[CHAPTER IV.]
AT SEA.
Sad and disastrous as were the effects of the blizzard on land on the night of Monday, March 9th, they were in most cases of a nature more or less reparable. At sea, however, the case was different, and from the afternoon of the day on which the storm commenced to the end of the week wrecks, resulting in the loss of over fifty lives, were strewn along the coast from Start Point to Falmouth. In most cases, such was the fury of the gale, but little help could be afforded from the shore. Generally, to launch a boat or to use a rocket apparatus was out of the question, and those on the shore, anxious to send help to the doomed vessels, had great difficulty in escaping from being blown into the sea. In many instances gallant services were rendered, and all that courage and self-sacrifice could do with the hope of saving life was accomplished; but the time was one of no common peril, and on the Tuesday lives were lost in full view of the cliffs upon the rocky fringes of which the vessels had been driven.
In Plymouth Sound, and the Hamoaze, well protected as they are from the gales of winter, much damage was done on Monday night. In addition to the accident to the Lion and Implacable, and the critical position of the Queen's harbour-master's cutter already briefly described, the Julia, a small coastguard cutter, moored inside Drake's Island, parted her moorings during the early hours of Tuesday morning, and went ashore on Bottle Nose, a point eastward of Devil's Point. She was badly knocked about, but there were no men on board at the time. Whilst the heavy squalls were on Tuesday morning the Impregnable, training-ship for boys, Captain Harris; the Cambridge, gunnery school ship, Captain Carr, and the Achilles, battle ship, all dragged their moorings, but not to any alarming extent. Staff-Captain Burniston, who, with the dockyard tugs under his command, was afloat during the whole of Monday night, and on Tuesday, under very trying circumstances, succeeded in getting out fresh anchors and hawsers to make the vessels secure for the night, a course which was wisely adopted, as the hurricane showed no signs of abating, there being, on the contrary, another great fall in the barometer. The men who were on board the tugs on Monday night, speak of the weather as being the worst that they ever experienced, and the manner in which they did their work under such trying circumstances was, as was the case so frequently throughout that, and several succeeding days, most praiseworthy.
Considerable damage was done during Monday night to many of the hookers belonging to the fishermen of Kingsand and Cawsand. The full force of the blizzard was experienced in Cawsand Bay, and ten of the hookers which had been moored up for the night were driven ashore and sunk. The only boat which rode out the storm was a craft owned by Mr. Andrews of Cawsand. A pilot boat went ashore in one of the little coves just south of the coastguard station, and a small fishing vessel was wrecked close under Lady Emma's Cottage, at Mount Edgcumbe.
The captain of the Norwegian galliot Falken, from Shields, with coal for Portugal which was found on Tuesday off Fowey, by the tug Belle of Plymouth, half full of water, and with her sails blown away, stated at the time that on Monday his vessel was caught in a kind of small cyclone, and that whilst about twenty miles south-west of Start Point he had a strange experience. The vessel was being driven along at a furious rate by a north-easterly gale, whilst ahead, within sight, a westerly wind was blowing. This bears out the theory of the cyclone to some extent, as on other parts of the coast the gale was found to blow only from the north-east or south-east, in rapid changes. The Channel was very rough at the time, and the vessel was greatly endangered. On Tuesday the boats were smashed, and the sails carried away. Pumps were manned, and kept working so long as the crew could hold out, the endeavour being to reach one of the ports. It was while the Falken was in this condition that the Belle came opportunely to her assistance, and towed her into Plymouth harbour, where she was laid up alongside Bulteel's Wharf, in the Cattewater, to discharge her cargo and be repaired. Several of the Lowestoft boats, and other fishing vessels which had been out in the Channel on the Monday night, returned to Plymouth on Tuesday, and reported having experienced very bad weather. The sudden squalls encountered were terrific, and the oldest fishermen on board declared that they had never experienced such violent weather on the Devonshire coast.
During the height of the storm the schooner Alice Brookall, from Swansea to Jersey with coals, ran ashore at Mutton Cove, near Godevy Hayle. She ran so far in that the crew—five in number—managed to drop from the bowsprit on to the rocks. The poor fellows had to pass the night exposed to the fury of the storm, with no other protection than they could mutually afford each other by huddling together. At daybreak they climbed the cliffs, and managed to reach the shelter of a farm-house. The vessel soon went to pieces. The schooner Perseverance, of Preston, Dandy, master, from Swansea to Salcombe, with coals, ran ashore a mile east of Hayle Bar. The crew of four remained by her during the night, and landed at daybreak. Both vessels experienced fearful weather on the way down Channel, the sea running mountains high. No one knew of their position until twenty-four hours after they struck.
At Exmouth, Dawlish, and Teignmouth, although the force of the wind was great, and all three towns sustained damage, there were no calamities at sea. Great injury was done to the pleasure and fishing boats at both of the latter places, but Teignmouth was not so unfortunate as Dawlish in this respect. Its harbour is almost land-locked, and from the beach where the boats are moored, as well as from the quays, the eye glances north-west and south-west upon a beautiful picture of river scenery, of which the distant Dartmoor Hills and the Haldon Heights form the background. The accompanying illustration, from a photograph by Messrs. Valentine & Son, of Teignmouth, taken during the week of the blizzard, depicts one part of this scene in as wintry a garb as any it has worn during the last half century. The village of Shaldon, on the opposite side of the Teign, lies exposed to a S.E. gale blowing across the low-lying sands of the Teignmouth "Point," and here the owners of fishing and other craft had much to lament in the way of destruction to their floating property.
