The crew are obtained from a body of 150 enrolled volunteers. The first ten of these who get into the lifeboat when the rocket signal goes up from the pier-head form on that occasion the crew of the lifeboat. In addition to these the two coxswains, by virtue of their office, raise the total number to twelve. The celebrated coxswain, Charles Fish, was also harbour boatman at Ramsgate, and slept in a watch-house at the end of the pier in a hammock. He was always first aroused by the watch to learn that rockets were going up from some distant lightship signifying 'a ship on the Goodwins.' With him rested the decision to send up the answering rocket from the pier-head, upon seeing which the police and coastguard called the lifeboat crew. Then would come the rush for a place. The coxswain had to decide what signals were to be regarded as false alarms, and there are many such; sometimes, it is said in Ramsgate, the flash of the Calais lighthouse is taken for a ship burning flares and in distress on the Goodwins, and draws the signal guns from the lightships. Sometimes a hayrick on fire is mistaken for a vessel's appealing signal; sometimes the signals, of enormous and unnecessary size, which the French trawlers burn to each other at night around the Goodwins, set both the lightships and lifeboats all astray; and the coxswains of the lifeboats, both at Ramsgate and Deal, have to be on their guard against these delusive agencies. As the coxswains in both of these places are men of exceptional shrewdness and ability, mistakes are few and far between. The coxswain of a lifeboat ought to have the eye of a hawk and the heart of a lion, and, I will add, the tenderness and pity of a woman. Never was the possession of these qualities more finely exhibited than by coxswain Charles Fish and the crew of the Ramsgate lifeboat in the rescue of the survivors of the Indian Chief from the Long Sand on January 5 and 6, 1881. The following account has been taken by permission from the _Lifeboat Journal_ for February, 1881, including the extracts from the _Daily Telegraph_ and the admirable engraving. The accompanying graphic accounts of the wreck of the Indian Chief, and of the noble rescue of a portion of her crew by the Bradford self-righting lifeboat, stationed at Ramsgate, appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_ on January 11 and 18, as related by the mate of the vessel and the coxswain of the lifeboat. The lifeboats of the National Lifeboat Institution stationed at Aldborough (Suffolk), Clacton and Harwich (Essex), also proceeded to the scene of danger, but unfortunately were unable to reach the wreck. Happily the Bradford lifeboat persevered, amidst difficulties, hardships, and dangers hardly ever surpassed in the lifeboat service; but her reward was indeed great in saving eleven of our fellow-creatures, who must have succumbed, as their mates had a few hours previously, to their terrible exposure in bitterly cold weather for nearly thirty hours.