The writer of the critical article from which the above quotations are taken[85] shows, firstly, that there was not at that time a life-boat station at Harwich. It had always been considered that the sands were too distant from that port for the successful employment of such a boat, and that, in the event of wrecks upon them, the numerous hovelling smacks would have anticipated its services. There was, however, a small but serviceable steam-tug—not, be it remembered, Government or town property, but that of a private individual. It is right that this should be fully understood. The circumstance of this tug, the Liverpool, not going off instantly on perceiving the rockets thrown up by the Cork light-ship was much criticised by some ignorant persons at the time. “Fortunately, she was commanded by an able and experienced seaman, Captain Carrington, who knew what he was about; who knew the difficulties of navigating in the intricate passages between the numerous shoals off the port on a dark night and gale of wind, and he could only do so at great risk of losing his owner’s vessel and the lives of those intrusted to him; that he might spend the whole night in vainly searching for the vessel in distress, and, even if he should find her, that, with the small tug’s boats, it would be quite impossible for him to render any assistance to a vessel surrounded by broken water, in a dark night and heavy sea; and, moreover, that if any mishap should disable his own vessel, the only chance of saving the wrecked persons might be destroyed.” He judiciously waited till shortly before daylight, and then proceeded, first, to the Cork light-ship, where he ascertained that the Sunk light-ship had been firing all night. He then steamed to the latter, and was misinformed (unintentionally) regarding the locality of the wreck. He, after searching in vain for some little time, steamed for the Kentish Knock, and when half-way to it saw the Deutschland on that sandbank. He then went to the Knock light-ship, and hailed her, inquiring whether those on board knew anything about the wreck, or whether there were any people remaining on board her, but could get no information. He soon proceeded to the spot, and, finding there were a large number of persons on board her, anchored his vessel under her lee, at about sixty fathoms’ distance, and sent his boats to her. After taking off three boat-loads, he weighed his anchor, placed his vessel alongside the ship, and took off the remainder of the survivors—173 in all. In spite of the time which had elapsed and the great dangers to which the vessel had been exposed, the loss of life had not been so serious as might well have been anticipated. Fifty-seven poor men and women had, however, perished in the raging waves. The tug[86] had done her work of saving nobly and well, and had performed it at a time when the hovelling smacks could have done nothing at all. On the same occasion the Broadstairs life-boat proceeded as soon as possible to the scene of the wreck, twenty miles distant, but too late to be of service. In these days of nearly universal telegraphy, [pg 275]it would seem strange that our light-ships on dangerous sands, and our lighthouses on dangerous rocks, are almost entirely without the means of proper communication with the nearest shores. From the light-ship, indeed, rockets and guns are constantly fired, as we have seen in many preceding examples, but fogs and heavy weather often prevent either from being of service. The expense of connecting all of them with the coasts by means of submarine cables might be sufficient to frighten any Government; but some such communication, however costly, should be made with many of those exposed and dangerous spots where shipwrecks are of constant occurrence.
Excellent authorities on maritime matters have strongly advocated the necessity for the establishment of a sound system of day and night signals from all outlying lighthouses, light-ships, and coastguard stations, and the laying of submarine cables to many of the more prominent stations. A formula of “signals of distress” was included in the new “Merchant Shipping Act of 1873,” which came into operation on the 1st of November of that year. Prior to that time such signals were too vague and too indiscriminately used to have much value, and sometimes were calculated to mislead. Thus, in the case of the Northfleet already cited, 400 of those on board were drowned, “although she was surrounded by other ships, and the rockets which she discharged as signals of distress were seen by the coastguard and life-boat men ashore, but were unheeded, it being a common custom for homeward-bound ships to discharge rockets for pilots, or as feux de joie on their safe return from distant lands.” The following signals of distress are now required. In the daytime the following signals, when used together or separately, shall be deemed sufficient and proper. 1. A gun fired at intervals of about a minute. 2. The International Code signal of distress. This is a square flag with chess-board pattern, blue and white, having beneath it a long triangular white pennant, with a red ball in the centre. 3. The distant signal, consisting of a square flag, having above or below it a ball or anything resembling a ball. At night the following signals:—1. A gun fired at intervals of about a minute. 2. Flames on the ship, as from a burning tar-barrel or oil-barrel, &c. 3. Rockets or shells, of any colour or description, fired, one at a time, at short intervals. And “any master of a vessel who uses or displays, or causes or permits any person under his authority to use or display, any of the said signals, except in the case of a vessel being in distress, shall be liable to pay compensation for any labour undertaken, risk incurred, or loss sustained, in consequence of such signal having been supposed to be a signal of distress, and such compensation may, without prejudice to any other remedy, be recovered in the same manner in which salvage is recoverable.”
The signals for pilots are also definitely fixed as follows:—By day, the “Jack” or other national colour usually worn by merchant ships, having round it a white border, is to be displayed at the fore; or the International Code pilotage signal, this consists of two square flags, the upper of which is a blue flag with a white square in its centre, and the lower of which is a striped flag, red, white, and blue, similar to the French flag. At night, “blue lights,” or bright white lights, are to be flashed at frequent intervals, just above the bulwarks. If these signals are used for any purpose other than that for which they are intended, a penalty, not exceeding twenty pounds, is incurred. Residents at, and visitors to, seaports and sea-side resorts will, from the above description, be able to [pg 276]judge whether a vessel in the offing is in dire distress or simply requires the ordinary services of a pilot.
In the eighteenth century, the requirements of a maritime country constantly at war obliged the Government to establish a complete system of signals and signal stations all round our coasts. At the conclusion of our wars with France that system was in full force, and at that time the movements of nearly every vessel, friend or foe, were telegraphed from point to point with a facility which contributed in an important degree to the security of the country. “This Government telegraph system was also available for summoning such aids as then existed for the preservation of life from shipwreck. Accounts of wrecks at what may be called the life-boat era all tend to show that the system of coast telegraphy then in existence played an important part in most notable life-boat and other rescues from shipwreck. With the long peace the need for information on the part of the Government as to the movements of its own or other ships became less urgent, though the coast system of signals maintained a precarious existence for many years, to assist the coastguard in protecting the revenue. As smuggling decreased, the coastguard men were reduced in number, and the chain of signallers became broken into gaps, which widened year by year. The final blow was given by railways and electricity to the old line of semaphores stretching between Portsmouth and the Admiralty, and elsewhere, and from headland to headland. But while the Government, by the help of modern invention, enormously increased its facilities of communication with the great dockyards and arsenals, it, conceiving itself to be in no way concerned (we suppose) with the safety of merchant ships or saving life, failed to supply a substitute for the old semaphore system along the coast line; and year by year the evil has increased from the reduction of the coastguard, and the consequent lengthening of the interval on lines of coasts in which watch has ceased to be kept. The result is that during the last twenty-five years, and up to the present time, there has been greater difficulty in communicating along the coast and summoning aid to distressed vessels at all out-of-the-way parts of the coast than existed at the end of the last century.
“The First Lord of the Admiralty or the President of the Board of Trade can converse at leisure with Plymouth, Deal, Leith, or Liverpool, but the Eddystone has no means of letting the authorities at Plymouth know that a ship is slowly foundering before the eyes of the keepers, though the two points are in sight of each other. The light-keepers at the Bishop have no means of telling the people at St. Mary’s that a ship full of passengers is slowly but surely tearing to pieces on the Retarrier reef; and the hundreds of vessels that yearly are in deadly peril on the Goodwins, the Kentish Knock, the Norfolk Sands, and elsewhere, have no means of summoning prompt aid from the land, though they are only a few miles distant from it.”[87] The writer notes that the number of cases of shipwreck, where the vessels might have been saved, which reach the National Life-boat Institution is considerable. These come largely from obscure and detached parts of the coasts. A foreign barque was wrecked on the Ship-wash, a sandbank eight miles from land, the nearest port being Harwich, from which its southern end is distant ten miles. The wreck was discovered by several smacks soon after seven o’clock on the morning of January 7th, 1876, and the news of the disaster was in the possession of the coastguards at Walton, [pg 277]Harwich, and Aldborough, before ten o’clock that day. Yet the crew were not taken off the wreck till the following morning, after they had been more than twenty-four hours exposed to all the horrors of a pitiless easterly gale, and the momentary expectation of being swept into eternity. So ill-adapted was the system of sending information along the coast that the news did not reach Ramsgate till the next morning, and tug-boat and life-boat then started on a gallant but fruitless expedition, to find that they had only just been forestalled by the Harwich steamer. The Ramsgate men were thus needlessly exposed for fourteen hours in a storm, with the cold so intense that the salt water froze as it fell on the boat. “It is also significant,” says a writer in The Lifeboat, “that the Aldborough life-boat’s crew declined to launch their boat (they being fifteen miles from the wreck), mainly because there were no sure grounds for concluding that the crew were still on board it—information which could certainly have been conveyed by the Ship-wash lightship had it had an electric wire communication with the shore; or, failing that, by properly arranged ‘distant signals’ visible to the eye.” The writer shows that had the information been telegraphed from the point which it actually did reach about 10 a.m., either to the Admiralty or the Board of Trade, or any other public department, assistance could with ease have been sent to the wreck, by orders from London, not the day after, but on the forenoon of the same day. And what might not have been the sad consequences of delay, had the vessel been carrying a lot of helpless passengers instead of nine hardy seamen?
A case occurred shortly after the above occurrence, illustrating the necessity for prompt and suitable communication with land. The steamer Vesper, of Hartlepool, was lost on the Kish Bank, four miles south of the Kish light-ship. The crew of this wreck, which struck the bank at 5 a.m., though only four miles from the light-ship, six of a coastguard station on shore, and seven of another point, received no assistance, nor did the light-ship pass the intelligence till 10 a.m., when a boatman at Kingstown saw masts sticking out of the water on the Kish Bank, with signals of distress flying from them. Promptly enough then the life-boat, towed by H.M. steam-tender Amelie, proceeded to the wreck, only to find, however, that on the steamer sinking the crew had taken to their own boats, and being unburdened with passengers, had escaped to land. The weather was moderate; had there been a gale, the story might have been far different. What a reproach to our system! first, that the light-ship had no means of signalling for assistance; and, second, that it had no means afterwards of indicating that all hands were happily saved.
CHAPTER XXI.
A Contrast—The Ship on Fire!—Swamped at Sea.
The Loss of the Amazon—A Noble Vessel—Description of her Engine-rooms—Her Boats—Heating of the Machinery—The Ship on Fire—Communication Cut off—The Ominous Fire-bell—The Vessel put before the Wind—A Headlong Course—Impossibility of Launching the Boats—“Every Man for Himself!”—The Boats on Fire—Horrible Cases of Roasting—Boats Stove in and Upset—The Remnant of Survivors—“Passing by on the Other Side”—Loss of a distinguished Author—A Clergyman’s Experiences—A Graphic Description—Without Food, Water, Oars, Helm, or Compass—Blowing-up of the Amazon—“A Sail!”—Saved on the Dutch Galliot—Back from the Dead—Review of the Catastrophe—A Contrast—Loss of the London—Anxiety to get Berths on her—The First Disaster—Terrible Weather—Swamped by the Seas—The Furnaces Drowned out—Efforts to Replace a Hatchway—Fourteen Feet of Water in the Hold—“Boys, you may say your Prayers!”—Scene in the Saloon—The Last Prayer Meeting—Worthy Draper—Incidents—Loss of an Eminent Tragedian—His Last Efforts—The Bottle Washed Ashore—Nineteen Saved out of Two Hundred and Sixty-three Souls on Board—Noble Captain Martin—The London’s Last Plunge—The Survivors picked up by an Italian Barque.