“The Goodwin Sands are about nine miles long; in the middle of them there is, at low water, a large lake, which is called on the chart ‘Trinity Bay,’ but which is known to the boatmen as the ‘In-Sand.’ The men row in the direction of the lake, and row over the sandbanks which surround it, as soon as the tide has flowed sufficiently to enable them to do so. Now they find themselves in completely smooth water, and are safe; but for how long? a short hour or so, for the hungry waves are following them up fast. Still higher and higher comes the tide, and a furious surf begins to rage over the banks that for a time protect the lake.” Well do the men know how short must be their period of rest.
Soon the heavy rollers come in and threaten to swamp them; the boat is nearly full of water. At this juncture the steersman, who has been steering and baling the boat for about four hours, suddenly lets the bowl with which he is baling fly from his hand; he gives a cry of horror, and the men cannot help repeating it, for may not this apparently small accident be fatal to them? To keep the boat afloat without baling is impossible; the surf breaks into her continually, and that bowl is indispensable to their safety, [pg 250]for the men cannot use their sou’westers for the purpose when both hands are so busily employed in freeing their oars from the seas and keeping the blades from being blown up into the air by the force of the gale. Most happily, the bowl is a wooden one, and it floats a few yards from them. The men watch it anxiously as they are tossed up and down by the quick waves. Back the boat down upon the bowl they cannot, and it is drifting away faster than they are floating. It would seem a simple matter to pick up a bowl floating within a distance so small, but the waves long render it impossible. Suddenly the coxswain cries, “Here is a lull; round with her sharp!” The men on the starboard side give a mighty pull, and the others back their hardest; then a pull altogether; the bowl is within reach; the coxswain grasps it with a hasty snatch. “Round! round with her quick!” and the boat is got head straight to the seas again before the waves can catch her broadside and roll her over. All breathe again: they have another chance of life.
They get clear of the Sands, but a fierce gale is still raging. “As they get into the Gull stream, they see vessel after vessel running with close-reefed topsails before the gale; the boatmen hail them, but they get no answer. One little sloop affords them slight hope, for she is evidently altering her course, but after a moment’s apparent hesitation, away she goes again before the gale, and abandons them to their fate. The captain of the little vessel related afterwards how, in the height of the storm, he saw some poor fellows in a small boat, and had a great wish to try and save them, but the sea was running so high that he felt it was impossible to heave his vessel to, and so had to leave them, and that they must have been driven on the Sands and lost. This sloop was about a quarter of a mile from the boat, and the men do not again get as near to any other ship; and as vessel after vessel passes, and the night begins to grow dark, the position of the men becomes more and more hopeless, and they all feel that if no vessel picks them up they must soon be blown in again upon the sands, and there perish.” The men work on, but solemnly, very solemnly.
But one vessel, a large American ship, remains at anchor in the Downs; vessel after vessel had slipped their cables and run before the gale. It is their last hope. “As they drop slowly towards her, they shout time after time, but cannot make themselves heard, and it is getting too dusk for them to be seen at any distance; the seas are running alongside the ship almost gunwale high, and it is impossible to get nearer to her than within fifty yards. Hail after hail the men give; still they get no answer. They can see a man on the poop, but he evidently neither sees nor hears them, and their last chance seems slipping away, for they are fast drifting past the vessel. ‘Get on the thwart, Dick, and shout with all your might!’ the coxswain says to the man pulling stroke oar. ‘I’ll hold you!’ hauling in his oar and catching it under the seat. The man springs upon the thwart, and balancing himself for a second, hails with all his force.”
“The man is moving; he hears us, hurrah!” is the glad cry in the boat; and they can soon see several astonished faces peering over them. The boat drifts by the ship; they give a pull or two, to get her under the stern of the vessel; a coil of rope with a life-buoy is thrown to them, and they manage to get it on board. The captain is now on deck; he orders other ropes to be sent down, and soon another life-buoy, with cord attached, comes floating by. Still the boat is in great danger; their safety hitherto has been in floating [pg 251]with the waves, yielding to them as they rolled on, but now the little boat has to breast the waves, and is tossed high in the air, and again plunged far down, running great risk of being overturned. “The difficulty now is how to get the men out of the boat, for they dare not haul her up closer to the vessel, as she will not ride with a shorter scope of rope. They send another rope down to the boat, with a bowline knot made in it, for the men to sit in, and then shout to the men, ‘We will haul you on board one at a time!’ ” A moment’s question as to the order in which the men shall go is quickly decided, for each feels that at any moment the boat may sink or upset. They leave in the order in which they sit, and one after another they plunge into the waves, and are hauled on board, dripping, but saved! Very soon the boat fills and turns over, and hangs by the ropes till morning.
The captain will hardly credit their story at first. “Impossible! impossible!” says he. “No boat could live in such a sea, and over the Sands. Impossible!” But he becomes convinced at last, and all on board show every attention and kindness. A little brandy and some dry clothes at once, a beefsteak supper and a glass of grog later on, followed by warm beds made up on the captain’s cabin floor, and their adventures in an open boat were but the memory of a horrid dream. The coxswain, however, fell very ill soon after, and was nigh death’s door; he did not recover his strength for a twelvemonth, so greatly had the anxiety of that night’s work told upon him.
Meantime, the lugger, after cruising backwards and forwards, the crew keeping an anxious and fruitless look-out for their comrades in the boat, is obliged to put in for Dover, from whence they telegraph the sad news that six of their men are to all appearance lost. Next morning they make one more effort to find some traces of their lost companions, and then steer, sad and disheartened, for Ramsgate. There the arrival of the lugger is most anxiously awaited. Alas! it is as they feared, and many a household is plunged in grief. While this is going on, the boatmen leave the American ship and row steadily for Ramsgate, near which they fall in with another lugger, on which they are taken. The lugger’s flag is hoisted, in token that they are the bearers of good news, and great is the curiosity of the men about the harbour. A crowd hurries down the pier to watch her arrival, and as soon as the men missing from the Princess Alice are recognised, the cheers and excitement are wild in the extreme. Men rush off to bear the good news. “One poor woman, in the midst of her agony and mourning for her husband, and surrounded by her weeping friends, is surprised by her door being burst violently open, and at seeing a boatman, almost dropping with breathlessness, gasping and gesticulating and nodding, but trying in vain to speak; and it is some seconds before he can stammer out, ‘All right! all right! Your husband is safe—coming now!’ ”
THE LUGGER REACHING RAMSGATE HARBOUR.
The danger incurred by the hovellers is well illustrated by the following example, recorded by our leading journal[76] some years since. Nine of these men endeavoured to save a sloop, the Wool-packet, of Dartmouth, stranded on Bideford Bar, and the crew must have lost their lives but for the noble service performed, under great risks, by Captain Thomas Jones, master of the steam-tug Ely, of Cardiff. A shipowner of Bideford, who was an eye-witness of the brave deed, stated that the crew of the vessel had aban[pg 252]doned her, and the two boats’ crews, consisting of nine men, afterwards boarded the wreck, with the view of trying to get her off the bar; but when the tide rose the sea broke heavily over the vessel, and the men hoisted a flag of distress. The steam-tug Ely now hastened to the rescue, against a strong tide and wind. Before, however, she could get near the wreck, the nine men were driven to seek refuge in the rigging. The sea was breaking fearfully in all directions and the vessel rolling from side to side, but Captain Jones and his crew bravely proceeded through the broken water, at the risk of their lives and vessel, and succeeded, at the first attempt, in saving three of the men. This was all that they could then accomplish, for the sea was now breaking so furiously over the wreck that the steamer was driven away; and the same want of success attended a second and third attempt to approach the wreck. The captain then backed astern, and, with consummate skill and boldness, actually placed the steamer alongside the vessel’s rigging, with her bow over the deck of the wreck, thus saving the six men in the rigging; and within the short space of two minutes the wreck had actually disappeared, and was not seen afterwards. But for this bold and successful service, nine widows (for the nine rescued men were all married) and forty fatherless children would to-day be lamenting the loss of husbands and fathers. The [pg 253]National Life-boat Institution presented a medal, &c., to the captain, and £1 each to the eight men forming the crew.