bull-dog tenacity, Marsh struggles.  And at last,
nearly exhausted, he wins the deck amid such shouting as seldom rings
on Deal beach.

Taking breath, he first fastens a line round his waist and to a
belaying pin; and then he discovers a senseless form, Holbrooke, the
pilot, a friend of his own, who, fast dying with the cold and drenching
freezing spray, was muttering, 'The poor boy! the poor boy!'

'William!' said Marsh.  'Who are you?' was the reply.  'I'm Henry
Marsh, and I'm come to save you.'  'No, I'll be lost; I'll be lost!'
'No you won't,' said Marsh, 'I'll send you ashore on the rope.'  'No,
you'll drown me! you'll drown me!'

And then finding the poor French boy was indeed lost and swept
overboard, alone he passed the rope round the nearly insensible man,
protecting and holding him as the seas came; and finally watching when
the vessel listed in, alone he got him on the toprail of the bulwarks,
with an exertion of superhuman strength, and then, with shouts to the
people ashore, 'Are you ready?' and 'I'm a-coming!' threw Holbrooke, in
spite of himself, into the sea; and both were safely drawn ashore.

The people nearly smothered Marsh when he got ashore, but he ran home,
his clothes frozen stiff when he got in; and I have no doubt that the
'short pipe' played no insignificant part in his recovery.

Eleven years afterwards, this same Henry Marsh was dragged by a rope
from the lifeboat to the Ganges, as described in the beginning of this
chapter, through the breakers on the Goodwin Sands at midnight; and he
is now (1892), my readers will be glad to hear, alive and hearty, at
the age of seventy-five, and I rejoice to say 'looking for and hasting
unto that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the Great God,
and our Saviour Jesus Christ.'

There can be few, I think, of my readers who will not find their hearts
beat faster as they read this story, and few will hesitate to say,
'Bravely done!'



[1] The names of the crew of the lifeboat on this occasion were--R.
Wilds (coxswain), Thomas Adams, Henry Marsh, T. Holbourn, Henry
Roberts, James Snoswell, T. Cribben, J. May, T. May, George Marsh, H.
Marsh, R. Betts, and Frank Roberts.




CHAPTER V

THE EDINA

  The oak strikes deeper as its boughs
  By furious blasts are driven.


The Edina was one of a great fleet of ships at anchor in the Downs on
January 16, 1884.  Hundreds of vessels were there straining at their
anchors--vessels of many nations, and of various rigs.  There were
picturesque red-sailed barges anchored close in shore, while even there
the sea flew over them.  Farther out were Italians, Norwegians and
Yankees, all unmistakable to the practised eye; French _chasse-marées_,
Germans, Russians and Greeks were there; and each vessel was
characterised by some nautical peculiarity.  Of course the greater
number were our own English vessels, as plainly to be pronounced
British as ever was John Bull in the midst of Frenchmen or Spaniards.

It was blowing a heavy gale from the W.S.W., and towards night,
accompanied by furious rain-squalls and thunder, the gale increased to
a storm.  The most powerful luggers along the beach tried to launch,
but as the tide was high they had not run enough to get sufficient
impetus, and were therefore beaten back on the beach by the surf.

[Illustration: Dangerous work.]

Some vessels were blown clean out of the Downs, and away from their
anchors.  Indeed, when the weather cleared between the squalls, a
pitiable number of blue light signals of distress were seen in the
distance beyond the North Foreland.  And it is probable that vessels
were lost that night on the Goodwins of which no one has ever heard.

When the tide fell, about 8.45, flares and rockets were seen coming
from the Brake, a very dangerous and partially rocky 'Sand' lying close
to the Goodwin Sands.  Then the Gull lightship also fired guns and
rockets.  There being obviously a vessel in danger on or near either
the Goodwins or the Brake Sand, the Deal lifeboat bell was rung; and a
crew was obtained out of the hundred men who rushed to get a place.
The beach was smoothed to give the lifeboat a run, she was let go, and,
in contrast with the failure of other boats, launched successfully.

In receiving the report of the coxswain next day, I asked him what time
precisely he launched.  Now that evening, about 9 p.m., I was sitting
in my own house listening to the long-protracted roar of the wind, and
just when I thought the strong walls could bear no more, there came a
blinding flash of lightning which paled the lamps, almost
simultaneously with a peal of thunder that made the foundations of the
house tremble.  When I asked the coxswain next day what time exactly he
launched, his reply was, 'Just in that clap of thunder.'

This may help my readers to depict the scene in its appalling grandeur,
and to realise the meaning of the words, 'A vessel in distress,' and
the launch of the lifeboat on its sacred errand.

The flares which had been burning now suddenly stopped.  This, however,
was owing to the distressed vessel having exhausted her stock of
rockets and torches.

Passing under the stern of a schooner which they hailed, the gallant
lifeboat crew were pointed out the vessel that had been burning them,
riding with a red light in her rigging to attract notice.  Making for
her, they anchored as usual ahead, and veered down eighty fathoms.  In
the gale and heavy sea they found the anchor would not hold, and they
had to bend on another cable, and pay out a hundred fathoms, and at
last they got alongside.

The captain cried out, 'Come on board and save the vessel!  My crew are
all gone!'  And indeed she was in a sore plight.

That evening after dark, about 6 p.m., this brig, the Edina, had been
riding out the gale in the Downs.  In a furious blast a heavy sea broke
her adrift from her anchor, and she came into helpless collision with a
ship right astern of her.  Grinding fiercely into this other very large
vessel, the Edina tore herself free with loss of bowsprit and jib-boom,
all her fore-rigging being in dire ruin and confusion.

In the collision, six of the crew of the Edina jumped from her rigging
to the other ship with which they were in collision, leaving only three
men, the captain, mate, and boy, on board the Edina.  By great efforts
they, however, were able to let go another anchor, but that did not
bite, and the Edina kept dragging with the wreckage and wild tangle of
bowsprit and jib-boom hanging over her bows and beating against her
side.

One of the six men who had jumped from the Edina in the panic of the
collision had, alas! jumped too short, and had fallen between the two
vessels.  The next day his body was found by the lifeboatmen entangled
in the wreckage, and under the bows of the Edina.

The Edina in her wrecked and crippled condition had dragged till she
got to the very edge of the Brake Sand.  She had dragged for two miles,
and at last her anchor held fast when within twenty fathoms or forty
yards of the Brake Sand.  She was stopped just short of destruction as
the sea was breaking heavily under her stern, and had she drifted a few
more yards she would have struck the deadly Brake, and have perished
with those on board before the lifeboat could have reached her.

In setting off his rockets, the unfortunate captain had blown away a
piece of his hand, and was in much suffering, when the advent of the
lifeboat proclaimed that he was not to be abandoned to destruction.
The vessel was riding in only three fathoms of water, and as a furious
sea was running, she was plunging bows under.  Six of the lifeboatmen
sprang on board and turned to clearing the wreck--the remainder of the
men remaining in the lifeboat, as they feared every moment the ship
would break adrift and strike.

They worked with the energy of men working for life, but they took
three hours to clear away the wreck; this being absolutely necessary in
order to get at the windlass and raise the anchor.

At morning dawn they found the body of the poor sailor who had failed
to spring to the other vessel; they got up anchor, they set the sails,
and they brought the vessel out of her dangerous position into Ramsgate
Harbour.

That day four weeks the Edina came out of Ramsgate refitted and ready
for sea.  I went on board the vessel on my daily task as Missions to
Seamen Chaplain in the Downs, and talked with the captain over the
events of the night as here described, and the merciful Providence
which prevented him striking on the Brake Sand.  'What brought you up,'
I asked him, 'when you had already dragged for miles?'

The captain pointed me to a roll of large-printed Scripture texts, a
leaf for each day, for four weeks.  'Why,' said he, 'that's the very
leaf that was turned the night of the 26th of last month'--and going
close to the 'Seaman's Roll,' as this Eastbourne publication is
called--'There,' said he, 'is the very text.'

It ran thus: 'Wherefore, also, He is able to save them to the uttermost
that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession
for them.'

'And that,' said the captain, 'was the anchor that held my ship that
awful night.'

It is hard to doubt that He who once stilled the tempest, and granted
to this humble sailor the mighty gift of Faith, on that stormy night
'delivered His servant that trusted in Him.'

The Edina went on her way to Pernambuco.




CHAPTER VI

THE FREDRIK CARL

  There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.


On October 30, 1885, the small Danish schooner, the Fredrik Carl, ran
aground on the Goodwin Sands.  She struck on the outer part of the
North Sand Head, about eight miles from the nearest land, and two miles
from the well-known Whistle Buoy, which ever and always sends forth its
mournful note of warning--too often unavailing.

Summoned by the lightship's guns and rockets to the rescue--for the red
three-masted North Sand Head lightship was only two miles from the
wreck--the Ramsgate lifeboat, towed by the steam-tug Aid, came to the
spot, and, after a long trial, failed to get the schooner afloat, and,
having taken her crew out of her, returned to the shore.

At low water the next day, October 31, the vessel lay high and dry on
the Goodwin Sands.  She was tolerably upright, having bedded herself
slightly in the sand, and all her sails were swinging loose as the wind
chose to sway them.  There was no rent in her side that could be seen,
and to all appearance she was safe and sound--only she was stranded on
the Goodwins, from which _vestigia nulla retrorsum_.  As in the Cave of
Cacus, once there, you are there for ever, and few are the cases in
which vessels fast aground on the Goodwins ever again get away from the
great ship-swallower.

[Illustration: The anchor of death.  From a photograph by W. H.
Franklin.]

The schooner had a cargo of oats, and if she could be got off would be
a very valuable prize to her salvors.  But 'if'--and we all know that
'there's much virtue in your "if".'

However, when morning broke on October 31, many of the Deal boatmen,
whose keen eyes saw a possibility of a 'hovel,' came in their powerful
'galley punts' to see about this 'if,' and try if they could not
convert it into a reality.  Accordingly, two of the Deal boats, taking
different directions, the Wanderer and the Gipsy King, approached the
Goodwin Sands near the north-west buoy.

On this day there was just enough sea curling and tumbling on the edge
of the sands to make landing on them difficult even for the skilled
Deal boatmen.  For the inexperienced it would have been dangerous in
the extreme.

There were four Deal men in each boat, and they only got ashore with
difficulty, one of the boats' cables having parted; and they had all to
jump out and wade waist-deep in the surf, as they dared not let their
weighty boats touch the bottom.

Two boatmen remained in each boat, for neglect of this precaution has
caused accidents frightful to think of, on the Goodwins; and the
remaining four boatmen, daring fellows of the sea-dog and amphibious
type, walked across the sands, dripping with the brine.  As a matter of
fact, two of them were not only Deal boatmen, but were sailors who had
been round and round the world, and one was an old and first-rate
man-o'-war's man.

Sometimes they met a deep gully with six feet of water in it, which
they had to make a circuit round, or to swim; and farther on a shallow
pond, in the midst of which would be a deep-blue 'fox-fall,' perhaps
twenty feet deep of sea-water.  Then, having avoided this, more dry,
hard sand, rippled by the ebbing tide, and then a dry, deep cleft--for
the Goodwins are full of surprises--and then came more wading.

Wading on the Goodwins conveys a very peculiar sensation to the naked
feet.  The sand, so dense when dry, at once becomes friable and
quick--indeed, it is hard to believe there is not a living creature
under the feet--and if you stand still you slowly sink, feet and
ankles, and gradually downwards.  As long as you keep moving, it is
hard enough, but less so when under water.

The surroundings are deeply impressive.  The waves plash at your feet,
and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious
as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place,
and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep sullen roar, and
the memories of the long sad history of the sands, oppress your soul.
Tragedies of the most fearful description have been enacted on the very
spot whereon you stand.  Terror, frozen into despair, blighted hope,
faith victorious even in death, have thrilled the hearts of thousands
hard by the place where you stand, and which in a few hours will be ten
feet under water.  Here you can see the long line of a ship's ribs
swaddling down into the sands, and there is the stump of the mast to
which the seamen clung last year till the lifeboat snatched them from a
watery grave.

Buried deep in the sands are the cargoes of richly-laden ships, and
their 'merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and pearls,
and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet.'  'To dig there' (if
that could be done, say the Deal boatmen), 'would be all as one as
going to Californy;' and who should know the Goodwins or the secret of
the sea better than they do?  'Only those who brave its dangers
comprehend its mystery.'

Keenly intent on getting to the wreck, the four men hastened on, and
they perceived that other boatmen had landed at similar risk, at other
points of the sands, and were also making for the wreck.

The four boatmen reached the vessel, found ropes hanging over her side,
all sails set, and a part of the Ramsgate lifeboat's cable chopped off
short, telling the tale of her unsuccessful efforts the night before to
get the vessel off.  They clambered up, and found others there before
them, and soon more came, and eventually there were twelve boatmen on
board.

All eagerly discussed the chances of getting her off.  To the
unpractised eye she seemed sound enough; but, after a thorough
overhaul, some saying she could be kept afloat, and others the reverse,
it was found that the water had got into her up to the level of her
cabin-seats, and that a bag of flour in one of her cabin-lockers was
sodden with salt-water.  Judging by these signs that the water would
again come into her when the tide rose, and that she was broken up, the
four men whose journey across the sands has been described, decided
with sound judgment to leave her to her fate, and with them sided four
other men, who also came to the conclusion that it was beyond the power
of their resources to save her.

George Marsh and George Philpot with six others took this view.
Looking overboard, they found the rising tide just beginning to lap
round her.

'Best for us to bolt,' said Marsh; and seeing there was no time to
lose, the eight men came down the ropes and made for their boats, more
than a mile off; leaving the four others, who took a different view, on
board.  The eight men ran, and ran the harder when they found the wind
and sea had increased, and having run and waded as before half the
distance, they made a halt and called a council of war.  There were now
serious doubts whether they would be able to reach their boats, which
they could see a long way off heaving on the swell, which was becoming
heavier every minute.

Some said, 'Best go back to the ship--we'll never reach the boats.'
And indeed it was very doubtful if they could do either; for the
flood-tide was now coming like a racehorse over the sands, and hiding
its fox-falls and gullies.  Others said, 'You'll never get back to the
ship now; there's deep water round her bows by this time!  Come on!'

But some of the men had left brothers on the vessel, and this attracted
three of the company back to the wreck, and Marsh was persuaded to join
the returning band.  And so they parted, there being danger either way:
Marsh with three others back to the ship, and Philpot with three others
to the boats; and both parties now ran for their lives.

Looking back, they saw Marsh standing in uncertainty, and they waved to
him.  But he finally decided--little knowing at the time how momentous
was his decision--for the ship.  He and his party reached it with great
difficulty, finding deep water around it, and they were at the last
minute pulled on board through the water by lines slung to them from
their friends.

Of the others, each man for himself, as best he could, 'pursues his
way,'--

  And swims or sinks or wades or creeps,

till they all come as close as the rough sea permits them to their
boats, and stand breathless on a narrow and rapidly contracting patch
of sand.

'Upon this bank and shoal' clustered the four men.  The sea was so
heavy that the weighty Deal boats did not dare to back into it.  The
men at first thought of trying to swim to them; but a strong tide
running right across their course rendered that out of the question.

Fortunately a tug-boat hove in sight, bound to the wrecked schooner,
and seeing the men waving and their dangerous plight, eased her
engines.  Deal boats were towing astern, and Deal boatmen were on
board, and out of their number Finnis and Watts bravely volunteered to
go to the rescue in the tug-boat's punt.

This boat being light and without ballast, they at considerable risk
brought off the four men to their own boats, when they forthwith,
forgetting past hardship and perils, got up sail for the wrecked
schooner, to see how their comrades who had returned, and those who
remained on board, were faring.

They found the tug-boat close to the wreck--say half a mile off--and
also many other Deal boats; but none ventured nearer than that
distance, and none could get nearer.

The wind, which had been blowing from south-west freshly, was dropping
into a calm, while great rollers from an entirely opposite quarter were
tumbling in on the Goodwins.  In fact, a great north-easterly sea was
breaking in thunder on the sands, and around and over the vessel.  The
eight men on board her were therefore beset as if in a beleaguered
city, and as nothing but a lifeboat could live for a moment in that
tremendous surf, the crews of the Deal boats, astounded at the sight,
were simply helpless spectators of their comrades' danger, and torn
with distress and sympathy, as they saw them take to the rigging of the
vessel.

An hour before this pitch of distress had been reached, a galley punt
had gone to Deal for the lifeboat, and in the afternoon, about 3 p. m.,
the boat reached Deal beach with one hand on board.  He jumped out, and
staggered up the beach to tell the coxswain of the lifeboat that eight
boatmen were on board the wreck, and that nothing but a lifeboat could
reach the vessel, as there was a dreadful sea all round her, and that
his own brother was among the number on board.

The Deal boatmen are not slow to render help when help is needed, and
indifference to the cry of distress is not one of their failings; but
when they heard of their own friends and neighbours, their comrades in
storm and in rescue and lifeboat work, thus beset and in imminent
peril, their eagerness was beyond the power of words to describe.  From
the time the bell rang to 'man the lifeboat' to the moment she struck
the water only seven minutes passed!

A fresh south-west breeze brought her to the North Sand Head, and round
and outside it to the melancholy spot where, in the waning autumnal
light, they could just discern the wreck.  They passed through the
crowd of Deal boats, and close to the tug-boat; but no one spoke or
hailed the other, as all knew what had to be done, and the nature of
the coming struggle.

The south-west breeze had now dropped completely, and they encountered,
as explained before, the strange phenomenon of a great windless swell
from the north-east, rolling in before the wind, which was evidently
behind it, and which indeed blew a gale next day, though it was now an
absolute calm.  Great tumbling billows came in from different quarters,
and met and crossed each other in the most furious collision.  There
was tossing about in the sea at the time an empty cask, which was
caught in the clash together of two such waves, and was shot clean out
of the water as high as the wrecked schooner's mast, or thirty feet
into the air, by the force of the blow.  The water-logged wreck was now
nearly submerged, or just awash, her bulwark-top-rail being now and
then exposed and covered again with the advance and recoil of each wave.

Aft there were a raised quarter-deck and a wheel-house, behind the
remains of which three of the boatmen took refuge, while the five
others climbed into the rigging, but over them even there the sea broke
in clouds.

As there was no tide and no wind, it was impossible to sheer the
lifeboat, and, whatever position was taken by anchoring, in that only
the lifeboat would ride after veering down before the sea.  The
coxswains, therefore, had to try again and again before they got the
proper position to veer down from.

At last, however, they succeeded, and anchoring the lifeboat by the
stern, they veered down bows first towards the wreck into the midst of
this breezeless but awful sea--bows first, lest the rudder should be
injured.

The cable was passed round the bollard or powerful samson-post, and
then a turn was taken round a thwart; and the end was held by Roberts,
the second coxswain, with his face towards the stern, and his back to
the wreck, watching the billows as they charged in line, and easing his
cable or getting it in when the strain had passed.

The heavy rollers drove the lifeboat before them like a feather, and
end on towards the wreck, till her cable brought her up with a jerk.
The strain of these jerks was so great, that, even though Roberts eased
his cable, each wave seemed to all hands as if it would tear the after
air-box out of the lifeboat, or drag the lifeboat itself in two pieces.

They veered down to about five fathoms of the wreck; closer they dared
not go, lest a sea should by an extra strain dash their bows into the
wreck, when not one of all the company would have been saved, and the
lifeboat herself would have perhaps been broken up.

Then they saw their friends and comrades and heard them cry, 'Try to
save us if you can!'  And the men said afterwards, 'We got in such a
flurry to save them, that what we did in a minute we thought took us an
hour.'

At last the cane and lead were thrown from the lifeboat by a stalwart
boatman standing in the bows.  A heavier line was then drawn on board
by the light cane line, and the boatmen came down from the rigging,
and, having made themselves fast to pins and staunchions, sheltered
behind the bulwark and the wheel-house, seeing the approach of rescue.

Enough of the slack of the weightier line was kept on board the
wreck--the end being there made fast--to permit the middle of the rope
being fastened round a man and of his being dragged away from the wreck
through the sea into the lifeboat.  A clove-hitch was put by George
Marsh over the shoulders of the first man, who watched his chance for
'a smooth,' jumped into the waves, and, after a long struggle--for the
line fouled--was hauled safe into the lifeboat.  Marsh on the wreck saw
after this that the line was clear, and that no kink or knot stopped
its running freely.

Reading these lines in our quiet homes, and in a comfortable arm-chair
by the fireside, it is hard to realise the position of those eight
boatmen.  They were drenched and buried in each wallowing sea, which
strove to tear them from the pin to which each man was belayed by the
line round his waist; and their ears were stunned with the bellow of
each bursting wave.  But, on the other hand, their eyes beheld the
grand and cheering spectacle of their brethren in the lifeboat
struggling manfully with death for their sakes, and they heard their
undaunted shouts.

If for a moment they cast off or lengthened their lifelines, they were
washed all over the slippery deck; and brave George Marsh, who was
specially active, was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, having been
dashed against a corner of the wheel-house.

The wheel-house up to this time had afforded some shelter to the men
who ventured on the deck of the wreck, lashed as just explained, of
course, to some pin or bollard; and even they had now and then to rush
up the rigging when a weighter [Transcriber's note: weightier?] wave
was seen coming.  But just at this time a great mass of water advanced
and wallowed clean over the wreck, carrying the wheelhouse away with
it, and bursting, where it struck the masts and booms, into a cloud: it
was too solid to burst much, but it just 'wallowed' over the wreck.

Successive seas are, of course, unlike in height, volume, and
demeanour.  One comes on board and falls with a solid, heavy lop--there
may be twenty tons of blue water in it--the next rushes along with wild
speed and fury.

Roberts in the lifeboat now saw a great roller of the latter
description advancing; ready to ease his cable, he cried, 'Look out!
Look out!  Hold on, my lads!'

But before Wilds, the coxswain, who was not a young man, could turn
round and grasp a thwart, the sea was on him, and drove him with great
force against the samson-post, breaking over and covering the lifeboat
fore and aft in fury.  This sea would have washed every man off the
wreck if they had not had ropes round their waists, and fastened
themselves to something; and it most certainly stupefied them and
half-drowned them, fastened as they were.

The blow which Wilds in the lifeboat received would have killed him but
that he was wearing his thick cork life-belt.  His health was so much
affected that he never came afloat again, and he never recovered the
strain, the shock, and the exposure of this day.  He was a brave man,
and a stout, honest Englishman.

  Faithful below he did his duty,
    And now he's gone aloft.

And the writer has good reason for sure and certain hope that this is
so.  His post as coxswain has since been filled, and nobly filled, by
R. Roberts, for many years second coxswain.

In meeting this sea, which struck down poor Wilds with such force, the
lifeboat stood straight up on her stern and reared, as the men
expressed it, 'like a vicious horse'; and so much did the cable spring,
that the lifeboat was driven to within a fathom, or six feet, of the
wreck, and was withdrawn the next instant to fifteen fathoms distance
by the recoil of the cable.

One by one the men were dragged through the breakers into the lifeboat,
until at last only two remained on the wreck, George Marsh and another
man.  It was Marsh, it will be remembered, who in the earlier part of
the day had been persuaded to return to the wreck across the sand, and
it was Marsh now who in each case had passed the clove-hitch round his
comrades, sending them before himself.  He was a very smart sailor and
a brave man, and with wise forethought he had also passed the end of
the veering line, on which the men were dragged through the surf, over
the main boom of the wreck, to let it run out clear of anything which
might have caught it, and, in fact, was the leader of the men in peril
on the wreck.

The last two men intended to come together, when another great billow,
notice of its advance being given by Tom Adams, came towering and
seething, filled the lifeboat, as usual, and covered the ship--indeed,
breaking right into her fore-top-sail!  That is, thirty feet above her
deck!

When the sea passed, the two remaining men, who had been tied together,
were not to be seen.

The men in the lifeboat pulled at the line, but it was somehow and
somewhere fast to something.  And then they shouted, and minutes went
by, hours as it seemed to them.  At last one of the men--but not
Marsh--slowly raised his head and seemed to move about in a dazed
condition.

'Where's Marsh?' cried the lifeboatmen.

'Can't find him!' he replied.

'Is he drowned?'

'Is he washed away?'

And the reply was, 'I can't find him.'

And then this man was pulled into the water, and was the last man
saved--and that with great difficulty, for the line fouled and
jammed--from the wreck of the Fredrik Carl, which had proved a
death-trap to poor Marsh, and so nearly to the seven others who were
saved.

Still the lifeboat waited in the gathering darkness, and hailed the
wreck, hoping against hope to see Marsh appear; but he was never seen
again alive.  Short as was the distance between the lifeboat and the
wreck, it was impossible to swim to her, lying broadside as she was to
the swell.  Anyone attempting it would either have been dashed to
pieces against her, or lifted bodily over her, brained very possibly,
and certainly washed away to leeward, return from which would have
been, even for an uninjured man, impossible.

And still the lifeboatmen waited and called; but there was no answer.
Poor Marsh had been suddenly summoned to meet his God.  The oldest man
of the number, and for some years a staunch total abstainer, he had
manfully stuck to his post, he had sent the others before himself, and
had shown throughout a fine spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of the best
traditions of the Deal boatmen.

Slowly and sadly the lifeboat got her anchor up, and never perhaps did
the celebrated Deal lifeboat return with a more mournful crew; for they
had seen, in spite of their best efforts, one of their comrades perish
before their eyes.

The next day it blew a gale of wind from the north-east, and it was not
till several days afterwards that Marsh's body was recovered, entangled
in the wreckage, to leeward of the vessel, and sorely mangled.  Wrapped
in a sail, and with the rope still round him which ought to have drawn
him into safety, lay the poor 'body of humiliation' in which had once
dwelt a gallant spirit; but a good hope burned within me as the
triumphant lines rang in my ears--

  Deathless principle, arise!
  Soar, thou native of the skies.
  Pearl of price, by Jesus bought,
  To His glorious likeness wrought!


In telling the story of this gallant struggle to save their comrades,
made by the Deal lifeboatmen, I lay this tribute of hope and regard on
the grave of brave George Marsh.

[Illustration: Deal boatmen on the lookout for a hovel.]




CHAPTER VII

THE GOLDEN ISLAND

  Nor toil nor hazard nor distress appear
  To sink the seamen with unmanly fear;
  Though their firm hearts no pageant-honour boast,
  They scorn the wretch that trembles in his post.


The smart and trim three-masted schooner, the Golden Island, was bound
from Antwerp to Liverpool, with a cargo of glass-sand, and was running
before a favouring gale to the southward.  At midnight, on May 14,
1887, or the early morning of May 15, with a heavy sea rolling from the
N.E., suddenly, no notice being given and no alarm felt, she struck
with tremendous force the outer edge of the Goodwin Sands.

The timbers of the Golden Island opened with the crash, and she filled,
and never lifted or thumped, but lay swept by each billow, like a rock
at half-tide, immovable by reason of her heavy cargo.  Her crew
consisted of seven all told, including a lad, the captain's son, and
they managed to light a large flare, which was seen a long way, and was
visible even in Deal, eight miles distant.

With what sinking of heart, as the waters raged round and over them,
they watched the flame of their torch burning lower and lower.  How
intense the darkness when it was extinguished!  How terrible the
thunderous roar of the breakers!

The nearest lightship was about four miles from them, and her look-out
man noticed the flare and fired the signal guns of distress, and sent
up the usual rockets.

At 2 a.m. the coastguard on Deal beach called the coxswain of the
lifeboat, R. Roberts.  Hastily dressing himself he went up the beach,
and seeing the flash of the distant guns, he rang the lifeboat bell.
Men sprang out of their warm beds, and, half-dressed, rushed to the
lifeboat.  Their wives or mothers or daughters followed with the
remainder of their clothes, their sea boots, or jackets or mufflers.
Then came the struggle to gain a place in the lifeboat, and then the
bustle and hurry of preparation to get her ready for the launch.

Deal beach at such a time is full of boatmen, some in the lifeboat
loosing sails and setting the mizzen, some easing her down to the top
of the slope, some seeing to the haul-off warp, a matter of life or
death in such a heavy sea dead on shore; others laying down the
well-greased 'skids' for the lifeboat to run on, and others clearing
away the shingle which successive tides had gathered in front of her
bows.

Mingling among the workers are the wives and mothers, putting a piece
of bread and cheese in Tom's pocket or helping on 'father' with his
oilskin jacket or his sou'wester.  And now 'All hands in the lifeboat!'
and twenty minutes after the bell is rung she rushes down the steep and
plunges into the surf.  The loving, lingering watchers on the beach
just see her foresail hoisted, and she vanishes into the night, as the
green rocket shoots one hundred yards into the sky to tell the
distressed sailors 'The lifeboat is launched and on her way.'

The vessel's flare had now burned out, and the guns and rockets from
the lightships had ceased, and in front of the lifeboat was only the
chill night, 'black as a wolf's throat.'  As they worked away from the
shore there came in, borne landwards and towards them by the gale, the
dull deep roar of the surf on the Goodwins.

It is marvellous how far the sound of the sea on the Goodwins travels.
Previously, on a fine calm day, with light breeze, I was standing
across the Goodwins, bound to the East Goodwin lightship, and we could
hear the roar of the ripple on the Goodwins--not breakers, but
ripple--at a distance of two miles.  We were sucked into that
ugly-looking ripple by an irresistible current, and after an anxious
half-hour we got through safely.

In front of the lifeboat on this night was no mere ripple, but
breakers; and the deep hollow roar foretold a tremendous sea.

As the dawn came faintly, the breakers were seen by the oncoming
lifeboat; she was already stripped for the fight, and her canvas was
shortened to reefed mizzen and reefed storm-foresail.  Even then she
was pressed down by the blast and leaned over as the spray flew
mast-high over her.  There was a mile of this surf to go through, and
with her red sails flat as a board the lifeboat plunged into it.

She thrashed her way nobly through, now up and down on short
wicked-looking chopping seas, now on some giant wave hoisted up to the
sky; and still up as if she was about to take flight into the air--as
we once before experienced in a gale on the Brake Sand--then buried and
smothered; and then over the next wave like a seabird.  On to the
rescue flew the lifeboat, steered by the coxswain himself, beating to
windward splendidly, as if conscious of and proud of the sacred task
before her.  On triumphantly through and over the breakers, onwards to
the Golden Island the lifeboat beat out against the sea and the storm.
She stood on till quite across the Goodwins, and fetched the East Buoy,
which lies in deep water well outside the breakers.  In that deep water
of fifteen fathoms there were of course no breakers, only a long roll
and heavy sea; but the moment this heavy sea touched the Goodwin Sands
it broke with the utmost fury, and was sweeping over the Golden Island,
now not more than half-a-mile from the lifeboat.  At the East Buoy the
lifeboat put about on the other tack, and stood in towards the Goodwins
and again right into the breakers, from which she had just emerged.

The wreck was lying with her head to the N.W., and was leaning to port,
so that her starboard quarter was exposed to the full fetch of the
easterly sea that was breaking 'solid' in tons on her decks.  'Why, she
was just smothered in it sometimes, and every big sea was just a-flying
all over her.'  Her masts they saw were still standing, and her crew of
seven were cowering for refuge between the main and mizzen masts under
the weak shelter of the weather bulwarks, and also under the lee of the
long boat, which still held its place, being firmly fastened to the
deck.  The fierce breakers burst rather over her quarter; had they
swept quite broadside over her, the boat would have been torn from its
fastenings long before.

As the Deal lifeboat stood in towards the Goodwins, they saw that their
noble rivals the Ramsgate tug and lifeboat in tow had arrived on the
scene a few minutes before them, and were close to the wreck.

The Ramsgate tug Aid now cast off the lifeboat, which got up sail and
made in through the breakers with the wind right aft impelling her
forwards at speed.  The tug of course waited outside the surf, in deep
water.  The Deal men, separated from the Ramsgate lifeboat by about
four hundred yards, were breathless spectators of the event.  They
watched her plunging and lifting into and over each sea and on towards
the wreck.

The Ramsgate men could not lie or ride alongside the vessel to
windward; there was too terrible a sea on that side, and therefore, in
spite of the danger of the masts falling, they were obliged to go to
leeward, or to the sheltered side of the vessel.

Just as the Ramsgate lifeboat was coming under the stern of the wreck
and about to haul down foresail and shoot up alongside her, she was
struck by a terrific sea.  The Deal men saw this and shouted 'She's
capsized!'  The Ramsgate lifeboat was indeed almost, but not quite
capsized, and she was also shot forwards and caught under the cat-head
and anchor of the wreck.  The captain of the wrecked vessel told me
afterwards that he thought she was lost, but it was happily not so, and
the Ramsgate lifeboatmen anchored, after recovering themselves, ahead
of the vessel and veered down to her.

But the tidal current which runs over the Goodwins varies in a very
irregular manner according to the wind that is blowing, and, contrary
to their calculations, swept the Ramsgate lifeboat to the full length
of her cable away from the vessel.

They naturally expected to find the usual off-tide from the land before
and at high-water, which would have carried them towards the vessel
when they anchored under her lee; but instead of that there was running
a strong 'in-tide,' which swept them helplessly away from the vessel,
and rendered them absolutely unable to reach her, though anchored only
two hundred yards off.

The seamen on the wreck, in order to reach by some means the lifeboat
which had thus been borne away from them so mysteriously, threw a
fender, with line attached, overboard, hoping that it too would follow
the current which carried away the lifeboat, and that thus
communications would be established between them; but the currents
round the ship held the fender close to the wreck, and kept it eddying
under her lee.

All eyes were now turned to the advancing Deal lifeboat battling in the
thickest of the surf.  Both the Ramsgate men with warm sympathy and the
shipwrecked crew with keen anxiety watched the Deal men's attempt, as
they raced into the wild breakers.

The poor fellows clinging to the masts feared lest the Deal lifeboat
too might miss them, and that they might all be lost before either
lifeboat could reach them again, and they beckoned the Deal men on.

The very crisis of their fate was at hand, but there were no applauding
multitudes or shouts of encouragement, only the cold wastes and
solitudes of wild tumbling breakers around the lifeboatmen on that grey
dawn, and only the appealing helpless crew in a little cluster on the
wreck.

It was now 4 a.m., and the Deal coxswain, cool and sturdy as his native
Kentish oak, knowing that the combination of an easterly gale with neap
tides sometimes produces an 'in-tide' at high-water, and seeing the
Ramsgate lifeboat carried to leeward, gave the order to 'down
foresail!' when well outside the wreck, and anchored E. by S. of her.
Thus the same 'in-tide' which swept the Ramsgate lifeboat away from the
wreck, carried the Deal lifeboat right down to her.

[Illustration: Location of the wreck]

It will be remembered that the head of the Golden Island lay N.W., and
the accompanying diagram will enable the reader to understand that as
the lifeboat anchored in nearly the opposite quarter, viz. about S.E.,
her head, as she ranged alongside the wreck, lay in precisely the
opposite direction to the head of the shipwrecked schooner.

The Deal lifeboat coxswain now hoisted a bit of his foresail to sheer
her in towards the wreck, but from the position of his anchor he could
not get closer than ten fathoms, or twenty yards.

To bridge this gulf of boiling surf, the cane loaded with lead, to
which a light line was attached, had to be hurled by a stalwart arm,
and John May succeeded in throwing the 'lead line' on board the wreck.

As the half-drowned and perishing crew of the wreck saw the Deal
lifeboat winning her way towards them, and inch by inch conquering the
opposing elements, their hearts revived.

They saw within hailing distance of them--for their cries could be
heard plainly enough coming down the wind by the Deal men--the brave,
determined faces of their rescuers, and they felt that God had not
forsaken them, but had wrought for them a great deliverance.

Having gone through all that surf, and having got within reach as it
were of the wreck, the crew of the Deal lifeboat were now eager for the
final rescue.  They never speak of, or even allude to the feeling on
such occasions within them, yet we know their hearts were on fire for
the rescue, and men in that mood are not easily to be baulked or to be
beaten.

As the wearied seamen grasped the meaning of the Deal coxswain's
shouts, or rather signs, for shouts against the wind were almost
inaudible, they aided in rigging up veering and hauling lines, by which
they would have to be dragged through the belt of surf which lay
between them and the lifeboat.

A clove-hitch, which my readers can practise for themselves, was passed
round the waist of the captain's son, a boy of thirteen, who was first
to leave the wreck.

[Illustration: Clove-hitch]

The lad naturally enough shrank from facing the boiling caldron which
raged between him and the lifeboat, and with loud cries clung to his
father.  Waiting was impossible, and he had to be separated partly by
persuasion and partly by main force from his father's arms and dragged
through the sea.  When once he was in the water the boatmen pulled at
him with all their might, and when alongside, two strong men reached
over the side and hoisted him like a feather into the lifeboat.

The men said 'he cried dreadful,' and the coxswain found a moment to
tell him, 'Don't cry, my little fellow! we'll soon have your father
into the lifeboat.'  But with the words came a sea 'that smothered us
all up, and it wanted good holding to keep ourselves from being carried
overboard.'  Some kind-hearted fellows, till the sea passed, held the
boy, but still he kept crying, 'Come, father!  Come, father!'

Three more of the crew then got the 'clove-hitch' over their shoulders
and jumped into the sea; some of them helped themselves by swimming and
kept their heads up; others merely gripped the rope and fared much
worse, being pulled head under, but all three were quickly dragged
through the water into the lifeboat.

I have said dragged through the 'water'; but surf is not the same as
water--it is water lashed into froth or seething bubbles in mountainous
masses.  You can swim in water; but the best swimmer sinks in 'froth,'
and can only manage and spare himself till the genuine water gives him
a heave up and enables him to continue the struggle on the surface.

Now water that breaks into surf is not merely motionless 'froth,' that
is half air and half water, but it runs at speed, and being partly
composed of solid water strikes any obstacle with enormous force and
smashes like a hammer.  These then were the characteristics of the sea
which beat all round the wreck, and through which the half-dazed and
storm-beaten sailors had to be dragged.

Besides the veering and hauling line by which the sailors in distress
came, there was another line passed round the mast of the tossing
lifeboat, to hold her in spite of her plunging as close as possible to
the ship; and this line had to be eased with each sea and then the
slack hauled in again.  Some better idea will be given of the nature of
this deadly wrestle, when I mention that this line cut so deeply into
the mast as to render it unsafe, and it was never again used after that
day.

The sails of the wrecked vessel were clattering and blowing about,
'like kites'--indeed, they were in ribbons; and the wind in the rigging
was like the harsh roar of an approaching train, so that in the midst
of this wild hurly-burly even the men in the lifeboat could hardly hear
each other's shouts.

Roberts now saw that it was necessary to shift the cable as it lay on
the bow of the lifeboat, and he shouted to his comrades forward to have
this done; but 'the wind was a blowin' and the sea a 'owling that
dreadful' that not a man could hear what he said, and he sprang forward
to shift the cable himself.  That very moment round the stern of the
wreck there swept the huge green curl of a gigantic sea, which, just as
it reached the lifeboat, broke with a roar a ton of water into her.

It took Roberts off his feet, so that he must have gone overboard, but
for the foremast against which it dashed him, and to which he clung
desperately, as the great wave melted away hissing, to leeward.
Shaking off the spray, the drenched lifeboatmen again turned to the
work of rescue; the coxswain having been preserved by his thick cork
lifebelt from what might otherwise have been a fatal crush.

This weighty sea tore away the lines and all means of communication
between the wreck and the lifeboat, and drove the three remaining
sailors on the vessel away from the shelter of the long boat to the
bows of the wreck.  Indeed, as they grasped for dear life the belaying
pins on the foremast, the sea covered them up to their shoulders, and
they were all but carried away.

Again the loaded cane had to be thrown; again the task was entrusted to
John May, who sent it flying through the air, and again the veering and
hauling line was rigged, and the remaining seamen were got into the
lifeboat.

The last man has to see to it for his life that the veering line is
clear, and that it is absolutely free from anything that could catch or
jam it or prevent it running out freely.

Just as coming down a steep ice slope where steps have to be cut by men
roped together, the best man should come last, so the last man rescued
from a wreck should have a good clear head and the stoutest heart of
all; and last man came bravely the captain, to the great joy of his
little son.

Then the lifeboatmen turned to preparations for home.  They dared not
get in their cable and heave their anchor on board, lest they should be
carried back and dashed against the wreck, the danger of which, a
glance at the sketch will show.  So they got a spring on the cable, to
cant the lifeboat's head to starboard or landsward, and with a parting
'Hurrah!' they slipped their cable, of course thus sacrificing it and
their anchor.  They hoisted their foresail, and with a gale of wind
behind them raced into and through the surf on the Goodwins, which lay
between them and home.

The Goodwins are four miles wide, and the land was eight miles distant,
but a splendid success had crowned the brave and steadfast Deal
coxswain's efforts.  Not a man was lost, and they had with them in the
lifeboat the shipwrecked vessel's crew--all saved.

It was a noble sight to see the lifeboat nearing the land that morning
at 7 a.m.  The British red ensign was flying proudly from her peak, in
token of 'rescued crew on board'; and as the men jumped out, I grasped
the brave coxswain's hand and said, 'Well done, Roberts!'  And as I saw
the rescued crew and their gallant deliverers, 'God bless you, my lads,
well done!'  The words will be echoed in many a heart, but could my
readers have seen the faces of the lifeboatmen, weather-beaten and
incrusted with salt, or watched them, as they staggered wearied but
rejoicing up the beach--could they have knelt in the thanksgiving
service which I held that morning with the rescued crew, and have heard
their graphic version of the grim reality--and how that the living God
had in His mercy stretched out His arm and saved them from death on the
Goodwins, they would better understand,--better, far, than words of
mine can bring it home--how splendid a deed of mercy and of daring was
that day done by the coxswain and the crew of the North Deal
lifeboat[1].



[1] The names of the crew of the lifeboat on this occasion (being one
man short, which was not observed in the darkness of the launch)
were--Richd. Roberts (coxswain), G. Marlowe, John May, Henry May, Wm.
Hanger, Ed. Pain, R. Betts, G. Brown, David Foster, Wm. Nicholas, Henry
Roberts, R. Ashington, John Adams, John Marsh.




CHAPTER VIII

THE SORRENTO, S.S.

  And the clamorous bell spake out right well
  To the hamlet under the hill,
  And it roused the slumb'ring fishers, nor its warning task gave o'er,
  Till a hundred fleet and eager feet were hurrying to the shore.


That Norse and Viking blood is to be found in the E. and S.E. coasts of
England is tolerably certain.  Tradition, as well as the physical
characteristics of the people, go to support the belief that the
inhabitants of the little picturesque village of Kingsdown, midway on
the coast line between Deal and the South Foreland, are genuine 'Sons
of the Vikings.'

Kingsdown looks seaward, just facing the southern end of the Goodwin
Sands, and at the back of the pretty village, which is built on the
shingle of the beach, rise the chalk cliffs which culminate in the
South Foreland, a few miles farther on.  Here in days gone by the
samphire gatherer plied his 'dreadful trade,' and, still from the
wooded cliff 'the fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice.'

Like their Deal brethren, the hardy boatmen of Kingsdown live by
piloting and fishing, and, like the Deal men, have much to do with the
Goodwin Sands.  The same may be said of the more numerous Walmer
boatmen; and all three are usually summed up in the general and
honourable appellation of Deal boatmen.

[Illustration: Jarvist Arnold]

The Kingsdown villagers are believed to be Jutes, and the names
prevalent amongst them add probability to the idea.  Certainly there is
a Norse flavour about the name of Jarvist Arnold, for many years
coxswain of the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabrina.  This brave, fine old
seaman still survives, and still his eye kindles, and his voice still
rings, as with outstretched hand and fire unquenched by age he tells of
grapples with death on the Goodwin Sands.  He is no longer, alas! equal
to the arduous post which he nobly held for twenty years, a post now
well filled by James Laming, Jarvist's comrade in many a risky job; but
still he is regarded with reverence and affection, and the rescue of
the crew of the Sorrento and the story of the 'old cork fender' will
always be honourably associated with his name.  Round him the incidents
of this chapter will group themselves, for, though brave men were his
crew on each occasion, he was the guiding spirit.

[Illustration: The Kingsdown lifeboat]

The mode of manning the Kingsdown lifeboat is somewhat different from
the practice of Deal and Walmer, as will be seen, but in all three
cases the same rush of eager men is made to gain the honourable post of
a place in the lifeboat.

Sometimes the launch is utterly unavailing, as was the case on a
December night in 1867, when with Jarvist Arnold at the helm, the
lifeboat sped into and through the tossing surf and 'fearful sea' (the
coxswain's words), across the south end of the Goodwins, and found a
barque from Sunderland on fire and drifting on to the sands.  So hot it
was from the flames that they could not if they would go to leeward of
her, and they kept to windward, witnessing the spectacle of a ship on
fire in a midnight 'hurricane from the west.'  There was no one on
board of the burning ship, and no one knows the fate of her crew.
Sadly the lifeboatmen returned to the land.

Again Jarvist Arnold is summoned to the rescue, and this time with a
different result.  On February 12, 1870, all the vessels in the Downs
were driven ashore, with the exception of one, which the skill and
pluck of E. Hanger, second coxswain of the Deal lifeboat, safely
piloted away to safety, through the tremendous sea.

There was a great gale from E.S.E. with bitter cold and snow.  Vessel
after vessel came ashore, and some were torn into matchwood along the
beach.  One large vessel, the ship Glendura, having parted her anchors
in the great sea that was running, was driving landwards.  The captain,
foreseeing the inevitable, and determined, if he could not save his
vessel, to save precious lives--his wife and child being on
board--boldly set his lower foretopsail, to force his vessel stem on as
far ashore on the mainland as possible; and about 9 p.m., in this dark
freezing snowstorm, the stem of his large vessel, drawing about
twenty-three feet of water, struck the land.

[Illustration: Scene on Deal Beach February 13, 1870.  From a painting
by W. H. Franklin.]

The engraving shows this ship in the act of striking.  Facing the
picture, the Glendura lies farthest from the spectator.  Between her
and the land would be about 100 fathoms, or 200 yards of water; but
that water was one furious mass of advancing billows hurled landwards
by this great tempest.

Fortunately, as I have said, the Glendura struck the beach unlike the
other vessels in the engraving, not broadside on, but stem on.  They
were broken up very soon; but the Glendura held together, burning
flares and sending up appealing rockets.  Still more fortunately--but
in truth providentially is the word to use--she struck right opposite
Kingsdown lifeboat house, where lay head to storm-blast, the Kingsdown
lifeboat Sabrina, and where, grouped round her, Jarvist Arnold and the
lifeboat crew stood ready.

Had the wrecked ship come ashore at any distance from the spot where
the lifeboat lay, either to the right or left, that is, either west or
east of where she did strike, the probability is that all on board
would have perished.  With a heavy gale dead on shore, if the lifeboat
had succeeded in launching, she would not have fetched the wreck, had
she lain any distance either side, but would have been helplessly
beaten back again.

The Kingsdown men were keenly watching the approaching catastrophe as
the Glendura came landwards.  Long before she struck, the little
fishing village echoed to the cry of 'Man the lifeboat,' and clad in
their sou'-westers and lifebelts the brave crew waited for the crash of
the doomed vessel, which, by God's mercy, took place right in front of
them.  The sea they had to face was terrific, and so bitter was the
night that the sea spray froze as it was borne landwards by the blast,
and each rope in the ship's rigging was thick with ice.

Just as the men were all in the lifeboat, and were about to man their
haul-off warp to pull the lifeboat out into deep water thereby, a
service of the greatest danger on such a night, some one on the
beach--it was James Laming, the present able Kingsdown coxswain, but
then a very young man--even in that black night discovered a great
fender floating in the recoil.  It was pulled ashore, and it was then
found that a line was attached to it, and to that line a weightier one;
and to that a four and a half-inch hawser, or strong cable, leading
from the wrecked ship to the land.

Perceiving the object of those on board, Jarvist Arnold gave the order
to 'Let the lifeboat go,' and she plunged down the steep beach into the
black billows of that easterly snowstorm and right into the very teeth
of it.  No sooner had they touched the water than they hauled upon the
cable which had been sent ashore from the vessel; and so, bit by bit,
one moment submerged and the next swung on the crest of some stormy
wave, they gradually hauled themselves out to the vessel, and found the
crew with the captain and his wife and child gathered in a forlorn
little cluster out on the jib-boom.

Right under the martingale with its sharp spear-like head the lifeboat
had to lie.  When a monstrous sea came roaring round the stern of the
vessel, the lifeboat had to let go and come astern, lest she should be
impaled on the sharp point, as she was hoisted up with great force.

Back again the crew hauled her, and when the furious sea had passed, in
answer to shouts of 'Come on!' 'Now's your time!' down a rope into the
lifeboat came the second mate with the captain's child in his arms.  Up
the stiff half-frozen rope again he climbed and brought down the
captain's wife; and some more of the crew rapidly came the same way.
Then the lifeboat having their full complement of people on board, some
of whom were perishing with the cold of that awful night, made for the
land; still holding the cable from the ship they drifted, or rather
were hurled ashore, in the darkness, pelted by hail and snow and
drenched by the seas, which broke with force clean over them.

The task of landing the enfeebled crew and the poor lady and child in
such a great sea was dangerous, but it was accomplished safely.
Indeed, such was the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Kingsdown villagers
and fisherfolk that, if need were, they could and would have carried
the lifeboat with its human freight right up the beach.

An attempt was now made to use the rocket apparatus, and a rocket was
fired, which went clean through the fore-topsail and to the poop of the
vessel behind.  Another whizzing rocket, carrying its line with it,
went hurtling through or close to the crowd clustered on the
top-gallant forecastle, where they cowered before creeping out on to
the bowsprit.  No harm was done by the erratic flight of the rockets,
but the wrecked sailors naturally preferred to go ashore in the
lifeboat to being dragged through the breakers in the cradle of the
rocket-apparatus, and declining to use it, they again summoned the
lifeboat.

The first crew of the lifeboat were worn out with their exertions, and
the blows and buffetings of the freezing sea-spray.  A fresh crew was
therefore obtained, all but the coxswain, Jarvist Arnold, who stuck to
his post.  Back again to the ship the lifeboatmen hauled themselves,
through such a sea that words which would truly describe it must seem
exaggerated.  Remember the bows of the ship lay nearly two hundred
yards from the land in a veritable cauldron of waters.

Again the lifeboat returned with her living freight of rescued seamen,
and again worn out as before with the struggle, a fresh crew was
obtained; but again Jarvist Arnold for the third time went back to the
wreck.  And yet again with a fourth fresh crew the brave man returned
for the fourth and last time to the vessel; and finally came safe to
the shore with the remainder of the crew, twenty-nine of whom were thus
rescued, but only rescued by the most determined and repeated efforts,
through what the coxswain's report describes as 'a fearful sea with
snowstorm and freezing hard all the time.'

When, long after midnight, the lifeboatmen staggered home, Jarvist
found that his oilskin coat was frozen so hard that it stood upright
and rigid on his cottage floor when he took it off his own half-frozen
self.  But he had a soft pillow that night; he had bravely done his
duty, and had saved twenty-nine of his fellow human beings from death
in the sea.

Many a stormy struggle after this rescue was gone through by Jarvist
Arnold and his Kingsdown lifeboat crew on the Goodwin Sands during the
years 1870-1873.  Holding the honourable but arduous post of coxswain
of the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabrina, he also manfully earned his living
as Channel pilot, being a most trustworthy and skilful seaman.  He did
well that which came to his hand; he did his best and his duty.  I
speak after the manner of men, and as between man and man.  More than
that no man can do.

On the night of December 17, 1872, about 2.30 a.m., it was blowing a
gale from the south-west.  Out of the gale was borne landwards the boom
of guns; far away on the horizon, or where the horizon ought to be, was
seen the flash of their fire; and upwards into the winter midnight shot
the distant rockets, appealing not in vain for help.

Almost simultaneously the coxswains at Walmer and Kingsdown were
roused, William Bushell and Jarvist Arnold.  At Walmer the
lifeboat-bell rang out its summons, but at Kingsdown a fast runner was
sent round the village, crying as he ran, 'Man the lifeboat!'  'Ship on
the Goodwins!'  Up sprang the men--that is, all the grown-up men in the
village; and while the tempest shook their lowly cottage roofs, out
they poured into the night, followed by lads, boys, wives, mothers,
sweethearts and sisters.

Jarvist Arnold's wife said, 'Ladies can sometimes keep their husbands,
but poor women like us must let them go;' and once more Jarvist Arnold
steered his lifeboat--shall I not say to victory? for 'Peace hath her
victories no less renowned than War;' and this sentence might well be
emblazoned on every lifeboat in the kingdom.

At 3 a.m. on this midwinter night they launched at their respective
stations, distant about two miles from each other, the lifeboats of
Walmer and Kingsdown, and faced the sea and the storm.  Think of the
deed, and its hardships, and its heroism; of the brave hearts who
'darkling faced the billows,' and the anxious women left behind, ye who
live to kill time in graceless self-indulgence, and ere it be too late,
learn to sacrifice and to dare.

The two lifeboats got together before they reached the edge of the
Goodwins, and held such consultation as was possible in the pitchy
darkness and in the roar of the sea.  It was agreed between them that
there would be much difficulty in finding the vessel in distress, as
her signals and blue lights had ceased and the night was very dark.
They decided that the Kingsdown lifeboat should go first, and if they
hit the vessel they were to burn a red light in token of success, and a
white light if they could not find her; but that, in any case, Walmer
was to come shortly after them and search through the breakers, whether
Kingsdown succeeded or not.

In the dark the Kingsdown coxswain put his lifeboat into the surf on
the Goodwins; it was heavy, but they got through it safely, and found
on the off-part of the Goodwins, towards its southern end--known as the
South Calliper--a large steamship aground.  She proved to be the
Sorrento, bound from the Mediterranean to Lynn.

Close outside where she lay on the treacherous sands were thirteen and
fourteen fathoms of deep water, that is, from seventy to eighty feet,
while she lay in about six feet of white surf, which flew in clouds
over her as each sea struck her quarters and stern.

The Sorrento had struck the Goodwins at midnight, or a little after, in
about twenty-one feet of water, but when the lifeboat got alongside the
tide had fallen, and there was only six feet of broken water around
her.  As the sands were nearly dry to the southward of her, the sea was
by no means so formidable as it afterwards became with the rising tide
and increasing gale and greater depth of water.

The Kingsdown lifeboat sent up her red light, and then came through the
surf the Walmer lifeboat, guided by the red signal of success from
Jarvist Arnold.  Both lifeboats got alongside the great steamer, and
the greater part of the crews of both lifeboats clambered on board her,
leaving eight men in each lifeboat.

The head of the wrecked steamer lay about E.N.E., and the seas were
hammering at and breaking against her starboard quarter, which rose
high in the air quite twenty feet out of the water at the time the
lifeboats got alongside.  All the lifeboatmen now turned to pumping the
vessel, which was very full of water, with a view to saving the ship
and her valuable cargo of barley.

The Walmer lifeboat lay alongside the Sorrento, under her port bow, and
the head of the Walmer lifeboat pointed towards the stern of the
wrecked steamer, and was firmly fastened to her by a stout hawser.

About this time--say, five o'clock in the morning--while it was dark,
the Ramsgate lifeboat also arrived, and seeing the other two lifeboats
alongside they anchored outside the sands.  And the Kingsdown lifeboat,
manned only by her coxswain and seven of her crew, was sheered off
about two hundred fathoms, to lay out a kedge anchor, with a view to
preventing the vessel drifting farther, as the tide rose, into the
shallower parts of the sands, and in the hope of warping her into
deeper water.

Naturally the presence of the lifeboats and a company of seventeen or
eighteen stalwart lifeboatmen, all thoroughly up to their work, infused
fresh courage into the captain and crew of the Sorrento.  They felt
that all was not lost, and dividing themselves into different gangs of
men, all hands worked with a will, throwing the cargo overboard to
lighten the vessel, and pumping with all their energies--their shouts
ringing out bravely as they worked to get out the water.  The donkey
engine too was set at work, and steam fought storm and sea, but this
time in vain.  After several hours' hard work, the engineer came to the
captain and lifeboatmen and said, 'It's all up; the water's coming in
as fast as we pump it out.  Come down and see for yourselves!'

It was too true, the good steamship's back was broken, and the clear
sea-water bubbled into her faster than it could be got out.  As the day
began to break, the sea rose and beat more heavily over the vessel; it
burst no longer merely in clouds or showers on the deck, but in heavy
volumes, and on all sides, especially to the south; long lines of
rollers careered on towards the doomed vessel with tossing, tumbling
crests, and then burst over her.

At 11 a.m. in this state of affairs the hope of saving the ship was
abandoned, and all only thought now of saving life.  Thinking the two
lifeboats--the Centurion and the Sabrina--were insufficient to rescue
the whole of the steamer's crew, the ensign was hoisted 'union down'
for more assistance.  None came; probably the signal was not seen, or
possibly, it was thought that the presence of the lifeboats had
answered the appeal.

As the tide rose the water deepened and more wind came.  Heavy masses
of water struck the hapless vessel, and though her starboard quarter
was still ten feet out of the water, each sea swept her decks, carrying
spars, hen coops, and everything movable clean before it.

All hands now fled to the bridge of the steamer, watching for a
favourable moment to get into the Walmer lifeboat, still riding
alongside, while each mad billow lifted her up almost to the level of
the bridge and then smothered the lifeboat in its foaming bosom as she
descended into the depths.

Any one who carefully observes a succession of waves either breaking in
charging lines on a beach, or in the wilder turmoil of the Goodwins,
must notice how frequently they differ in shape and in size.  I am by
no means convinced that either the third wave--the [Greek] _trikumia_
of the Greeks--or the tenth wave, as the Latin _fluctus decimanus_
seems to suggest--is always larger than its tempestuous comrades, but
ashore or afloat you do now and then see a giant, formed mysteriously
in accordance with the laws of fluids, that does out-top its fellows,
[Greek] _kephalen te kai eureas ômous_.

Such a great sea was seen advancing by the occupants of the bridge of
the Sorrento.  Combing, curling, high over the stern of the wreck it
broke, carrying everything before it in one common ruin.  It carried
away the boats of the wrecked steamer, tearing them and the davits
which supported them out of the vessel.

Snap went the strong five-inch cable which fastened the Walmer lifeboat
to the port or sheltered quarter of the Sorrento, as the end of the
great green sea swept round her stern; and as the lifeboat was torn
away from the wreck she was forced up against the crashing jangle of
the steamer's boats and davits; and yet again with tremendous force
jammed right up against the anchor of the Sorrento, which was driven
into the fore thwart of the ascending lifeboat.  The lifeboatmen
crouched down to avoid destruction, and--for all this was done in a
moment--away she sped, spun round as a boy would spin his top, to
leeward of the wreck and among the breakers of the Goodwins.

'Never saw anything spin round like her in my life!' said one of the
crew afterwards; and so far was she carried by this great sea that she
could not drop anchor till she was half a mile from the wrecked
steamship.  Tide and wind were both against her, and she was utterly
unable to get back to the wreck.  She simply rode helplessly to her
anchor with less than half of her own men in her, the remainder being
clustered on the bridge, as already described, or clinging to the
rigging of the Sorrento.  The aspect of affairs had now become one of
extreme gravity.

The Walmer lifeboat was swept away, and as helpless as if she were
fifty miles off, leaving seven of her crew in great peril on the
bridge.  Seven of the crew of the Kingsdown lifeboat were also gathered
on the steamer's bridge, together with thirty-two of the crew of the
wrecked vessel herself.  In all, there stood or clung there, drenched
by the clouds of spray, drowned almost as they fought for breath,
forty-six persons; and their only hope or chance for life was the
Kingsdown lifeboat, which still bravely lived, heavily plunging into
and covered now and then by the seas.

At the helm, in dire anxiety, was Jarvist Arnold, and with him were in
the lifeboat only seven of his crew, the remainder of them being
entrapped on board the Sorrento, together with the Walmer lifeboatmen.
It was thought, as my readers will remember, that two lifeboats were
insufficient to rescue all hands, but now the rescue--if rescue there
were to be--depended upon one small lifeboat half manned.

Besides this, Jarvist Arnold saw with his own eyes the defeat of the
Walmer lifeboat, and was so close to the wreck that he was well aware
of the dangerous sea sweeping over her and racing up under her stern;
but the brave fellow never faltered in his determination to attempt the
rescue; and he was strung to his formidable task by the knowledge that
three of his own sons were holding on for dear life on the bridge of
the wreck.  He could see the gestures and hear the shouts from the
bridge as the sounds came across the wind, now a heavy gale.

There was no lack of resolution, but the problem was to get at the
Sorrento at all, as the diagram will help the reader to understand.

[Illustration: Position of the Sorrento.]

It will be plain that the tide current was forcing the Kingsdown
lifeboat, even when at anchor, away from the distressed vessel, and
that if she weighed anchor, she would be carried away to leeward, as
the Walmer men had been.

Thinking of all expedients, they bent on their second cable and rode to
the long scope of one hundred and sixty fathoms.  Still the cruel
lee-tide and wind forced them away.  They sheered the head of the
lifeboat in towards the wreck--and then--the six men in her sprang to
the oars, and tugged and strained at them, all rowing on the same side,
to direct the lifeboat towards the vessel.  While they struggled, the
great breakers overwhelmed and blinded them, filling many times the
gallant little lifeboat--she was only thirty-six feet in length--which
as obstinately emptied herself free and lived through it all, by God's
good providence.

'Must I see my sons die in my sight, and my friends and neighbours
too?' thought Jarvist Arnold, as he was beaten away from the vessel;
and then, 'Lord, help me!'  Again and again, in vain they struggled,
when some one on the wreck sprang from the bridge at the most imminent
peril of his life, on to the slippery, sloping wave-swept deck.

He had seen coiled on a belaying pin on the bridge a long lead line,
and on the deck still unwashed away an old cork fender.  Some say it
was the mate of the vessel; others that it was one of the Kingsdown men
who fastened the lead line to the fender and who slung it overboard,
and then, stumbling and slipping, ran for his life back to the bridge,
barely escaping an overwhelming wave.

Swirling and eddying in the strange currents on the Goodwins, and
beaten of the winds and waves, on came the old cork fender towards the
lifeboat.  They had not another bit of cable to spare on board the
lifeboat; every inch of their one hundred and sixty fathoms was paid
out.  Breathless the coxswain, and the man in the bows, rigid as his
own boat-hook with the anxiety of the moment, lashed to his position, a
life line round his waist, watched the approach of the fender.  It was
sucked by the current towards the lifeboat, and then tossed by a wave
away from her again.

Feeling assured that a great loss of life must soon occur, either by
the people on the frail refuge of the steamer's bridge being swept off
it, or by the bridge itself being carried away by the seas, which were
becoming more solid every moment, Jarvist and his comrades thought the
cork fender was a long time in reaching them.  Lives of men hung in the
balance, and minutes seem hours then.

At last it drifted hopelessly out of reach, but into a curious
backwater, which eddied it right under the boat hook of the bowman.  In
an instant it was seized, and the line made fast to a thwart.  'I've a
great mind to trust to it,' said Jarvist Arnold, but caution prevailed,
and they made fast a stout rope to the lead line.

Again the people on the bridge watched their chance.  One man managed
to wade along the now submerged deck to reach the lead line, and he
hauled it with the stronger rope on board, making the latter securely
fast.  Again had this man to fly for life up the bridge from an
advancing billow, which, leaping over the stern of the wreck, nearly
overtook him, and at the same time by its great weight and impulse,
beat the stern of the steamship a little way round to the west.

Hauling on this cable without letting go their own anchor, Jarvist
Arnold and his small crew hauled their lifeboat as close under the
leaning bridge as they dared.

The first man who tried to escape from the bridge in his leap missed
the lifeboat and fell into the sea, and not a moment too soon was
grasped by friendly hands and dragged into the lifeboat.

The direction of the tidal current on the Goodwins shifts every hour to
a different point of the compass; and now this strong eddy, being
altered still more by the position of the wreck, would suck the
lifeboat towards the stern of the wreck.  There she would meet another
current of the truer tide, and get hurried back again half buried in
breakers, which were ever and anon bursting over and round the stern of
the wreck.

[Illustration: The Sorrento on the Goodwin Sands.]

Then she would come back under the bridge, where every effort was made
to hold her by stern ropes; and as she rose, 'by the dreadful tempest
borne, high on the broken wave,' man after man they jumped, or were
dragged, or came quick as lightning down a rope, into the Sabrina, the
whole forty-six of the imperilled men, the captain being last man, and
almost too late.

Bringing with them the old cork fender as a memento, Jarvist and his
unbeaten crew sheered out their lifeboat to ride by their own cable, as
before the timely arrival of the fender.  Now they saw signs of the
approaching break up of the Sorrento, for before they had left her very
long her funnel and masts went overboard, and reeling to the blows of
the sea, she split in halves and disappeared under the breakers of the
Goodwins.

But before this dramatic conclusion, the Kingsdown lifeboat slipped her
anchor, to which she never could have got back, and setting her mast
and double-reefed storm-foresail, ran away before the wind through the
'heavy boiling surf' on the Goodwins.  These are the coxswain's own
written words, and I can only repeat they are below the grim reality.

With the forty-six rescued seafarers on board she was terribly low in
the water, and was filled in and out from both sides at once by the
seas as they broke.  Only a lifeboat could have lived, but even she
resembled a floating baulk of timber, which is covered and swept by the
seas on the same level as itself.  Holding on for life to thwarts and
life-lines, they kept the lifeboat dead before the sea.  They did not
dare to luff her to the west or bear her away to the east.  They dared
not keep away to get to the Walmer lifeboat, nor in the other direction
toward the mainland, about six miles off.

The slightest exposure of the broadside of the lifeboat would either
have capsized her, or washed every soul out of her; onwards, therefore,
dead before the wind and right on the top of and in the breakers of the
Goodwins she flew her stormy flight for nearly four miles.

The Walmer lifeboat had got up anchor at the same time as the Kingsdown
men; for as the Kingsdown overcrowded lifeboat ran past the Walmer
lifeboat, which was waiting at anchor for them, they shouted to the
Walmer men, 'Slip your cable, and come after us!'

This the Walmer lifeboat did, and now ventured to approach the
Kingsdown lifeboat.  Though handled with skill and caution, being
light, she took a sea; and she came right on top of the gunwale of the
Kingsdown lifeboat, smashing her oars, which were run out to steady
her, like so many pipe-shanks, and crunching into her gunwale.

But at last, with difficulty, half of the living freight of the Sabrina
was transferred to the Walmer lifeboat; and then both lifeboats luffing
in through Trinity Swatch, by God's mercy, escaped the deadly Goodwins,
and landed the rescued crew at Broadstairs.

And the gallant deed is still sung by the Kingsdown children in simple
village rhymes,

  God bless the Lifeboat and its crew,
    Its coxswain stout and bold,
  And Jarvist Arnold is his name,
    Sprung from the Vikings old,
  Who made the waves and winds their slaves,
    As likewise we do so,
  While still Britannia rules the waves,
    And the stormy winds do blow;
  And the old Cork Float that safety brought,
    We'll hold in honour leal,
  And it shall grace the chiefest place
    In Kingsdown, hard by Deal!


One of Jarvist Arnold's sons never recovered the strain of those awful
hours on the bridge of the Sorrento in her death-throes, and, to use
his father's words: 'He never was a man no more.'  But Jarvist himself
did many a subsequent good deed of rescue, and stuck to his arduous
post as long as, and even beyond, what health and strength and age
permitted.

Would that I could say that the noble old fellow was in independent
circumstances!  Despite the continued generosity of the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution to him, alas! this is not the case.  Would that
some practicable scheme for providing a pension for deserving working
men in their old age were before the country!

Jarvist Arnold is, however, not forsaken; he has good and honourable
children, and I know that with that inner gaze which sees more clearly
as eternity approaches, he too in simple faith beholds the advancing
lifeboat, and hears the glad words, 'When thou passest through the
waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not
overflow thee,' from the mouth of the Great Commander.




CHAPTER IX

THE ROYAL ARCH

  Cease, rude Boreas, blust'ring railer!
  List, ye landsmen ill, to me!
  Messmates! hear a brother sailor
  Sing the dangers of the sea.


This and the following chapter contains the story of cases of rescue in
which the ships in distress were saved, together with all on board, by
the skill and courage of the Deal lifeboatmen, and brought finally with
their respective cargoes safe into port.

A century ago, certain of our English coasts are described by the same
writer whose lines head this chapter, as--

  Where the grim hell-hounds, prowling round the shore,
  With foul intent the stranded bark explore.
  Deaf to the voice of woe, her decks they board,
  While tardy Justice slumbers o'er her sword.


But these pages recount, in happy contrast, the generous and gallant
efforts of the Deal boatmen, in the first instance to save life, and
then, when besought to stand by the vessel, or employed to do so, of
their further success in saving valuable property, often worth many
thousand pounds, from utter destruction in the sea.

I stood some years ago on the deck of a lightship stationed near the
wreck of the British Navy, a vessel sunk by collision in the Downs one
dreadful night, when twenty sailors went to the bottom with her, and I
saw her masts blown up and out of her by an explosion of dynamite to
remove the wreck from the Downs, while the water was strewn with the
debris of her valuable cargo.  This cargo, amongst countless other
commodities, was said to have contained one hundred pianos; hence some
idea may be gathered of the pecuniary importance, apart from the
story's thrilling interest, of salvage of valuable vessels and precious
merchandize.

On March 29, 1878, the wind blew strong from the E.N.E., and only one
vessel, the Royal Arch, lay in the Downs.  The great roadstead,
protected from the full fetch of an easterly sea by the natural
breakwater of the Goodwins--for without those dreaded sands neither the
Downs as a sheltered anchorage would exist, nor in all probability the
towns of Deal and Walmer--was nevertheless on that day a very stormy
place, and as the wind freshened towards evening, as the east wind
nearly always does in this locality, it eventually came on to blow a
whole gale dead on shore.

The sea raised by an easterly gale on Deal beach is tremendous, and not
even the first-class luggers, or their smaller sisters, the 'cats,'
could be launched.  Had there been a harbour from which the Deal
luggers could at once make the open sea, they would have been able to
live and skim like the stormy petrel over the crest of the billows; but
it is quite a different thing when a lugger has to be launched from a
beach right in the teeth of a mountainous sea, and incurs the certainty
of being driven back broadside on to the steep shingle, and of her crew
being washed out of her, and drowned by some giant sea.  Hence that
evening no ordinary Deal boat or even lugger could launch.  On the
morning of the same day the captain of the Royal Arch had been
compelled by some necessary business to come ashore.  To have come
ashore in his own ship's boat in such a wind and sea would have
involved certain disaster and even loss of life, and therefore he came
ashore in a Deal galley punt, which successfully performed the feat of
beaching in a heavy surf.

In the evening, against an increasing gale, and much heavier sea, the
galley punt dared not launch to bring the captain back.  None even of
the luggers would encounter the risk of launching in so heavy a sea
dead on the beach.  He therefore tried the lifeboats, upon the plea and
grounds that his ship was dragging her anchors and in peril.  She was
lying abreast of Walmer Castle, and was indeed gradually dragging in
towards the surf-beaten shore, which, if she struck, not a soul on
board probably would have been saved.

The anxious captain first tried the Walmer lifeboat, but she was too
far to leeward, and would not have been able to fetch the vessel.  But
eventually, as his vessel was now burning signals of distress, he ran
to the North Deal lifeboat, and the coxswain, Robert Wilds, seeing all
other boats were helpless, decided to ring the lifeboat bell and pit
the celebrated Van Cook against the stormy sea in deadly fight.

The Deal boatmen had long foreseen the launch of the lifeboat, and they
were massed in crowds round the lifeboat-house, competitors for the
honour of forming the crew.  The danger of the distressed vessel was
known in the town, and crowds had assembled on the beach, amongst them
the Mayor of Deal, to watch the lifeboat launch.

The long run of the great waves came right up to where the lifeboat
lay, so that when she was let go she had no steep slope to rush down so
as to hurl her by her own impetus into the sea.  She depended,
therefore, for her launching against this great sea, on her haul-off
warp, which was moored one hundred fathoms out to sea, and by which her
fifteen men hoped to pull her out to deep water.  But this dark night
she simply stuck fast after running down a little way, and got into the
'draw back' under the seas bursting in fury.

Her situation was most perilous, and the danger of the men being swept
out of her was great.  But through it all the lifeboatmen, with
stubborn pluck, held on to the haul-off warp and strained for their
lives, and at last a great sea came and washed them afloat within its
recoil, an

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