The Kingsdown villagers are believed to be Jutes, and the names prevalent amongst them add probability to the idea. Certainly there is a Norse flavour about the name of Jarvist Arnold, for many years coxswain of the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabrina. This brave, fine old seaman still survives, and still his eye kindles, and his voice still rings, as with outstretched hand and fire unquenched by age he tells of grapples with death on the Goodwin Sands. He is no longer, alas! equal to the arduous post which he nobly held for twenty years, a post now well filled by James Laming, Jarvist's comrade in many a risky job; but still he is regarded with reverence and affection, and the rescue of the crew of the Sorrento and the story of the 'old cork fender' will always be honourably associated with his name. Round him the incidents of this chapter will group themselves, for, though brave men were his crew on each occasion, he was the guiding spirit.
The Kingsdown lifeboat
The mode of manning the Kingsdown lifeboat is somewhat different from the practice of Deal and Walmer, as will be seen, but in all three cases the same rush of eager men is made to gain the honourable post of a place in the lifeboat.
Sometimes the launch is utterly unavailing, as was the case on a December night in 1867, when with Jarvist Arnold at the helm, the lifeboat sped into and through the tossing surf and 'fearful sea' (the coxswain's words), across the south end of the Goodwins, and found a barque from Sunderland on fire and drifting on to the sands. So hot it was from the flames that they could not if they would go to leeward of her, and they kept to windward, witnessing the spectacle of a ship on fire in a midnight 'hurricane from the west.' There was no one on board of the burning ship, and no one knows the fate of her crew. Sadly the lifeboatmen returned to the land.
Again Jarvist Arnold is summoned to the rescue, and this time with a different result. On February 12, 1870, all the vessels in the Downs were driven ashore, with the exception of one, which the skill and pluck of E. Hanger, second coxswain of the Deal lifeboat, safely piloted away to safety, through the tremendous sea.
There was a great gale from E.S.E. with bitter cold and snow. Vessel after vessel came ashore, and some were torn into matchwood along the beach. One large vessel, the ship Glendura, having parted her anchors in the great sea that was running, was driving landwards. The captain, foreseeing the inevitable, and determined, if he could not save his vessel, to save precious lives—his wife and child being on board—boldly set his lower foretopsail, to force his vessel stem on as far ashore on the mainland as possible; and about 9 p.m., in this dark freezing snowstorm, the stem of his large vessel, drawing about twenty-three feet of water, struck the land.
