The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 2

by Frederick Whymper

WRECK OF THE “WOOL-PACKET” ON BIDEFORD BAR.

The greatness of the risk to the hoveller, and the comparative smallness of his reward, are illustrated in the case of La Marguerite, a small French brig, rescued from the Goodwin Sands and brought safely into Ramsgate Harbour. She was owned by her captain, and represented to him the labours of a hardworking life. She was bound from Christiania to Dieppe, with a cargo of deals, and was considerably hampered on deck, the timber being piled up almost to her gunwale. She lost her course in the night, and grounded on the Sands. “Where are they? Where can they be? What horrible mistake have they made?” writes Mr. Gilmore in his forcible manner. “They think they must have run somewhere on the mainland on the Kent coast; one man proposes to swim ashore with a rope, but the seas come sweeping over them with a degree of violence that quite does away with any thought of making such an attempt. They hurry to the long-boat, to try and get it out, but it and the only other boat [pg 254]which is in the brig are speedily swept overboard by the seas. The vessel is on the edge of the Sands, and feels all the force of the waves as they roll in and leap and break upon the bark. With every inrush of the seas she lifts high, and pitches, crushing her bow down upon the Sands, each time with a thump that makes her timbers groan, and almost sends the men flying from the deck.” For some twenty minutes she keeps thrashing on the Sands, when they glide off into deep water, and after much delay get their anchor overboard. The gale continues, and, after much entreaty—for the captain is a poor man—the crew succeed in inducing him to cut the foremast away, and the brig rides more easily when this is accomplished. They wait for daylight. They are then seen from Margate, and two fine luggers have a race to see which can get first to the vessel. The life-boat also puts off. One of the luggers gets alongside in fine shape, and the men at once recommend the captain to cut away the remaining mast, but he will not be persuaded. They raise the anchor, and passing a hawser on board, attempt to tow the brig from the Sands, but make little progress. To their satisfaction, they see the Ramsgate steam-boat and life-boat making their way round the North Foreland.

“The coastguard officer at Margate, when he saw that the Margate life-boat could not reach the brig, and knowing that if any sea got up where the vessel was that the luggers could be of no use, telegraphed to Ramsgate that the vessel was on the Knock Sands. The steamer and life-boat get under weigh at once, and proceed as fast as possible to the rescue. There is a nasty sea running off Ramsgate, but it is not until they get to the North Foreland that they feel the full force of the gale. Here the sea is tremendous, and as the steamer pitches to it the waves that break upon her bows fly right over her funnel—indeed, she buries herself so much in the seas that they have to ease her speed considerably to prevent her being completely overrun with them.” The boatmen at last get on board the brig; a glance shows that no time must be lost, and as rapidly as possible the steamer is enabled to take the water-logged vessel in tow. The French crew are utterly exhausted with fatigue and excitement, and are quite ready to leave their vessel in English hands. Away the brig goes, plunging and rolling, with the seas washing over her decks, which are scarcely out of the water, while the two boats are tossing astern, all being towed by the gallant little steamer. They have nearly reached the harbour.

In spite of the rough cold night, the interest in life-boat work is too great for all sympathisers to be driven away from the pier-head; and there is a crowd there ready to watch the boats return and to welcome the men with a cheer. The steamer approaches cautiously, and the brig seems well under command. A couple of minutes more and all will be safe, when suddenly the rush of tide catches the wreck on the bow; she overpowers the lugger, which is towing astern; round her head flies; she lurches heavily forward, and strikes the east pier-head. Crash goes her jib-boom first, and the steamer, towing with all its might, cannot prevent her again and again crushing against the pier. Her bowsprit and figure-head are broken and torn off, her stern smashed in. Ropes and buoys are thrown from the pier. “The poor Frenchmen are almost paralysed by the scene and by excitement—they cannot make it out; the harbour-master, Captain Braine, has enough to do: he sees the danger of the men on [pg 255]board the brig, but he sees more than this—he sees the danger of the crowd at the pier-head, for the brig’s mainmast is swaying backwards and forwards, coming right over the pier as the vessel rolls, and threatens to break and come down upon the people as the brig strikes the pier; and if it does it will certainly kill some, perhaps many.” Women shriek and men shout, and it looks as though the Marguerite would be wrecked in sight of all. Meantime the crew of the hovelling lugger are in equal, if not greater, danger.

“As soon as the men on board the lugger saw the brig sweep and crash against the pier, they cast off their tow-rope, but before they could hoist any sail, the way they had on the boat and the rush of the tide carried the lugger almost between the vessel, as she swung round, and the pier. The men, however, escaped that danger, and indeed death, but the boat was swept to the back of the pier, and in the eddy of the tide was carried into the broken waters; then she rolls in the trough of the sea; wave after wave catches and sweeps her up towards the pier, as if to crush her against it, but each time the rebound of the water from the pier acts as a fender and saves her from destruction; but she is an open boat, and if one big wave leaps on board it will fill her, and she must sink at once; and the seas around her are very wild, the surf from their crests breaks into her continually. The people on the pier see her extreme peril; some run to the life-boat men, who are preparing to moor the boat, and shout to them to hasten out—that the brig is breaking up, and that the lugger will be swamped; before, however, the life-boat can get out the brig is towed clear of the pier, and, the lugger having drifted to the end of the pier, the men are able to get up a corner of the foresail; it cants the lugger’s head round; the men get the foresail well up: it fills; she draws away from the pier and away from the broken water, and is clear.” But now the brig, the rudder of which had been wrenched out of her on the Sands, has no boat to help her steer, and lurches about in all directions. A heavy sea strikes her bow; the steamer’s hawser tightens, strains, and breaks! Excited people on the pier crowd round the harbour-master, and beg him to order the life-boat men to take the crew and the boatmen off the wreck at once. That official knows, however, the boatmen too well: they will not leave her while a stitch holds together.

The captain of the steamer knows their peril, and backs his vessel down to the wreck, now not over a hundred yards from the Dyke Sand. She is rolling heavily, and the seas sweep over her; her crew can hardly keep the deck. The steamer gets close to the brig, and soon another cable is out. Each time the brig sheers heavily to one side or the other she is brought up with a jerk that makes the steamer tremble from stem to stern, but that plucky little boat is not to be beaten. Five brave fellows come off from the pier in a small boat, bringing a line with them: with this they haul a second hawser to the wreck; a crowd of people on the pier pull their hardest, and succeed in moving the wreck. This cable breaks shortly afterwards, but the steamer has by this time again got hold of the vessel, and tows her safely into the harbour, a miserable wreck, with masts and rudder gone, her bow and stern crushed, but with everybody safe on board. The Marguerite was ultimately repaired and sent to sea again, though she could never be the vessel she once was. And the Margate and Ramsgate men got a few pounds each for work that required each one to be a hero, and a very practical and sea[pg 256]manlike hero too. The old wreckers made ten times the money, with an infinitesimal proportion of the trouble.

Yes, times have changed for the better. Individuals may, of course, be found capable of any amount of brutality for the sake of gain, but the shipwrecked mariner of to-day is morally certain that his life and remaining property are safe when he reaches the shore of any part of the United Kingdom, and that for every ruffian there will be twenty kindly and hospitable people ready to pity and to aid him. The same could not be said of the early part of this very century. It seems almost incredible, too horrible, to be possible, that in 1811 the remnant of a poor crew of a frigate wrecked on the Scotch coast were, after buffeting the breakers and struggling ashore for dear life, absolutely murdered on the beach for the sake of their wretched clothes, or, at all events, stripped and left to die. When morning dawned the beach was found strewn with naked corpses. The inhabitants of many fishing villages and seaside hamlets were open to similar imputations late in the last, and indeed early in the present, century. Whole communities have in bygone times—let us trust gone for ever—turned out at the tidings of a vessel in danger; solely with a view to plunder. A tolerably well-known yarn, in which, probably, implicit confidence should not be placed, tells us of a wreck which occurred near the village of St. Anthony, Cornwall, one Sunday morning. This being the case, and the parishioners assembling at the church, the clerk announced that “Measter would gee them a holladay,” for purposes on which that excellent clergyman well knew they were intent. This is only one part of the story, for it is stated that as the members of the congregation were hurrying pell-mell from the church, they were stopped by the stentorian voice of the parson, who cried out, “Here! here! let’s all start fair!” The fact is that the contents or material of a wreck scattered around a coast were, and, no doubt, are still in many places, looked upon as legitimate prey by fishermen and others who would scorn anything in the form of treachery, in luring the good ship ashore, or in brutal treatment to the survivors of her crew. “Within the past five-and-twenty years,” said a leader-writer a short time since, “it is said that a candidate for Parliamentary honours, while canvassing in a district near the coast, found that his opinion on the subject of wrecking was made a crucial point. Wrecking, indeed—so far as the appropriation of shipwrecked property is implied in the word—seems to have held very much the same position in popular ethics as smuggling has done. ‘Such was the feeling of the wreckers,’ writes one who was at one time Commissioner of the Liverpool Police, ‘that if a man saw a bale of goods or a barrel floating in the water, he would run almost any risk of his life to touch that article, as a sort of warrant for calling it his own. It is considered such fair game, that if he could touch it he called out to those about him, “That is mine!” and it would be marked as his, and the others would consider he had a claim to it, and would render him assistance.’ ” We are told that the natives of Sleswig-Holstein considered wrecking so legitimate that prayers were offered up in their churches at one time that “their coasts might be blessed.” Pastor and flock looked upon wrecks as much of blessings as they did a good fishing season. The parson, however, it was explained, did not really pray for wrecks. Certainly not! What he meant was that if there must be wrecks, those wrecks might happen on their coasts!

The question of “salvage” is of a nature too technical for these columns. In some minor matters it would seem that the authorities do not offer proper encouragement to fishermen and others to be decently honest or humane. At the period of the wreck of the Schiller, on the Scilly Islands, a correspondent of our leading journal[77] tells us “that many floating bodies of drowned passengers and seamen were picked up by the fishing boats which abound in that part of Cornwall. Upon some of them money or valuables were found, and these were given up to the Customs when the body was sent ashore. In such cases the valuables were retained for the friends of the drowned persons, and a uniform reward of five shillings was paid to the finders. Now, for the sake of taking ashore such a body as I have described, the fishermen—seven or eight in number—would have lost their night’s fishing, for it would not have been safe, even if the crew were willing, to have done otherwise. The smallness of the reward given in return for the services rendered would therefore operate as a strong inducement to the more selfish among them to prefer their fishing to the dictates of humanity. My informants even told a story of a fishing boat which picked up a floating body, and, having collected all the papers and valuables from it, restored the body itself to the deep, and went on its way. The papers and valuables were given up in due course, and no charge of dishonesty was preferred against the crew; but the want of humanity caused (and not unnaturally) a strong feeling of indignation against the perpetrators of this act. The fishermen, however, argued that if they brought the bodies into port (as they were [pg 258]instructed to do), they would get, at most, a sum of sevenpence per man for their night’s work; and if they brought merely the property to the proper authorities, they were abused for their inhumanity; and that, therefore, their only alternative was to pass the bodies by, and attend to their own work. Should the view that I have here stated be found to be a general one, I think that it will be allowed that it is an argument for either paying more highly for the finding of bodies at sea, or allowing the finders the same salvage upon the property found upon the bodies that they would have received had the property been picked up in a chest.”

Pleasant it is to turn from what we may well believe is only an occasional example of want of feeling to such a case as the following—one out of thousands that might be cited. It is slightly abridged from a little publication[78] which should be in the hands of all readers of “The Sea” interested in benevolent efforts for the seaman’s welfare.