At last a brig passed nearer to them than any other vessels had come; the mate said, "If they are looking at the wreck with a good glass, they may, perhaps, see us," and he stood up and waved to them. At that moment, most providentially, the pilot on board the vessel looked at the wreck through a glass, and saw the mate waving his south-wester cap. The brig soon after spoke a smack that was making in for the land, and the smack proceeded to Broadstairs and reported a wreck on the Kentish Knock, with the crew in the rigging, and that a life-boat was wanted for their rescue, for that no ordinary boat could live through the sea that was running over the Sands. At Broadstairs they felt that their own boat could never get there in time without the assistance of a steamer, and they telegraphed to Ramsgate. It was about six o'clock in the evening, the steamer Aid, with Reading in command, and the life-boat Bradford, with Fish as coxswain, and R. Goldsmith as second coxswain, at once made their way out into the gale and tremendous sea to the rescue of the shipwrecked crew.
In the meantime the poor fellows on board the wreck waited on almost in despair, the ship each moment yielding to the force of the storm till the whole deck was washed away, and the masts were working more and more loose; happily she had wire rigging, which stood the heavy swaying and lurching of the masts better than the ordinary rope rigging would have done.
It was piteous in talking to the men to hear them describe the condition of utter despair that they were in, and how little ground they could find for any hope whatever; piteous to hear the captain say, "There were just two planks of the deck left floating entangled in a rope, and I kept watching them, thinking that if the mast went I would try and swim to them, and float on them for the chance of being picked up by some vessel;" to hear the mate answer, "But I was just watching them too, with the same idea;" and the carpenter adds, "That was just the plan I had in my mind."
And thus the ten men clung to the rigging and to each other, standing on the small crosstrees of one tottering mast, hour after hour. The day passed, still no signs of rescue; it became quite dark; it seemed impossible that they could ever see another day's dawn.
They might perish at any moment! at any moment! and all ten of them. This was the conviction of each one. They told me how endless the dark hours of that terrible night seemed; and one man said, "That the thought that seemed ever present with him, was the bitter way that his little boy sobbed and cried when he bid him good-bye, and how he would cry again when he heard that 'Dadda was gone.'" At last there was a streak of dawn, but the mast had fallen over almost to a level with the water and seemed still yielding rapidly; they might see the sunrise again, but that was all; when one of the sailors cried out, "A steamer!" "What good can that be to us?" and they watch her without interest, for there seems little chance of her coming in their direction. "Ah! she is running down the edge of the Sands, and comes nearer, and nearer!"—"Well she can't help us if she does; no boat can come across the Sands to us in this surf—No! no." Shortly, a man cries, "She has a large boat in tow;"—"What! perhaps a life-boat! it may be that some passing vessel made us out yesterday and has sent a life-boat;" Oh, what a thought of hope, of joy, of life! "Can it be so? it is—it is! thank God it is—it is! Look, she has left the steamer and is coming in through the breakers straight towards us!"
It is something to remember, the way in which one man said to me, as if almost unnerved by the remembrance, "Oh, what a beauty she looked! what a beauty she looked coming over those seas!"
The steamer and life-boat had got out to the Sands after battling with the storm for a distance of twenty-six miles. At about 11 o'clock the night before, they spoke the Lightship on the Kentish Knock, and learnt the bearings of the wreck; but they found that it was impossible to discover her in the darkness of the night and storm, so after several vain efforts they lay to until the morning. As soon as it was light they went in search of the wreck, and the life-boat made in across the Sands, and it was then truly a great matter of heartfelt congratulation to the life-boat men that all their labour and perseverance had not been in vain; for to their great joy they could see the crew in the rigging. They anchored the boat as near to the wreck as they could venture, and then let the cable veer out until the boat was under the vessel's jib-boom. It was low-tide—the seas were not breaking over the wreck so violently as they had been; and the men were able to work their way out on to the bowsprit, and drop into the boat, and thus the ten men were saved, after being twenty-six hours holding on in the maintop of the wreck.
The flood-tide was just making; all felt, that as soon as it rose and the wreck began to heave and work again, the mast would speedily go, and they realized to the full that they had only been saved just in time.
The life-boat returned to the steamer as speedily as possible, and put the rescued men on board her. The shipwrecked men had not tasted anything for nearly thirty-six hours, as it was before breakfast time that they had run ashore, and they had been in the rigging for twenty-six hours. The life-boat got back to the harbour at 11 o'clock in the morning; the life-boat men had been in the open boat exposed to all the fury of the storm for nearly seventeen hours, and their exhaustion was very great. The kindness of some friends provided the weary and famished men with a good dinner at the house of their old comrade and friend, Jarman, and soon after a telegram came from Mr. Lewis, of the Life-boat Institution, to whom tidings of the rescue had been telegraphed, that the life-boatmen were to have a sovereign each, and a good dinner; but by that time they were all resting at home after their long hours of fatigue. Other friends made recognition by subscription of their noble services; and comfort was thus carried into the homes of our Storm Warriors after their gallant and triumphant efforts in saving life.
The shipwrecked men were cared for in our Sailors' Home, and speedily recovered their fatigues. The captain told me he did not think they would have been alive one hour longer, if the life-boat had not come just when she did; and speaking of the life-boat, said with deep feeling, "Oh! she is a noble boat, and nobly manned; there could not be a kinder set of men!" And with these words of the brave and grateful sailor so recently and unexpectedly saved with all his crew, from that which seemed most certain death, I feel inclined to finish my book. But I will add one wish, namely, that we had a better Sailors' Home in which to receive the poor fellows who are brought ashore; 156 wrecked men were received into the Home at Ramsgate last year, 40 in one day; and a little house of £25, or so, rent, and its one sitting-room for the use of the men, only about sixteen feet by fourteen, and eighteen beds crowded together in small rooms is, of course, quite inadequate to afford the accommodation that we would wish to provide for the poor fellows brought in half dead with cold, with exhaustion, and with hunger, plucked by the Storm Warriors from the very jaws of death 'mid the rage of waters on the Goodwin Sands.