Battles with the Sea

Chapter Two.
Describes a Tremendous Battle and a Glorious Victory

Before following our brilliant lifeboat—this gaudy, butterfly-like thing of red, white, and blue—to the field of battle, let me observe that the boats of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have several characteristic qualities, to which reference shall be made hereafter, and that they are of various sizes. (A full and graphic account of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution—its boats, its work, and its achievements—may be found in an interesting volume by its late secretary, Richard Lewis, Esquire, entitled History of the Lifeboat and its Work—published by Macmillan and Company.)

One of the largest size is that of Ramsgate. This may be styled a privileged boat, for it has a steam-tug to wait upon it named the Aid. Day and night the Aid has her fires “banked up” to keep her boilers simmering, so that when the emergency arises, a vigorous thrust of her giant poker brings them quickly to the boiling point, and she is ready to take her lifeboat in tow and tug her out to the famed and fatal Goodwin Sands, which lie about four miles off the coast—opposite to Ramsgate.

I draw attention to this boat, first because she is exceptionally situated with regard to frequency of call, the means of going promptly into action, and success in her work. Her sister-lifeboats of Broadstairs and Margate may, indeed, be as often called to act, but they lack the attendant steamer, and sometimes, despite the skill and courage of their crews, find it impossible to get out in the teeth of a tempest with only sail and oar to aid them.

Early in December, 1863, an emigrant ship set sail for the Antipodes; she was the Fusilier, of London. It was her last voyage, and fated to be very short. The shores of Old England were still in sight, the eyes of those who sought to “better their circumstances” in Australia were yet wet, and their hearts still full with the grief of parting from loved ones at home, when one of the most furious storms of the season caught them and cast their gallant ship upon the dangerous Sands off the mouth of the Thames. This happened on the night of the 3rd, which was intensely dark, as well as bitterly cold.

Who can describe or conceive the scene that ensued! the horror, the shrieking of women and children, and the yelling of the blast through the rigging,—for it was an absolute hurricane,—while tons of water fell over the decks continually, sweeping them from stem to stern.

The Fusilier had struck on that part of the sands named the Girdler. In the midst of the turmoil there was but one course open to the crew—namely, to send forth signals of distress. Guns were fired, rockets sent up, and tar-barrels set a-blaze. Then, during many hours of agony, they had to wait and pray.

On that same night another good ship struck upon the same sands at a different point—the Demerara of Greenock—not an emigrant ship, but freighted with a crew of nineteen souls, including a Trinity pilot. Tossed like a plaything on the Sands—at that part named the Shingles—off Margate, the Demerara soon began to break up, and the helpless crew did as those of the Fusilier had done and were still doing—they signalled for aid. But it seemed a forlorn resource. Through the thick, driving, murky atmosphere nothing but utter blackness could be seen, though the blazing of their own tar-barrels revealed, with awful power, the seething breakers around, which, as if maddened by the obstruction of the sands, leaped and hissed wildly over them, and finally crushed their vessel over on its beam-ends. Swept from the deck, which was no longer a platform, but, as it were, a sloping wall, the crew took refuge in the rigging of one of the masts which still held fast. The mast overhung the caldron of foam, which seemed to boil and leap at the crew as if in disappointed fury.

By degrees the hull of the Demerara began to break up. Her timbers writhed and snapped under the force of the ever-thundering waves as if tormented. The deck was blown out by the confined and compressed air. The copper began to peel off, the planks to loosen, and soon it became evident that the mast to which the crew were lashed could not long hold up. Thus, for ten apparently endless hours the perishing seamen hung suspended over what seemed to be their grave. They hung thus in the midst of pitchy darkness after their blazing tar-barrels had been extinguished.

And what of the lifeboat-men during all this time? Were they asleep? Nay, verily! Everywhere they stood at pierheads, almost torn from their holdfasts by the furious gale, or they cowered under the lee of boats and boat-houses on the beach, trying to gaze seaward through the blinding storm, but nothing whatever could they see of the disasters on these outlying sands.

There are, however, several sentinels which mount guard night and day close to the Goodwin and other Sands. These are the Floating Lights which mark the position of our extensive and dangerous shoals. Two of these sentinels, the Tongue lightship and the Prince’s lightship, in the vicinity of the Girdler Sands, saw the signals of distress. Instantly their guns and rockets gleamed and thundered intelligence to the shore. Such signals had been watched for keenly that night by the brave men of the Margate lifeboat, who instantly went off to the rescue. But there are conditions against which human courage and power and will are equally unavailing. In the teeth of such a gale from the west-nor’-west, with the sea driving in thunder straight on the beach, it was impossible for the Margate boat to put out. A telegram was therefore despatched to Ramsgate. Here, too, as at Broadstairs, and everywhere else, the heroes of the coast were on the lookout, knowing well the duties that might be required of them at any moment.

The stout little Aid was lying at the pier with her steam “up.” The Ramsgate lifeboat was floating quietly in the harbour, and her sturdy lion-like coxswain, Isaac Jarman, was at the pier-head with some of his men, watching. The Ramsgate men had already been out on service at the sands that day, and their appetite for saving life had been whetted. They were ready for more work. At a quarter past eight p.m. the telegram was received by the harbour-master. The signal was given. The lifeboat-men rushed to their boats.

“First come, first served,” is the rule there. She was over-manned, and some of the brave fellows had to leave her. The tight little tug took the boat in tow, and in less than half an hour rushed out with her into the intense darkness, right in the teeth of tempest and billows.

The engines of the Aid are powerful, like her whole frame. Though fiercely opposed she battled out into the raging sea, now tossed on the tops of the mighty waves, now swallowed in the troughs between. Battered by the breaking crests, whelmed at times by “green seas,” staggering like a drunken thing, and buffeted by the fierce gale, but never giving way an inch, onward, steadily if slowly, until she rounded the North Foreland. Then the rescuers saw the signals going up steadily, regularly, from the two lightships. No cessation of these signals until they should be answered by signals from the shore.

All this time the lifeboat had been rushing, surging, and bounding in the wake of her steamer. The seas not only roared around her, but absolutely overwhelmed her. She was dragged violently over them, and sometimes right through them. Her crew crouched almost flat on the thwarts, and held on to prevent being washed overboard. The stout cable had to be let out to its full extent to prevent snapping, so that the mist and rain sometimes prevented her crew from seeing the steamer, while cross seas met and hurled her from side to side, causing her to plunge and kick like a wild horse.

About midnight the Tongue lightship was reached and hailed. The answer given was brief and to the point: “A vessel in distress to the nor’-west, supposed to be on the high part of the Shingles Sand!”

Away went the tug and boat to the nor’-west, but no vessel could be found, though anxious hearts and sharp and practised eyes were strained to the uttermost. The captain of the Aid, who knew every foot of the sands, and who had medals and letters from kings and emperors in acknowledgment of his valuable services, was not to be balked easily. He crept along as close to the dangerous sands as was consistent with the safety of his vessel.

How intently they gazed and listened both from lifeboat and steamer, but no cry was to be heard, no signal of distress, nothing but the roaring of the waves and shrieking of the blast, and yet they were not far from the perishing! The crew of the Demerara were clinging to their quivering mast close by, but what could their weak voices avail in such a storm? Their signal fires had long before been drowned out, and those who would have saved them could not see more than a few yards around.

Presently the booming of distant cannon was heard and then a faint line of fire was seen in the far distance against the black sky. The Prince’s and the Girdler lightships were both firing guns and rockets to tell that shipwreck was taking place near to them. What was to be done? Were the Shingles to be forsaken, when possibly human beings were perishing there? There was no help for it. The steamer and lifeboat made for the vessels that were signalling, and as the exhausted crew on the quivering mast of the Demerara saw their lights depart, the last hope died out of their breasts.

“Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him,” perchance occurred to some of them: who knows?

Meanwhile the rescuers made for the Prince’s lightship and were told that a vessel in distress was signalling on the higher part of the Girdler Sands.

Away they went again, and this time were successful. They made for the Girdler lightship, and on the Girdler Sands they found the Fusilier.

The steamer towed the lifeboat to windward of the wreck into such a position that when cast adrift she could bear down on her. Then the cable was slipped and the boat went in for her own special and hazardous work. Up went her little foresail close-reefed, and she rushed into a sea of tumultuous broken water that would have swamped any other kind of boat in the world.

What a burst of thrilling joy and hope there was among the emigrants in the Fusilier when the little craft was at last descried! It was about one o’clock in the morning by that time, and the sky had cleared a very little, so that a faint gleam of moonlight enabled them to see the boat of mercy plunging towards them through a very chaos of surging seas and whirling foam. To the rescuers the wreck was rendered clearly visible by the lurid light of her burning tar-barrels as she lay on the sands, writhing and trembling like a living thing in agony. The waves burst over her continually, and, mingling in spray with the black smoke of her fires, swept furiously away to leeward.

At first each wave had lifted the ship and let her crash down on the sands, but as the tide fell this action decreased, and had ceased entirely when the lifeboat arrived.

And now the point of greatest danger was reached. How to bring a lifeboat alongside of a wreck so as to get the people into her without being dashed to pieces is a difficult problem to solve. It was no new problem, however, to these hardy and fearless men; they had solved it many a time, before that night. When more than a hundred yards to windward of the wreck, the boat’s foresail was lowered and her anchor let go. Then they seized the oars, and the cable was payed out; but the distance had been miscalculated. They were twenty yards or so short of the wreck when the cable had run completely out, so the men had to pull slowly and laboriously back to their anchor again, while the emigrants sent up a cry of despair, supposing they had failed and were going to forsake them! At length the anchor was got up. In a few minutes it was let go in a better position, and the boat was carefully veered down under the lee of the vessel, from both bow and stern of which a hawser was thrown to it and made fast. By means of these ropes and the cable the boat was kept somewhat in position without striking the wreck.

It was no easy matter to make the voice heard in such a gale and turmoil of seas, but the captain of the Fusilier managed to give his ship’s name and intended destination. Then he shouted, “How many can you carry? We have more than a hundred souls on board; more than sixty of them women and children.”

This might well fill the breasts of the rescuers with anxiety. Their boat, when packed full, could only carry about thirty. However, a cheering reply was returned, and, seizing a favourable opportunity, two of the boatmen sprang on the wreck, clambered over the side, and leaped among the excited emigrants. Some seized them by the hands and hailed them as deliverers; others, half dead with terror, clung to them as if afraid they might forsake them. There was no time, however, to humour feelings. Shaking them all off—kindly but forcibly—the men went to work with a will, briefly explained that there was a steamer not far off, and began to get the women first into the boat.

Terror-stricken, half fainting, trembling in every limb, deadly pale, and exhausted by prolonged anxiety and exposure, the poor creatures were carried rather than led to the ship’s side. It needed courage even to submit to be saved on such a night and in such circumstances. Two sailors stood outside the ship’s bulwarks, fastened there by ropes, ready to lower the women. At one moment the raging sea rose with a roar almost to the feet of these men, bearing the kicking lifeboat on its crest. Next moment the billow had passed, and the men looked down into a yawning abyss of foam, with the boat surging away far out of their reach, plunging and tugging at the ropes which held it, as a wild horse of the plains might struggle with the lasso. No wonder that the women gazed appalled at the prospect of such a leap, or that some shrieked and wildly resisted the kind violence of their rescuers. But the leap was for life; it had to be taken—and quickly, too, for the storm was very fierce, and there were many to save!

One of the women is held firmly by the two men. With wildly-staring eyes she sees the boat sweep towards her on the breast of a rushing sea. It comes closer. Some of the men below stand up with outstretched arms. The woman makes a half spring, but hesitates. The momentary action proves almost fatal. In an instant the boat sinks into a gulf, sweeps away as far as the ropes will let her, and is buried in foam, while the woman is slipping from the grasp of the men who hold her.

“Don’t let her go! don’t let her go!” is roared by the lifeboat-men, but she has struggled out of their grasp. Another instant and she is gone; but God in His mercy sends the boat in again at that instant; the men catch her as she falls, and drag her inboard.

Thus, one by one, were the women got into the lifeboat. Some of these women were old and infirm; some were invalids. Who can conceive the horror of the situation to such as these, save those who went through it?

The children were wrapped up in blankets and thus handed down. Some of the husbands or fathers on board rolled up shawls and blankets and tossed them down to the partially clothed and trembling women. It chanced that one small infant was bundled up in a blanket by a frantic passenger and handed over the side. The man who received it, mistaking it for merely a blanket, cried, “Here, Bill, catch!” and tossed it into the boat. Bill, with difficulty, caught it as it was flying overboard; at the same moment a woman cried, “My child! my child!” sprang forward, snatched the bundle from the horrified Bill, and hugged it to her bosom!

At last the boat, being sufficiently filled, was hauled up to her anchor. Sail was hoisted, and away they flew into the surging darkness, leaving the rest of the emigrants still filled with terrible anxiety, but not now with hopeless despair.

The lifeboat and her tender work admirably together. Knowing exactly what must be going on, and what would be required of him, though he could see nothing, the captain of the Aid, after the boat had slipped from him, had run down along the sands to leeward of the wreck, and there waited. Presently he saw the boat coming like a phantom out of the gloom. It was quickly alongside, and the rescued people—twenty-five women and children—were transferred to the steamer, taken down to her cabin, and tenderly cared for. Making this transfer in such a sea was itself difficult in the extreme, and accompanied with great danger, but difficulty and danger were the rule that night, not the exception. All went well. The Aid, with the warrior-boat in tow, steamed back to windward of the wreck; then the lifeboat slipped the cable as before, and returned to the conflict, leaping over the seething billows to the field of battle like a warhorse refreshed.

The stirring scene was repeated with success. Forty women and children were rescued on the second trip, and put on board the steamer. Leaden daylight now began to dawn. Many hours had the “storm warriors” been engaged in the wild exhausting fight, nevertheless a third and a fourth time did they charge the foe, and each time with the same result. All the passengers were finally rescued and put on board the steamer.

But now arose a difficulty. The tide had been falling and leaving the wreck, so that the captain and crew determined to stick to her in the hope of getting her off, if the gale should abate before the tide rose again.

It was therefore agreed that the lifeboat should remain by her in case of accidents; so the exhausted men had to prepare for a weary wait in their wildly plunging boat, while the Aid went off with her rescued people to Ramsgate.

But the adventures of that night were not yet over. The tug had not been gone above an hour and a half, when, to the surprise of those in the lifeboat, she was seen returning, with her flag flying half mast high, a signal of recall to her boat. The lifeboat slipped from the side of the wreck and ran to meet her. The reason was soon explained. On his way back to Ramsgate the captain had discovered another large vessel on her beam-ends, a complete wreck, on that part of the sands named the Shingles. It was the Demerara, and her crew were still seen clinging to the quivering mast on which they had spent the livelong night.

More work for the well-nigh worn out heroes! Away they went to the rescue as though they had been a fresh crew. Dashing through the surf they drew near the doomed ship, which creaked and groaned when struck by the tremendous seas, and threatened to go to pieces every moment. The sixteen men on the mast were drenched by every sea. Several times that awful night they had, as it were, been mocked by false hopes of deliverance. They had seen the flashing of the rockets and faintly heard the thunder of the alarm-guns fired by the lightships. They had seen the lights of the steamer while she searched in vain for them on first reaching the sands, had observed the smaller light of the boat in tow, whose crew would have been so glad to save them, and had shouted in vain to them as they passed by on their errand of mercy to other parts of the sands, leaving them a prey to darkness and despair. But a merciful and loving God had seen and heard them all the time, and now sent them aid at the eleventh hour.

When the lifeboat at last made in towards them the ebb tide was running strongly, and, from the position of the wreck, it was impossible to anchor to windward and drop down to leeward in the usual fashion. They had, therefore, to adopt the dangerous plan of running with the wind, right in upon the fore-rigging, and risk being smashed by the mast, which was beating about with its living load like an eccentric battering-ram. But these Ramsgate men would stick at nothing. They rushed in and received many severe blows, besides dashing into the iron windlass of the wreck. Slowly, and one by one, the enfeebled men dropped from the mast into the boat. Sixteen—all saved! There was great shaking of hands, despite the tossings of the hungry surf, and many fervid expressions of thankfulness, as the sail was hoisted and the men of the Demerara were carried away to join the other rescued ones, who by that time thronged the little Aid almost to overflowing.

At Ramsgate that morning—the morning of the 4th—it was soon known to the loungers on the pier that the lifeboat was out, had been out all night, and might be expected back soon. Bright and clear, though cold, was the morn which succeeded that terrible night; and many hundreds of anxious, beating, hopeful hearts were on the lookout. At last the steamer and her warrior-boat appeared, and a feeling of great gladness seemed to spread through the crowd when it was observed that a flag was flying at the mast-head, a well-known sign of victory.

On they came, right gallantly over the still turbulent waves. As they passed the pier-heads, and the crowd of pale faces were seen gazing upwards in smiling acknowledgment of the hearty welcome, there burst forth a deep-toned thrilling cheer, which increased in enthusiasm as the extent of the victory was realised, and culminated when it became known that at one grand swoop the lifeboat, after a fight of sixteen hours, had rescued a hundred and twenty souls from the grasp of the raging sea!

Reader, there was many a heart-stirring incident enacted that night which I have not told you, and much more might be related of that great battle and glorious victory. But enough, surely, has been told to give you some idea of what our coast heroes dare and do in their efforts to rescue the perishing.