THE GANGES
I've lived since then in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor's life;
And Death whenever he come to me
Shall come on the wide unbounded sea.
The rule that gales of wind prevail at the equinoxes is certainly proved by the exceptions, but October 14, 1881, was an instance of a gale so close to the autumnal equinox that it belonged rather to the rule than to the exception. It had been blowing from the west all that day, and the Downs was full of ships. Others were running back from down Channel under lower fore top-sails, all ready to let go their anchors.
Sometimes in stress of weather a ship bringing up will lose her anchors by not shortening sail sufficiently before she lets them go. She preserves too much 'way' through the water, and she snaps the great chain cable by the force of her momentum as if it had been a pack-thread.
The wind reached the force of a 'great gale,'—the entry I find in my diary of that date. The boatmen say to the present day that it was blowing a 'harricane,' and, according to the report of the coxswain of the lifeboat, 'it was blowing a very heavy gale of wind.' There was, therefore, no mere capful of wind, but a real, whole, tremendous gale. Old salts are always ready to pity landsmen, and to overwhelm them with 'Bless you's!' when they venture to talk of a 'storm'; but the harsh, steady roar of the wind on this day made it plainly and beyond doubt a storm.
Long lines of heavy dangerous rollers broke on Deal beach, and only the first-class luggers could launch or live in the Downs, so great was the sea. These splendid luggers being of five feet draught, and having therefore a deeper hold of the water, could do better than a lifeboat in the deep water of the Downs. They could fight to windward better, and would not be so liable to upset under sail as a lifeboat; but this only applies to the deep water.
Put the best Deal lugger that ever floated alongside the present Deal lifeboat, the Mary Somerville, in a furious sea of breakers on the Goodwin Sands, and the whole state of affairs is altered. The lugger would be swamped and overwhelmed in five minutes, while the lifeboat would empty herself and live through it successfully.
The fortunes of the vessels in the Downs on that day were varied. Some were manfully riding out the gale; others were holding on to their one remaining anchor, signalling for help, and as sorely in need of fresh anchors and chains as ever was King Richard of a horse. Some had lost both anchors and were drifting out to destruction; destruction meaning the Goodwin Sands, on which a fearful surf was raging about two miles under their lee.
One of those driving vessels was the Ganges. She had run back from the Channel to the Downs for shelter, and dropped her anchors running before a strong tide and a heavy gale; having thus too much 'way' on her, both the long chain cables parted, snapping close to the anchors, and trailed from her bows. Her head was thus kept up to the wind, while there was no sufficient check to her drift astern and outwards towards the Goodwins.
Efforts, but ineffectual efforts, were made to get rid of the trailing cables, and therefore the vessel's head could not be got before the wind, and she could not be steered, but drifted out faster and faster. It is supposed that there was another anchor on the forecastle head, which had somehow fouled, or, at any rate, could not be got loose from some cause or other.