Several lifeboats were stationed at that point. They were all launched, manned, and promptly pulled into the Narrows, but the force of the hurricane and seas were such that they could not make headway against them. The powers of man are limited. When there is a will there is not always a way! For two hours did these brave men strain at the tough oars in vain; then they unwillingly put about and returned, utterly exhausted, leaving it to the men with the life-lines on shore to do the fighting. Thus, frequently, when one arm of the service is prevented from acting; the other arm comes into play.
The work of the men engaged on the pier was perilous and difficult, for the lines had to be fired against a head wind. The piers were covered with ice, and the gale was so strong that the men could hardly stand, while the crews of the wrecks were so benumbed that they could make little effort to help themselves.
The men of the Mary Mac, however, made a vigorous effort to get their longboat out. A boy jumped in to steady it. Before the men could follow, the boat was stove in, the rope that held it broke, and it drove away with the poor lad in it. He was quickly washed out, but held on to the gunwale until it drifted into broken water, when he was swallowed by the raging sea and the boat was dashed to pieces.
Meanwhile the crew of the Cora managed to swing themselves ashore, their vessel being close to the pier. The crew of the Lucern, acting on the advice of the brigade men, succeeded in scrambling on board the Cora and were hauled ashore on the life-lines. They had not been ten minutes out of their vessel when she turned over with her decks towards the terrible sea, which literally tore her asunder, and pitched her up, stem on end, as if she had been a toy. The crew of the Maghee were in like manner hauled on to the pier, with the exception of one lad from Canterbury. It was the poor boys first voyage. Little did he think probably, while dreaming of the adventures of a sailors career, what a terrible fate awaited him. He was apparently paralysed with fear, and could not spring after his comrades to the pier, but took to the rigging. He had scarcely done so when the vessel heeled over, and he was swung two or three times backwards and forwards with the motion of the masts.
It is impossible to imagine the feelings of the brave men on the pier, who would so gladly have risked their lives to save himhe was so near, and yet so hopelessly beyond the reach of human aid!
In a very brief space of time the waves did their workship and boy were swallowed up together.
While these events were enacting on the pier the Mary Mac had drifted over the sand about half a mile from where she had struck. One of her crew threw a leadline towards a seaman on the shore. The hero plunged into the surf and caught it. The rest of the work was easy. By means of the line the men of the Life Brigade sent off their hawser, and breeches-buoy or cradle (which apparatus I shall hereafter explain), and drew the crew in safety to the land.
That same morning a Whitby brig struck on the sands. The lifeboat Pomfret, belonging to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, put out and rescued her crew. In the morning the shores were strewn with wreckage, and amongst it was found the body of the boy belonging to the Mary Mac.
All these disasters were caused by the masters of the vessels mistaking the south for the north pier, in consequence of having lost sight of Tynemouth light in the blinding showers.
Of course many lifeboats were out doing good service on the night to which I have referred, but I pass all that by at present. The next chapter will carry you, good reader, into the midst of a pitched battle.
Chapter Two.
Describes a Tremendous Battle and a Glorious Victory
Before following our brilliant lifeboatthis gaudy, butterfly-like thing of red, white, and blueto 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 Institutionits boats, its work, and its achievementsmay be found in an interesting volume by its late secretary, Richard Lewis, Esquire, entitled History of the Lifeboat and its Workpublished 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 coastopposite 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 crewnamely, 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 pointthe Demerara of Greenocknot an emigrant ship, but freighted with a crew of nineteen souls, including a Trinity pilot. Tossed like a plaything on the Sandsat that part named the Shinglesoff Margate, the Demerara soon began to break up, and the helpless crew did as those of the Fusilier had done and were still doingthey 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.