'The second mate was still alive, but a maniac; it was heartbreaking to hear his broken, feeble cries for his brother, but he lay quiet after a bit, and died in half an hour, though we chafed his feet and poured rum into his mouth, and did what men in our miserable plight could for a fellow-sufferer. Nor were we out of danger yet, for the broken water was enough to turn a man's hair grey to look at. It was a fearful sea for us men to find ourselves in the midst of, after having looked at it from a great height, and I felt at the beginning almost as though I should have been safer on the wreck than in that boat. Never could I have believed that so small a vessel could meet such a sea and live. Yet she rose like a duck to the great roaring waves which followed her, draining every drop of water from her bottom as she was hove up, and falling with terrible suddenness into a hollow, only to bound like a living thing to the summit of the next gigantic crest.
'When I looked at the lifeboat's crew and thought of our situation a short while since, and our safety now, and how to rescue us these great-hearted men had imperilled their own lives, I was unmanned; I could not thank them, I could not trust myself to speak. They told us they had left Ramsgate Harbour early on the preceding afternoon, and had fetched the Knock at dusk, and not seeing our wreck had lain to in that raging sea, suffering almost as severely as ourselves, all through the piercing tempestuous night. What do you think of such a service, sir? How can such devoted heroism be written of, so that every man who can read shall know how great and beautiful it is? Our own sufferings came to us as a part of our calling as seamen. But theirs was bravely courted and endured for the sake of their fellow-creatures. Believe me, sir, it was a splendid piece of service; nothing grander in its way was ever done before, even by Englishmen. I am a plain seaman, and can say no more about it all than this. But when I think of what must have come to us eleven men before another hour had passed, if the lifeboat crew had not run down to us, I feel like a little child, sir, and my heart grows too full for my eyes.'
Two days had elapsed (continues the writer in the Daily Telegraph) since the rescue of the survivors of the crew of the Indian Chief, and I was gazing with much interest at the victorious lifeboat as she lay motionless upon the water of the harbour. It was a very calm day, the sea stretching from the pier-sides as smooth as a piece of green silk, and growing vague in the wintry haze of the horizon, while the white cliffs were brilliant with the silver sunshine. It filled the mind with strange and moving thoughts to look at that sleeping lifeboat, with her image as sharp as a coloured photograph shining in the clear water under her, and then reflect upon the furious conflict she had been concerned in only two nights before, the freight of half-drowned men that had loaded her, the dead body on her thwart, the bitter cold of the howling gale, the deadly peril that had attended every heave of the huge black seas. Within a few hundred yards of her lay the tug, the sturdy steamer that had towed her to the Long Sand, that had held her astern all night, and brought her back safe on the following afternoon. The tug had suffered much from the frightful tossing she had received, and her injuries had not yet been dealt with; she had lost her sponsons, her starboard side-house was gone, the port side of her bridge had been started and the iron railing warped, her decks still seemed dank from the remorseless washing, her funnel was brown with rust, and the tough craft looked a hundred years old. Remembering what these vessels had gone through, how they had but two days since topped a long series of merciful and dangerous errands by as brilliant an act of heroism and humanity as any on record, it was difficult to behold them without a quickened pulse. I recalled the coming ashore of their crews, the lifeboatmen with their great cork-jackets around them, the steamer's men in streaming oilskins, the faces of many of them livid with the cold, their eyes dim with the bitter vigil they had kept and the furious blowing of the spray; and I remembered the bright smile that here and there lighted up the weary faces, as first one and then another caught sight of a wife or a sister in the crowd waiting to greet and accompany the brave hearts to the warmth of their humble homes. I felt that while these crews' sufferings and the courage and resolution they had shown remained unwritten, only half of the very stirring and manful story had been recorded. The narrative, as related to me by the coxswain of the lifeboat, is a necessary pendant to the tale told by the mate of the wrecked ship; and as he and his colleagues, both of the lifeboat and the steam-tug, want no better introduction than their own deeds to the sympathy and attention of the public, let Charles Edward Fish begin his yarn without further preface.
No. 2.—The Coxswain's Account.
'News had been brought to Ramsgate, as you know, sir, that a large ship was ashore on the Long Sand, and Captain Braine, the harbour-master, immediately ordered the tug and lifeboat to proceed to her assistance. It was blowing a heavy gale of wind, though it came much harder some hours afterwards; and the moment we were clear of the piers we felt the sea. Our boat is considered a very fine one. I know there is no better on the coasts, and there are only two in Great Britain bigger. She was presented to the Lifeboat Institution by Bradford, and is called after that town. But it is ridiculous to talk of bigness when it means only forty-two feet long, and when a sea is raging round you heavy enough to swamp a line-of-battle ship. I had my eye on the tug—named the Vulcan, sir—when she met the first of the seas, and she was thrown up like a ball, and you could see her starboard paddle revolving in the air high enough out for a coach to pass under; and when she struck the hollow she dished a sea over her bows that left only the stern of her showing. We were towing head to wind, and the water was flying over the boat in clouds. Every man of us was soaked to the skin, in spite of our overalls, by the time we had brought the Ramsgate Sands abeam; but there were a good many miles to be gone over before we should fetch the Knock lightship, and so you see, sir, it was much too early for us to take notice that things were not over and above comfortable.
'We got out the sail-cover—a piece of tarpaulin—to make a shelter of, and rigged it up against the mast, seizing it to the burtons; but it hadn't been up two minutes when a heavy sea hit and washed it right aft in rags; so there was nothing to do but to hold on to the thwarts and shake ourselves when the water came over. I never remember a colder wind. I don't say this because I happened to be out in it. Old Tom Cooper, one of the best boatmen in all England, sir, who made one of our crew, agreed with me that it was more like a flaying machine than a natural gale of wind. The feel of it in the face was like being gnawed by a dog. I only wonder it didn't freeze the tears it fetched out of our eyes. We were heading N.E., and the wind was blowing from N.E. The North Foreland had been a bit of shelter, like; but when we had gone clear of that, and the ocean lay ahead of us, the seas were furious—they seemed miles long, sir, like an Atlantic sea, and it was enough to make a man hold his breath to watch how the tug wallowed and tumbled into them. I sung out to Dick Goldsmith, "Dick," I says, "she's slowed, do you see, she'll never be able to meet it," for she had slackened her engines down into a mere crawl, and I really did think they meant to give up. I could see Alf Page—the master of her, sir—on the bridge, coming and going like the moon when the clouds sweep over it, as the seas smothered him up one moment, and left him shining in the sun the next. But there was to be no giving up with the tug's crew any more than with the lifeboat's; she held on, and we followed.
'Somewhere abreast of the Elbow buoy a smack that was running ported her helm to speak us. Her skipper had just time to yell out, "A vessel on the Long Sand!" and we to wave our hands, when she was astern and out of sight in a haze of spray. Presently a collier named the Fanny, with her foretopgallant-yard gone, passed us. She was cracking on to bring the news of the wreck to Ramsgate, and was making a heavy sputter under her topsails and foresail. They raised a cheer, for they knew our errand, and then, like the smack, in a minute she was astern and gone. By this time the cold and the wet and the fearful plunging were beginning to tell, and one of the men called for a nip of rum. The quantity we generally take is half a gallon, and it is always my rule to be sparing with that drink for the sake of the shipwrecked men we may have to bring home, and who are pretty sure to be in greater need of the stuff than us. I never drink myself, sir, and that's one reason, I think, why I manage to meet the cold and wet middling well, and rather better than some men who look stronger than me. However, I told Charlie Verrion to measure the rum out and serve it round, and it would have made you laugh, I do believe, sir, to have seen the care the men took of the big bottle—Charlie cocking his finger into the cork-hole, and Davy Berry clapping his hand over the pewter measure, whenever a sea came, to prevent the salt water from spoiling the liquor. Bad as our plight was, the tug's crew were no better off; their wheel is forrard, and so you may suppose the fellow that steered had his share of the seas; the others stood by to relieve him; and for the matter of water, she was just like a rock, the waves striking her bows and flying pretty nigh as high as the top of her funnel, and blowing the whole length of her aft with a fall like the tumble of half-a-dozen cartloads of bricks. I like to speak of what they went through, for the way they were knocked about was something fearful, to be sure.
