Coming nearer home, the writer must record a case of “derring-do,” which will prove—if after what these pages have recorded of the men of Deal and Walmer and Kingsdown, of Ramsgate and Margate, further proof were needed—that the men of the North and South Foreland are not degenerate descendants of their forefathers, who sailed and fought and died with Blake and Nelson. It occurred in Deal on a Sunday morning in bleak December. A whole gale was blowing from the south-west and vessels in the comparatively sheltered Downs were riding to both anchors. As the various congregations were leaving their respective places of worship umbrellas were blown inside out, and children were taken off their feet or clung frightened to their parents’ limbs, the wind and spray along Deal beach being blinding. Let the “Chaplain” (nom de plume of the excellent clergyman who superintends the Missions to Seamen) tell the tale. “Just then,” he writes, “in answer to the boom of the distant gun, the bell rang to man the lifeboat, and the Deal boatmen gallantly answered to the summons. A rush was made for the life-belts and for the coxswain’s house. The coxswain, Robert Wilds, has for fifteen years held the yoke-lines through the surf on the sands, and knows the powers of the boat to save. Fourteen men besides the coxswain were the crew, and with a mighty rush they launched the good boat down the steep beach to the rescue. There were three vessels on the Goodwins. The crew of one took to their boats, and not being in the worst part of the sands got safe round the North Foreland to Margate. Another schooner, supposed to be a Dane, disappeared, and was lost with all hands. The third, a German barque, the Leda, with a crew of seventeen ‘all told,’ was stuck fast in the worst part of the sands—viz., the South Spit, on which even on a fine day the writer has encountered a dangerous and peculiar boil or tumble of seas. The barque’s main and mizen masts by this time were gone, and the crew were clinging to the weather bulwarks, while sheets of solid water made a clean breach over them—so much so that from cold and long exposure the captain was almost exhausted. The Deal life-boat, the Van Kook, fetched a little to windward of the devoted barque, and dropping anchor, veered down on her. One cable being too short, another was bent on to it, and closer and closer came the lifeboat. If the cable parted and the lifeboat struck the ship with full force, not a man would probably have survived to tell the tale; or if they got to leeward of the barque the crew of the wreck would have been lost, as the lifeboat could not again have worked ‘to weather’ to drop down as before. No friendly steam-tug was at hand to help the lifeboat to windward in case of failure in this their first attempt, and both [pg 243]the crew in distress and their rescuers were well aware of the stake at issue, and that this was the last chance. But the lifeboat crew said, ‘We’re bound to save them,’ and with all the coolness of the race, yet ‘daring all that men dare do,’ they concentrated their energies on getting close enough to the wreck to throw their line, and yet to keep far enough off to ensure the boat’s safety. They were now beaten and hustled by the tremendous seas breaking into and over them, and no other boat could have lived a moment in the cauldron of waters seething and raging around them. Notwithstanding the self-emptying power of the wondrous boat, the seas broke into her in such quick succession that she was and remained full up to her thwarts while alongside the vessel, and as each cataract came on board the coxswain sang out, ‘Look out, men!’ and they grasped the thwarts and held on with both hands, breathless, for dear life. One sea hurled the lifeboat against the ship, and stove in her fore air-box, so that the safety of all made it necessary to sheer off. Another sea prostrated two men under her thwarts. The lifeboat’s throw-line was at last got on board the barque, and communication being established the crew were drawn on board the lifeboat through the raging waves by ones or twos, as the seas permitted. Thus saved from the jaws of death, so astonished were the rescued crew at the submerged condition of the lifeboat and the awful turmoil of water around them that some of them wished to get back to their perishing vessel; but the coxswain and crew knew the powers of their gallant boat. ‘Up foresail and cut the cable,’ and with its goodly freight of thirty-four souls the lifeboat, hurled like a feather, sometimes dead before the wind, and next moment ‘taken aback,’ plunged into the surf for home. One of the rescued crew had twice before been saved by the same boat (the Van Kook), and encouraged his comrades with a recital of his previous deliverances. Some rum, which was brought for the use of the lifeboat crew, was generously given by them and all used by the perishing men of the barque. And so at last, sodden through and through, exhausted, but gloriously successful, they landed the staggering and grateful Germans on the Deal beach, where, despite the storm, crowds met them with wondering and thankful hearts.”
Among nearly all classes who dwell near and love the sea the same heroic spirit prevails. Only in 1879 Lord Dunmore, with John M‘Rae, Ewen M‘Leod, and Norman Macdonald, put out to sea in a furious Atlantic gale, in the noble Scottish peer’s undecked cutter, the Dauntless, when no other boat would venture out at all, and saved the lives of several men, women, and children from the yacht Astarte, wrecked on a small island-rock between Harris and the North Uist coast (west coast of Scotland). The noble hero of this gallant band is a Murray of the ducal tree of Atholl, sharing the savage motto, “Forth fortune, and fill the fetters.” The spirit of daring adventure which spurred his forefathers to feats of reckless foray and ruthless feud has, in a milder age, developed into the performance of deeds of valour for the benefit of suffering humanity.
Sad to say, occasionally, there is another story to be told. In February, 1880, some strapping fishermen refused to make up the complement of the Blackpool lifeboat—some of her own men being away fishing off North Wales, and others at Fleetwood—and remained leafing on the beach while they let the coxswain take in two joiners and a stonemason, and then start two short of the complement. Nevertheless four persons were saved from the wreck of the Bessie Jones, under circumstances most honourable to the rescuers. On their return, being obliged to run over the bank with a [pg 244]tremendous sea running, they had the narrowest escape from being capsized; one man was washed out of the boat, but was recovered, and most of the loose tackle was swept overboard and irretrievably lost.
RAMSGATE.
Popular Ramsgate, with its fashionably select annexe St. Lawrence-on-Sea, is so well known by all, that no lengthened description is required here, for its actual and practical connection with the sea, in the noble work done by its lifeboatsmen, has already been detailed. Ramsgate has a fine harbour and piers, from which the “husbands’ boat” is often, more especially on Saturdays, watched and longed for by hundreds of wives and daughters.
Margate had, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, fifteen boats and other vessels, ranging from one to eighteen tons, there being four of the latter. It had 108 inhabited houses. It now has a floating population of 50,000 to 70,000 people, the permanent residents being about 15,000 in number. There are several pilots, and a large number of luggers employed in fishing and in seeking for casualties; it owns a certain number of coasting vessels; while a large number of coasters and French fishing-boats come in during the winter months and fishing season for refuge, repairs, and provisions. Margate has a Seaman’s Room and Observatory, and Ramsgate a Seaman’s Infirmary. The local agents [pg 245]of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society have their hands full in winter, and generally at other seasons in stormy weather.
THE GULF STREAM LIGHT VESSEL ON THE GOODWIN SANDS.
Who that has visited Ramsgate or Margate, has not, some time or other in his or her life, nourished an all-absorbing curiosity to peep into the interior and solve the mysteries of those distant beacons, the “Floating Light Ships.” Those who have seen them either lying peacefully on the tranquil bosom of the sunlit ocean, or trembling and shaken in Neptune’s angry moods, still valiant and isolated, nobly doing their duty, must often have wished to get a closer view. That natural curiosity can be gratified at last; the curtain has been raised, so that we may peep into the mysteries of the flame-coloured sphinxes, by a writer[60] who went into voluntary imprisonment for one week on the Gulf Stream Light Vessel, one of three floating lights which mark the Goodwin Sands.