Such were the circumstances on December 8, 1914, when the oil-tank steamer Vedra took fire off Walney Island. She had left Sabine, in Texas, some while before, and run the gauntlet of the few German commerce raiders in the Atlantic; and Captain Brewster was telling himself, when he arrived off Barrow on December 7, that his voyage was at an end, and that he would soon be able to unload his cargo of benzine. He counted his chickens before they were hatched, for Dame Fortune was bent on playing him a scurvy trick. For some time the weather had been rough, and the Vedra had been forcing her way through in the teeth of a gale which played shuttlecock with her. But the sturdy steamer had fought hard and long to get to her port; and now she was within sight. Across the darkening waters signals were sent for a pilot to come aboard and guide her into harbour.
Meanwhile, the storm increased in fury, and the Vedra found herself fighting against the titanic forces of the deep. Now on the crest of a wave, now in the trough the vessel lay, hovering at times, it seemed, on the very edge of the pit of destruction, and at others diving down, down, down, and then righting herself as by a miracle.
The waiting men saw a tug put out and head towards their ship.
“The pilot,” they muttered. “He’s in for a rough trip!”
A rough trip it was, and one that was never finished, for ere he could reach the Vedra the latter was taken up, as it were, by giant hands and flung shorewards; then swung about again and hurled towards Walney Island. Firm as a rock Captain Brewster stood to his post, and worked his ship like the mariner he was; but it was a hopeless task, and very soon there was a grinding that told she had run ashore. The engines were immediately reversed, and the ship strained to her utmost in the effort to get off the shore. As the waters poured over her she seemed to shake herself like a great dog. There was the hum of the engines below, the swish of the propeller as it churned up the water, but never a move backward did the Vedra make; rather, she bumped more heavily and got farther in. She was fast held.
Captain Brewster, realising now that it was useless to try to float her by her own engines, signalled to the shore for assistance, and the guardship Furness, lying off the port, immediately put out and hurried to render what aid she could, while at the same time the tugs Walney and Cartmel pushed their noses through the water in her direction. Captain Hill, of the Furness, worked his vessel as near to the Vedra as was possible with safety, and then, calling on the crew to stand by, hurled a hawser towards her. Time and time again the hawser was flung, only to fall short; but at last it was successfully thrown, and caught by some of the Vedra’s crew. It took but a little while for them to hitch it securely; and when this was done the word was given to the Furness, whose engines were reversed, and away she bore till the hawser stretched taut from ship to ship.
But the Furness found she had undertaken a task that defied all her strength, and, strain though she did with every ounce of steam in her and every horsepower in her engines, she could not make the Vedra budge from the fast hold in which she had been caught. Suddenly, too, there was a crack that sounded above the roar of the wind, and the Furness went staggering back as a child staggers when someone lets go of a rope he is straining at. The hawser had snapped in two. A sharp command, and the Furness eased up, and once more she steamed towards the Vedra; another hawser was hurled, and again, eventually, was hitched on. Then back she pulled, more carefully than ever this time, with the hawser tightening between the two vessels. Would it hold? Would the Vedra move? Would the Furness’s engines stand the strain? Such were the questions that raced through many a mind in those anxious moments. On the Vedra, the captain still at his post, men waited tensely, holding on to anything at hand, lest they be pitched off into the boiling sea below, while the whole ship seemed to throb to the racing of her engines as they worked at high pressure. But she refused to move.
Things were now assuming a very serious aspect, though the coming of the two tug boats at this time, under command of Commander Bisset, R.N., Harbour-master of Barrow, heartened the captain and crew, who refused to heed exhortations thrown at them to leave the vessel.
“No!” bawled the captain through his funnelled hands. “I’ll not leave her till there’s no hope. I think we can refloat her!”
So, as the men would stick to their duty, there was nothing to do but to strive the utmost to get the ship off, and the tugs and the guardship worked nobly with this end in view; but all unavailingly. And while they worked the news had been signalled along the coast, and the lifeboats at Piel and Fleetwood put out to succour the stranded mariners. Just as the Piel boat reached the spot, however, a great calamity had come to pass.