Suddenly a loud sharp crack, like a crash of thunder, pealed through the ship. One of her large timbers had snapped like a pipe-stem, and now the Portuguese sailors were only too anxious to leave. Even then, however, they made a rush to get their things, and soon eight sea-chests hampered the life-boat. The captain did not like to refuse the poor fellows, although every moment was of consequence. The surf flew over the brig, and boiled up all around her; the life-boat, deluged with spray, had all her lights washed out. The snapping and rending of the brig’s timbers was heard over the fury of the storm; she was breaking up fast. The boy was handed to the boat, the sailors following, and the brig was abandoned. But the danger was far from over.
The steamer and the luggers, exposed to the full fury of the increasing gale, were outside, the former head to wind, steaming half-power. The steamer endeavoured to keep in the neighbourhood of the wreck and of the life-boat. One of the luggers had to cut her cable, without attempting to save her anchor, and make with all speed for Ramsgate; the second sprung her mast, which was fished with great difficulty, and she too made the best of her way for the harbour. The crew of the steamer could see nothing of the boat—Was she swamped or stove, and all lost? They made signals, but to no purpose; and the Aid cruised up and down the edge of the dangerous sands as near as might be, hoping against hope. The night was pitchy dark, and the storm remained at its worst. Through the thick darkness the bright light of the Goodwin light-vessel shone out like a star. With a faint hope, the crew of the steamer wrestled their way through the storm, and spoke the light-ship. Nothing had been seen of the life-boat. They hastened to their old cruising-ground. How they longed for the light! All hands were still on watch, and as the faint grey light of dawning came, they sought with straining eyeballs to penetrate the twilight, and find some sign of their lost comrades. It was almost broad daylight before they could find the place where the wreck was lying, and when they discovered it, lost all hope, for the brig was found completely broken up, actually torn to pieces. They could see great masses of splintered timber and tangled rigging, but not a sign of life. Sadly they turned from the fatal Goodwin, and made for the harbour.
To return to the life-boat, afloat within the circle of the bed worked by the brig in her wild careering. She could not by any possibility leave, though the wreck threatened to roll over her every moment, for outside were the shallow sands, and she was grounding every few moments. “Crash! the brig heaves, and crushes down upon her bilge; again and [pg 227]again,” says the narrator, “she half lifts upon an even keel, and rolls and lurches from side to side; each time that she falls to leeward she comes more and more over, and nearer to the boat.
“This is the danger that may well make the stoutest heart quail. The boat is aground—helplessly aground; her crew can see through the darkness of the night the yards and masts of the brig swaying over their heads, now tossing high in the air as the brig rights, and now falling nearer and nearer to them, sweeping down over their heads, swaying and rending in the air, the blocks, and ropes, and torn fragments of sails flying wildly in all directions. Let but one of the swaying yards hit the boat, she must be crushed, and all lost. The men crouch down closer and closer, clinging to the thwarts as the brig falls to them, casting dread glances at the approaching yards; all right once more; another pull at the cable—hard, men, hard; over again comes the brig; stick to it, stick to it, my men; crushed or drowned, it will be soon over if we cannot move the boat; another pull, all together; again and again they make desperate efforts to stir the boat, but she will not move one inch; they must wait, and, if needs be, wait their doom.” And so through hours of fearful suspense, half dead with cold and the ceaseless rush of surf over them, watching in the shadowy darkness the swaying masts and flying blocks, expecting each moment to be their last.
But at length a dawn of hope arrived; the boat lifted on the swell of the tide that was beginning to reach her, and though she immediately grounded again, the men knew that all was not lost. After desperate hauling on the cable they at last were able to ride to their anchor a few yards clear of the brig. But to get away from the sand in the face of the fierce gale and tide was impossible, and so there was no alternative, they must beat right across the sands, and this in the wild fearful gale, and terrible sea, and pitch-dark night. Breaker after breaker rushed furiously towards and over them; the men were nearly washed out of the boat; and, worse, the anchor began to drag, and every moment they drifted nearer to the wreck again. There might now be water enough to take them clear; at all events, they must risk it. The foresail was hoisted and the cable cut, and she leaped forward, but only for a few yards, when she grounded upon the sands again with a terrible shock, and again within reach of the brig. Huge breakers came tearing along, and, at last, after many such experiences, they were once more clear of the wreck. Then another danger arose. A small life-boat belonging to the Broadstairs men had been in tow all this time, and when the Ramsgate boat grounded she came crashing along into her. The Ramsgate men had, in the midst of the boiling sea, to fend her off with their feet, and at last cut her adrift. The sea-chests of the Portuguese sailors—or at least those not already washed away—were thrown overboard. Again and again she grounded on the sand ridges washed up by the surf—ridges giant editions of the little sand-ripples on the sea-shore so well remembered by all visitors to our coasts, but two and three feet high, instead of as many inches.
“One old boatman,” says Gilmore, “afterwards thus described his feelings:—‘Well, sir, perhaps my friends were right when they said I hadn’t ought to have gone out—that I was too old for that sort of work’ (he was then about sixty years of age), ‘but, you see, when there is life to be saved, it makes one feel young again; and I’ve [pg 228]always felt I had a call to save life when I could, and I wasn’t going to hang back then. And I stood it better than some of them, after all. I did my work on board the brig, and when she was so near falling over us, and when the Dreadnought life-boat seemed knocking our bottom out, I got on as well as any of them; but when we got to beating and grubbing over the sands, swinging round and round, and grounding every few yards with a jerk that bruised us sadly, and almost tore our arms out from the sockets; no sooner washed off one ridge, and beginning to hope that the boat was clear, than she thumped upon another harder than ever, and all the time the wash of the surf nearly carrying us out of the boat—it was truly almost too much for any man to stand. There was a young fellow holding on next to me; I saw his head begin to drop, and that he was getting faint, and going to give over; and when the boat filled with water, and the waves went over his head, he scarcely cared to struggle free. I tried to cheer him a bit, and keep his spirits up. He just clung to the thwart like a drowning man. Poor fellow! he never did a day’s work after that night, and died in a few months.’ And then the old man described how he took his life-belt off, that he might have it over all the quicker; how the captain cheered them up by crying out, ‘We’ll see Ramsgate yet again, my men, if we steer clear of old wrecks;’ and how he was going off into a kind of stupor when the clouds broke a little, and one bright star shone out, a star of life and hope to him. For seven whole days after the poor old man reached shore he lost his speech, and lay like a log on his bed, while all the men were considerably shaken. ‘I cannot describe it,’ said he, ‘and you cannot, neither can any one else; but when you say you’ve beat and thumped over those sands, almost yard by yard, in a fearful storm on a winter’s night, and live to tell the tale, why it seems to me about the next thing to saying that you’ve been dead, and brought to life again.’ ”
But suddenly the swinging and beating of the boat ceased: she was in a heavy sea, but in deep water, and she answered her helm. The crew soon got more sail on her, and she made good way before the gale. Even the Portuguese sailors lifted their heads. They had been clinging together and to the boat, crouching down under the lee of the foresail, utterly despairing of life; now their joy knew no bounds. They were noticed earnestly consulting together. They had lost their kits, and only possessed the clothes they stood in and a few pounds in money (about £17) between them, but the latter they determined to present to the crew. “I, for one, won’t touch any of it,” said the coxswain of the boat. “Nor I!” “Nor I!” all added; “put your money up.” And so to the harbour, where their consul took care of them. When the steamer arrived later on, what was not the surprise and delight of the captain and all hands to find the life-boat at her old moorings, and their comrades in so many dangers all safe in port!
For by far the larger proportion if not indeed nearly the whole of these life-savers work con amore, and a mishap or positive disaster is often to them an agonising disappointment. One stormy New Year’s Eve some years ago “a ship was seen off Deal beach in almost a blaze of light, burning tar-barrels and firing rockets, to tell of her distress; an intervening fog seemed to prevent the look-out on board the light-vessel seeing her, and some boatmen on Deal beach, who could not possibly get their boats off the sands in the face of the strong gale blowing straight on shore, put their halfpence together to pay for a telegraph message—the [pg 229]messages were dearer then than they are now—and sent their swiftest runner to telegraph to Ramsgate; and, after all, there was some unfortunate mistake, and fatal delay, and a telegram at last sent for further particulars, which was answered with a demand for urgent speed, and away then flew steamer and life-boat, and they neared the wreck, and rounded to, to send the life-boat in, when some of the boatmen thought they heard an agonising shriek, and others thought it was only the wail of the storm; but they looked, and the great green seas swept over the wreck, turned her right over, and she was seen no more, and twenty-eight lives went to their account. A piteous New Year’s tale it was that was told next morning. A boat’s crew got away from the ship soon after she struck, and, battling through the broken seas, made way before the wind to Dover, and they told the story that the lost vessel had picked up a shipwrecked crew, who were thus a second time wrecked, and at the second time lost; and that more of the crew would have come away in the boat, and in other boats, but it was a great risk; and there was a Deal pilot on board, who pointed out the danger, and said that the Ramsgate life-boat was sure to be out to their rescue, they might be sure of her; and so they stayed and lighted tar-barrel after tar-barrel, and fired rocket after rocket; and when the sea washed their signal-fires out and swept the decks, they took to the rigging, and waited for the life-boat; and as they waited, the poor Deal pilot could watch the light on the [pg 230]beach, by the house where slept his wife and eight children, who were to call him husband—father—no more.” The life-boat men hardly like to speak of such a cruel disaster—blameless though they be in the matter. In this particular case a Board of Trade inquiry acquitted them and all else concerned of any blame whatever.
A GROUP OF LIFE-BOAT MEN.