Chapter 9

THE ROYAL ARCH

Cease, rude Boreas, blust'ring railer! List, ye landsmen ill, to me! Messmates! hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea.

This and the following chapter contains the story of cases of rescue in which the ships in distress were saved, together with all on board, by the skill and courage of the Deal lifeboatmen, and brought finally with their respective cargoes safe into port.

A century ago, certain of our English coasts are described by the same writer whose lines head this chapter, as--

Where the grim hell-hounds, prowling round the shore, With foul intent the stranded bark explore. Deaf to the voice of woe, her decks they board, While tardy Justice slumbers o'er her sword.

But these pages recount, in happy contrast, the generous and gallant efforts of the Deal boatmen, in the first instance to save life, and then, when besought to stand by the vessel, or employed to do so, of their further success in saving valuable property, often worth many thousand pounds, from utter destruction in the sea.

I stood some years ago on the deck of a lightship stationed near the wreck of the British Navy, a vessel sunk by collision in the Downs one dreadful night, when twenty sailors went to the bottom with her, and I saw her masts blown up and out of her by an explosion of dynamite to remove the wreck from the Downs, while the water was strewn with the debris of her valuable cargo. This cargo, amongst countless other commodities, was said to have contained one hundred pianos; hence some idea may be gathered of the pecuniary importance, apart from the story's thrilling interest, of salvage of valuable vessels and precious merchandize.

On March 29, 1878, the wind blew strong from the E.N.E., and only one vessel, the Royal Arch, lay in the Downs. The great roadstead, protected from the full fetch of an easterly sea by the natural breakwater of the Goodwins--for without those dreaded sands neither the Downs as a sheltered anchorage would exist, nor in all probability the towns of Deal and Walmer--was nevertheless on that day a very stormy place, and as the wind freshened towards evening, as the east wind nearly always does in this locality, it eventually came on to blow a whole gale dead on shore.

The sea raised by an easterly gale on Deal beach is tremendous, and not even the first-class luggers, or their smaller sisters, the 'cats,' could be launched. Had there been a harbour from which the Deal luggers could at once make the open sea, they would have been able to live and skim like the stormy petrel over the crest of the billows; but it is quite a different thing when a lugger has to be launched from a beach right in the teeth of a mountainous sea, and incurs the certainty of being driven back broadside on to the steep shingle, and of her crew being washed out of her, and drowned by some giant sea. Hence that evening no ordinary Deal boat or even lugger could launch. On the morning of the same day the captain of the Royal Arch had been compelled by some necessary business to come ashore. To have come ashore in his own ship's boat in such a wind and sea would have involved certain disaster and even loss of life, and therefore he came ashore in a Deal galley punt, which successfully performed the feat of beaching in a heavy surf.

In the evening, against an increasing gale, and much heavier sea, the galley punt dared not launch to bring the captain back. None even of the luggers would encounter the risk of launching in so heavy a sea dead on the beach. He therefore tried the lifeboats, upon the plea and grounds that his ship was dragging her anchors and in peril. She was lying abreast of Walmer Castle, and was indeed gradually dragging in towards the surf-beaten shore, which, if she struck, not a soul on board probably would have been saved.

The anxious captain first tried the Walmer lifeboat, but she was too far to leeward, and would not have been able to fetch the vessel. But eventually, as his vessel was now burning signals of distress, he ran to the North Deal lifeboat, and the coxswain, Robert Wilds, seeing all other boats were helpless, decided to ring the lifeboat bell and pit the celebrated Van Cook against the stormy sea in deadly fight.

The Deal boatmen had long foreseen the launch of the lifeboat, and they were massed in crowds round the lifeboat-house, competitors for the honour of forming the crew. The danger of the distressed vessel was known in the town, and crowds had assembled on the beach, amongst them the Mayor of Deal, to watch the lifeboat launch.

The long run of the great waves came right up to where the lifeboat lay, so that when she was let go she had no steep slope to rush down so as to hurl her by her own impetus into the sea. She depended, therefore, for her launching against this great sea, on her haul-off warp, which was moored one hundred fathoms out to sea, and by which her fifteen men hoped to pull her out to deep water. But this dark night she simply stuck fast after running down a little way, and got into the 'draw back' under the seas bursting in fury.

Her situation was most perilous, and the danger of the men being swept out of her was great. But through it all the lifeboatmen, with stubborn pluck, held on to the haul-off warp and strained for their lives, and at last a great sea came and washed them afloat within its recoil, and covered the lifeboat and her crew. The spectators groaned with horror as the lifeboat disappeared, but the men were straining gallantly at the haul-off warp, and the lifeboat emerged. When she was seen above the surges just only for an instant, 'All Deal sent forth a rapturous cry,' and the brave men, though they could not see the people on the land, yet heard their mighty cheer, and, strung in their hearts to dare and to conquer, sped on their glorious task.

When just out to deep water, the coxswain sang out, 'Hang on, every man!' and a great sea came out of the night right at the lifeboat. Tom Adams was out on the fore air-box, lifting the haul-off warp out of the cheek, a perilous spot, when the sea was seen; he had just time to get back and clasp both arms round the foremast as the sea broke, overwhelming lifeboat and the crew and the captain of the Royal Arch, who was aft, in a white smother of foam. But the lifeboat freed herself of the sea, and like a living creature stood up to face the gale.

Close-reefed mizzen and reefed storm foresail was her canvas; watchful men stood by halyards and sheets, hitched, not belayed, and watched each gust and sea as only Deal men who watch for their lives can watch, and even they are sometimes caught.

At last the vessel in distress loomed through the night, and from many an anxious heart on board went up, 'Thank God! here comes the lifeboat!' Not too soon was she! For the hungry breakers were roaring under their lee. Blue lights and other signals of distress had already been made on board the vessel for some time; a rocket too had been fired, with a rather unsatisfactory result.

One of the mates, who I was informed hailed from County Cork, decided to fire a rocket, a thing he had never, it seems, done before in his life, and failing the usual rocket-stand, he bethought him of the novel and ingenious expedient of letting it off through the iron tube which formed the chimney of the galley or cooking-house on deck, thus hoping to make sure of successfully directing its flight upwards. In the confusion and darkness he did in his execution not perhaps do justice to himself, or to the fertility of resource which had devised so excellent a plan. The sea was rolling to the depth of two feet over the deck, and washing right through the galley house, and it was only by great efforts he succeeded in the darkness in fastening the rocket in the tube which formed the chimney.

To do this he had unwisely removed the rocket from its stick, and, unfortunately, he fastened it in the chimney upside down. Having done so, he fumbled in his pocket, the darkness being intense, for his matches, and applied the light underneath in the usual place. But the rocket being upside down he of course failed to set it off, and then he unluckily tried the other end, which was uppermost, with the disastrous result, as my English informant described it, that 'the hexplosion blowed him clean out of the galley.'

'Blowed him!' said I, unconsciously adopting my friend's expression, 'where?'

'Why,' said he, 'hout of the galley into the lee scuppers.'

'Was the poor fellow much hurt?'

'Hurt! Bless you! not he. But he kept shouting like forty blue murders!'

'What did he say?'

'Well,' he replied, 'he was that scared and that choked with soot, as ever was, that all he could say was--I'm dead! I'm dead! I'm dead!'

The position of the vessel was now very serious; she was going so fast astern towards the breakers and the land that after the lifeboat anchored ahead of and close to her she could hardly keep abreast of the dragging vessel by paying out her cable as fast as possible. Roberts and Adams, and in all five of the lifeboatmen, sprang on board of her as she rolled in the pitchy night.

They sprang, as the lifeboat went up and the ship came down, over the yawning chasm, on the chance of gripping the shrouds, and some of them rolled over and actually and literally, as they were carried off their feet, had to swim on the decks of the labouring vessel.

The captain of the vessel could not get on board in the same way, and though they passed a line round his waist it was a good half-hour before they could get him up the steep side.

The lifeboatmen say that when he did reach the deck he declared 'that if that was what they called coming hoff in a lifeboat from Deal beach, he wouldn't do it again--no, not for hall the money in the Bank of England!'

The captain now hesitated to slip his ship, lest she might pay off on the wrong tack and come ashore; but as the vessel was steadily drifting and the sea terrific, the lifeboat being now and then hoisted up to her foreyard, while mountainous seas wallowed over both the lifeboat and the vessel, the Deal lifeboatmen said, 'If you don't slip her, we will. There's death right astern for all of us if you delay.'

Then the captain himself took the helm, the rudder-head being twisted, and the spirit and energy of the Deal men infused new life into the wearied crew, and all hands worked together with a will.

They loosed the fore-topsail and they set the foretopmast staysail. Tom Adams went or waded forwards, holding on carefully, with a lantern, and he watched by the dim light till the fore-topmast staysail bellied out with a flap like thunder on the right side, and then he shouted down the wind, 'Hard up, captain! Hard a-port!' At the same instant Roberts shouted, 'Slip the cable! Let go all!' And just within the very jaws of the breakers, the ship's head payed away to the southward, and she escaped--saved at the last minute, and safe to the open sea.

When safe away and running before the gale, the Deal men strapped the rudder-head with ropes, straining them tight with a tackle, and then wedged the ropes tighter and tighter still, making the rudder head thoroughly safe.

And then, though only very poorly and miserably supplied with food--for they only had dry biscuits till they reached port--they manned the pumps with the worn-out crew, and brought the ship safe to Cowes.

But for the existence of a lifeboat at North Deal the ship would have been wrecked that night on the stormy beach of Deal, and, in all probability, her crew would also have perished.

It is pleasant to record the unselfish heroism of the Deal lifeboatmen, who on this occasion were the means of saving both valuable property and precious human lives.