Category: Adventure
To Lionel Lukin, a coachbuilder of Long Acre, London, belongs the honour of inventing the lifeboat. As early as the year 1784 he designed and fitted a boat, which was intended "to save the lives of mariners wrecked on the coast." It had a projecting gunwale of cork, and air-ti...
About six miles off the east coast of Kent there is a sandbank known as the Goodwin Sands, extending for a distance of ten miles, between the North Foreland and the South Forela...
1. CHAPTER I.To Lionel Lukin, a coachbuilder of Long Acre, London, belongs the honour of inventing the lifeboat. As early as the year 1784 he designed and fitted a boat, which was intended "...
6. CHAPTER VI.About a quarter past eight one wintry night, a telegram was received at Ramsgate to say that the lightships west of Margate were sending up rockets and firing guns. Owing to the...
10. CHAPTER X.One bleak December night, a few years ago, word was brought to Ramsgate that a large vessel had gone ashore on the Goodwin Sands. Immediately on receiving the message, the harbo...
7. CHAPTER VII.Of the many heartrending scenes which have taken place on our coasts, there is perhaps none more calculated to move our sympathies for the imperilled crews, and our admiration f...
11. CHAPTER XI.Clang! clash! roar! rings out the bell at the lifeboat-house, its iron voice heard even above the thunder of the surf and the whistling wind, warning the sleeping inhabitants of...
2. CHAPTER II.We have already referred to the numerous disasters which did so much to retard the progress of the lifeboat movement. Now let us see how these disasters were caused. The early l...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.It is a common belief at the present day that our sailors are no longer the same bold, kind-hearted fellows that they were before the introduction of steam and other modern impr...
23. CHAPTER XXIII.The spacious harbour of Milford Haven, on the south-west of Pembrokeshire, the finest in the kingdom, and large enough to shelter the whole British fleet, was, a few months ago,...
15. CHAPTER XV.During a dreadful storm which swept over the British Isles several years ago, the American ship _Northern Belle_, from New York to London, came to anchor off Kingsgate, near Bro...
9. CHAPTER IX.The first duty of the crew of the lifeboat is to save life, but it frequently happens that a stranded vessel is not so seriously damaged as to hinder her being got afloat again....
8. CHAPTER VIII.Exactly ten years after the events narrated in the previous chapter had taken place, the Ramsgate lifeboatmen were again conspicuous for their gallantry in saving life under the...
20. CHAPTER XX.One stormy December day, a few years ago, a horse reeking with foam galloped into Penzance, bearing a messenger with news that a ship which had got into the bay was unable to ma...
21. CHAPTER XXI.Lizard Point in Cornwall, the most southerly headland in England, is a piece of rocky land, which "has caused more vivid and varied emotions than any other on our coasts. The em...
13. CHAPTER XIII.The ship _Benvenue_ of Glasgow was being towed through the Straits of Dover on Nov. 11th, 1891, when a terrible gale sprang up. Arriving off Sandgate, the vessel became quite un...
14. CHAPTER XIV.On the night of Sunday the 31st of January 1892, the North-German Lloyd liner _Eider_, bound from New York to Southampton, stranded on a reef of rocks off the Isle of Wight. A d...
16. CHAPTER XVI.Shortly after daybreak, on the 4th January 1894, the lookout on the pier at Clacton-on-Sea saw a vessel strike on the Buxey Sand, about six miles from the shore. Without a momen...
22. CHAPTER XXII.During the terrific storm which spread such destruction over a large area of the United Kingdom in October 1889, a vessel was seen to be labouring heavily, and showing signals o...
17. CHAPTER XVII.In the early morning of the 7th of November 1890, while one of the severest storms known for years on the coast of Lancashire was at its height, signal flares were observed abou...
12. CHAPTER XII.About ten o'clock on the night of the 11th of February 1894, signals of distress were observed from the Gull lighthouse by the look-out on Ramsgate pier. In response the lifeboa...
3. CHAPTER III.[On the night of the 9th of December 1886, the Lytham, Southport, and St. Anne's lifeboats put out to rescue the crew of the ship _Mexico_, which had run aground off the coast o...
19. CHAPTER XIX.Captain Leighton, of the British ship _Three Bells_, some years ago rescued the crew of an American vessel sinking in mid-ocean. Unable to take them off in the storm and darknes...
5. CHAPTER V.There's fury in the tempest, And there's madness in the waves; The lightning snake coils round the foam, The headlong thunder raves; Yet a boat is on the waters, Filled with Bri...