Battles with the Sea by Robert Michael Ballantyne (ereader android .txt) 📕

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