Heroes of the Goodwin Sands

by Thomas Stanley Treanor

Ten years more fly by, in which there is a splendid record of services and rescues to the credit of Coxswain Fish, the Ramsgate lifeboatmen, and the brave steam-tugs, Vulcan and Aid, and we come to the night of Jan. 5 and 6, 1891, which is exactly, my readers will see, ten years to the day after the rescue of the survivors of the Indian Chief, a rescue certainly unsurpassed for its dramatic intensity and its heroism even by the Deal lifeboat.

At 3 a.m. on the night of Jan. 5, 1891, Coxswain Fish was asleep in his hammock in the watch-house at the end of Ramsgate pier. There was a gale blowing from the E.N.E., and in the long frost of that awful winter there was no more terrible night than this. The thermometer stood at 15° below freezing-point; there was a great sea and strong wind.

At 3 a.m. Fish was called by the watch on Ramsgate pier, and he saw a flare on the Goodwins through the rifts in the snow squall. At 2.15 Richard Roberts, the coxswain of the Deal lifeboat, was also roused from sleep and launched his lifeboat, manned by the gallant Deal men. But though the Deal men launched at 3.15 a.m., they had not the same favourable chance of reaching the wreck, beating eight miles dead to windward, as compared with the Ramsgate lifeboat, towed into the eye of the wind by its powerful steam-tug Aid.

We may on this occasion, therefore, leave out the consideration of the Deal lifeboat, splendid as its effort was, inasmuch as it only arrived at the scene of the wreck just as the Ramsgate lifeboat had saved the crew. Some of the hardy Deal lifeboatmen were almost benumbed and rendered helpless by the cold, and they only saw the tragedy of the captain's death and the rescue of the remainder of the crew from the wreck by the Ramsgate men.

At 3 a.m. then the Ramsgate rocket went up in answer to the signals from the Gull lightship; on that bitter night the lifeboat was manned in eight minutes. The lifebelts and oilskins were handed into the lifeboat; shivering, the brave hearts got their clothes on, and in less time than this page has been written, the tow rope had been passed into the lifeboat from the Aid, and that tug was out of the harbour, dragging the lifeboat, head to sea, 110 yards astern of her.

It was black midnight, and no man in the boat could see his neighbour; the pier was like a great iceberg and sheeted with ice; the sea was flying over the oilclad figures in the lifeboat and freezing almost as it fell, rattling against the sails or on the deck, or fiercely hurled into the faces of the men; indeed, every oilskin jacket was frozen stiff before they had been towed a quarter of a mile against the furious sea, which drenched them 'like spray,' as the coxswain expressed it, 'from the parish fire engines.' The brave fellows were more than drenched—they were all but frozen, but no one dreamed of turning back, for though the lightship's rockets had stopped they could see the piteous flares from the distant wreck now and then, as the snow squalls broke, beckoning them on.

The vessel on the Goodwins was the three-masted schooner or barquentine The Crocodile, laden with stone from Guernsey to London, and when about a mile or so north of the Goodwins 'reaching' on the port tack, 'missed stays' in the heavy sea, and before they had time to 'wear' ship, she struck the northern face of the Goodwins, against which a tremendous sea was driven by the black north-easter that was blowing from the Pole. She struck the Goodwins bows on with her head to the south-east, and she heeled over to starboard, the sea which rolled from the E.N.E. beating nearly on her port broadside.

The wrecked crew knew their position, and that their only chance was the advent of some lifeboat, and they burned flares, which consisted on this occasion of their own clothes, which they tore off and soaked in oil. They were soon beaten off the deck as the tide rose, and in the darkness had to take to the rigging, the captain, who was an elderly man, and his crew all together climbing in the mizzen weather rigging. The weather rigging was of course more upright than the lee rigging, which leaned over to the right or starboard hand as the vessel lay.

As the tug bored to windward and rapidly neared the vessel they could see the flares being carried up the rigging by the sorely beset crew, and knew the extremity of the case; then the next snow squall wrapped them in like a winding-sheet, and all was shut out. But still, on plunged the Aid at great speed, for the new tug-boat Aid is a much faster and more powerful boat than either of the old tugs, the Aid and the Vulcan. Towing the lifeboat well to windward of the wreck, at last the moment arrived, and though not a word was spoken and not a signal made, the end of the tow-rope was let go by the lifeboat and sail was made on her for the wrecked vessel, or rather for the flares.

But even then down came an extra furious snow squall, and the lifeboat had to anchor, lest she should miss the vessel altogether.