Roberts now decided to run the lifeboat right through the breakers which beat on the outer part of the sands, and thoroughly to search that part of the Goodwins.
Some said, 'The Ramsgate lifeboat has been here and taken the man off.'
Others, 'If there are people alive on the wreck, why is there no light or flare?'
And then they ran her, in that pitchy blackness, into the surf; she went through it close hauled, and beyond it into the deep sea the other side, and searched the outside edge of the sands, but to no purpose. Then, having shouted all together and listened, they stood back again through the surf, running now before the wind.
The broken and formidable sea raged round the lifeboat like a pack of wolves. It broke on both sides of the lifeboat right into her, and literally boiled over her as she flew before the gale and the impulse of the swell astern. Nothing could be seen in this stormy flight except the white burst of the tumultuous waves, and all around was midnight blackness.
Some were of opinion, after the prolonged search, that the wreck had disappeared; but Roberts carried all hearts with him when he said, 'We're not going home till we see and search that wreck from stem to stern!'
Then they anchored in Trinity Bay in four fathoms of water. They each had a piece of bread, a bit of cheese, and a smoke; and with every faculty of sight and hearing strained to the utmost, they longed for the coming of the day.
We may now return to the wrecked vessel, and describe the fate of her captain and crew. She was a Norwegian brig, the Auguste Hermann Francke, bound from Krageroe to sunny San Sebastian with a cargo of ice. She had a crew of seven all told, and the captain's name was Jargersen.
He had been running his vessel that morning before the gale, and at eight o'clock in the forenoon struck on the Goodwins, having either failed in the thick weather to pick up the lightships or the Foreland as points from which to take a safe departure, or being carried out of his course altogether by the strong tides which run around and over the Goodwins, and which, if not allowed for, are a frequent cause of disaster. It was on the shallower northern part of the Goodwins that the Norwegian brig struck in a north-easterly gale.
The brig struck the Goodwins about high water with a terrific crash, and was lifted up by successive billows and thumped down and hammered on the hard sand. Contrary to the popular idea, ships sink but slowly in the sand, which is practically very hard and close. When she took the ground the crew rushed to the main rigging and the captain to the fore rigging. The sea beat in clouds high over the vessel, and the seven men lashed themselves in the rigging to prevent themselves being shaken into the sea by the shocks. Again and again the heavy vessel was lifted up and thumped down; while the weather was so thick that neither could she be seen from the nearest lightship or the land, nor could they on the vessel see the land, or form the least idea as to where they were; conjecturing merely that they were aground on the Goodwins.