But the boatmen must be doing something, if only drawing their bow at a venture, and now the Champion is getting ready for sea; she is one of the Ramsgate hovelling-luggers, a noble boat of twenty-two tons, fit for any weather. In summer time she is fitted as a pleasure-boat, and, as such, takes many a holiday cruise; but now she is in winter gear, and ready for rougher scenes and harder work.
The more threatening and heavy the weather, the greater the probability of disaster occurring, or having occurred, then the more ready are her crew to work their way out to the Goodwin Sands, and to cruise round them on the look-out for vessels in distress; they dare not take the lugger into the broken water—there a life-boat alone can live; but still she is a grand sea-boat, one that will stagger on with a ship's heavy anchor and chain on board, through weather bad enough for anything—a boat that is well suited for the hard and dangerous service which employs her during the winter months.
Her crew consists of ten men; the men get no regular pay, but any salvage or reward for services they may obtain is divided into fourteen shares: the boat takes three and a half shares for her owners, one half share goes to the provision account, as the crew when on board are supplied by the owners with provisions, and one share is given to each of the men—this is the ordinary arrangement. Complaints are sometimes made of the amounts charged by these men for services rendered; but the cases of a good hovel are few and far between; and often the luggers put out to sea, night after night, throughout a stormy winter, hanging about the Sands, in wind and rain, and snow and mists, the men half frozen with the cold, and half smothered with the flying surf and spray, and often week after week they thus suffer and endure, and do not make a penny-piece each man; working their hardest, without any other result, than that of getting more and more into debt at home, and almost tempted to become disheartened with it all, hardly able to hope against hope; then at last, perhaps, comes a chance—a big ship is on the tail of a sand bank; they render assistance and get her off; if she had remained there another tide she would probably have been knocked to pieces: they have saved thousands of pounds' worth of property; and the captain, and the owners, and the underwriters, all look aghast, and cry out with indignation, when they ask perhaps a sum that will give them ten or fifteen pounds a man—do something to pay the scores that have been growing month after month, something to requite them for the weary watching, and labour, and suffering, that they have had so many weeks in vain.
No! let those who grumble at the demands made on such occasions, feel fully assured that they know many easier, more pleasant, and more profitable ways of making money, than by hovering around the Goodwin Sands throughout the nights of a stormy winter, on the look-out for vessels in distress. The following tale will illustrate, in its simple narration of actual facts, some of the dangers to which the men are exposed when on such service.
On the morning in question a haze floated over the Goodwin Sands, preventing anything being made out from the shore; wherever the haze lifted a little, the men on the look-out on the pier closely watched the break in it with their glasses; for the channels on either side of the Sands are so narrow and the tides so strong, that it is an easy matter for a ship-master to lose his bearings in thick weather, and to run his ship on the Sands.
A squall passes over the Sands, driving the mists before it, and the men on the pier make out that a vessel is ashore on the Goodwin; she is completely on her broadside, and the boatmen, looking through powerful glasses, can see that men are walking about on the side of the wreck. The harbour-master is immediately informed; he knows that the Champion lugger is out there, but the surf may be too great for her to be able to render assistance, and he gives directions that the life-boat shall be at once manned. The steamer soon takes the life-boat in tow, and they proceed through a comparatively smooth sea to the vessel. Upon arriving there, they find that the Champion lugger has succeeded in sending in her small boat, and in taking the men off the wreck.
But as the boat makes off to the lugger's she loses an oar, and the tide is running with such strength that the boat's crew cannot stem it, and are driven back in the direction of the Sands; the life-boat men see the danger the boat will get into if she is carried into the broken water, and at once give chase.
The men on board the lugger's boat are, not unnaturally, anxious to have the honour of saving the crew without the assistance of the life-boat, and they persevere in their efforts to reach the lugger; suddenly the wind flies round to the north-east, and a heavy squall sweeps along accompanied with snow and sleet; it becomes very thick and dark, the lugger's men think the squall will soon pass, and although their boat is only sixteen feet long, and has eleven men on board, they still work away striving to get back to the lugger. But the wind increases in force, and the sea begins to make rapidly, the little boat gets into shallow water and thumps heavily on the edge of the sand; then the boatmen and the shipwrecked crew realize the danger they are in. The wrecked sailors begin to shout to the life-boat men to come to their help, and the boat's crew see that they cannot get away from the Sands by themselves; in fact, that without the aid of the life-boat they must all then and there perish, and they are glad to make for the life-boat with all speed. The sailors and some of the boat's crew get on board the life-boat, two or three hands remain in the small boat, which is taken in tow by the life-boat, and they start in search of the steamer; but the weather becomes more and more thick, and they can see nothing of her; in fact, can only see a few yards before them. Now to their dismay they find that they have come away without a compass, and the wind has shifted so frequently and rapidly, that they cannot guess at its direction, and therefore cannot tell which way to steer; they are on the top of the Sands, and in very shallow water, and the boat often touches the ground with a great jerk as she sails along. Now, and again, she grounds bow on and is swung round and round by the tide. The tide as it is low water runs through so many channels and swatch ways that its direction does not at all help the men to tell the course they are steering; and so, as a mere matter of guess-work, and that they may keep the boat's head in one direction, they put her on the wind, and after being beaten about a good deal by the broken seas, succeed in getting into deep water; but not until they have been entangled for four hours among the Sands.
After sailing for about half an hour, they discover the Gull light looming red out of the thick mist. They then soon make out the Champion, and put her crew on board her. The lugger's men want the shipwrecked crew to accompany them, but they are too content with the life-boat, and refuse to move; the steamer comes up and takes the life-boat in tow. Again the wrecked sailors cannot be persuaded to leave the life-boat for her, and as soon as the boat is in tow, and they are well under weigh, the wrecked sailors begin to tell their tale.
"The name of our wrecked vessel is the Effort; it is now several days since we sailed from the Forth, bound for Rotterdam, and ever since we have had a a terrible time of it, nothing but gale after gale, the wind flying about in all directions, until you can guess we were pretty well tired of all this beating about in the North Sea; what with the wind driving us first in one direction and then in another—what with contrary tides and thick weather—we soon lost our reckoning, and must have been caught in the lee drift of the tide, and thus got carried on to the Goodwin Sands. We grounded heavily, at once felt the danger we were in, and hoisted lamps as signals of distress, but we knew that these could not be made out at any distance in such thick weather, and hurried to get a tar-barrel on deck to set fire to it, and make a good blaze; but our vessel was very light—she rolled from side to side almost yard arms under, and suddenly capsized altogether. At once, and with difficulty, we made for the weather-rigging, and were glad to find that not any of the crew were lost as she fell over. We lashed ourselves to the rigging. We knew to our great joy that the tide was falling; had it been rising we must have very soon been overrun by it, the vessel broken up, and every man of us lost. We were in danger enough as it was, for the brig soon after she capsized was caught by the tide, and worked round with her deck towards the seas; and as the heavy seas broke over her and came rushing up the deck, they fell on us with terrible weight, and beat us and crushed us against the ship's rail, so that we were forced to unlash ourselves from the rigging, and what to do we did not know, till one of us said, 'Our only chance is to lash the end of the ropes round our waists, and let go the rigging as the waves come,' and so we did; and terrible work it was. As the waves came we slackened the ropes and went away a little with them, and as they passed, half smothered as we were, hauled ourselves back to the rigging and held on a bit; and then, when the next wave came, we let go, and were all adrift in the wash again; our hands were almost torn to pieces with the strain on the ropes, and grasping at the side of the vessel." And they shewed where their hands were torn, with the nails almost drawn from the finger ends. "You see, too, how our clothes were nearly dragged off us; it was indeed an awful time. We encouraged each other as well as we could, but soon became too exhausted to speak much, and just went struggling on. The topmast heads were right down in the Sands, and every moment we expected the masts would break off short, and then the vessel would have rolled over, and it would have been death to us at once—but while there was life there was hope, and so we held on, just hoping against hope, and so we would not despair, but seemed to gather a little bit of courage, again and again struggling to prolong, for a few minutes, the life of which we saw so little chance of at last saving; but the tide was still falling, and if we could only live through all the wash of the sea, until it had gone down a bit, there was just one more chance for us.