Heroes of the Goodwin SandsTreanor, Thomas Stanley
History
Heroes of the Goodwin Sands
Treanor, Thomas Stanley
Goodwin Sands (England); Lifesaving -- Great Britain; Shipwrecks
Two days had elapsed (continues the writer in the _Daily Telegraph_)
since the rescue of the survivors of the crew of the Indian Chief, and
I was gazing with much interest at the victorious lifeboat as she lay
motionless upon the water of the harbour. It was a very calm day, the
sea stretching from the pier-sides as smooth as a piece of green silk,
and growing vague in the wintry haze of the horizon, while the white
cliffs were brilliant with the silver sunshine. It filled the mind
with strange and moving thoughts to look at that sleeping lifeboat,
with her image as sharp as a coloured photograph shining in the clear
water under her, and then reflect upon the furious conflict she had
been concerned in only two nights before, the freight of half-drowned
men that had loaded her, the dead body on her thwart, the bitter cold
of the howling gale, the deadly peril that had attended every heave of
the huge black seas. Within a few hundred yards of her lay the tug,
the sturdy steamer that had towed her to the Long Sand, that had held
her astern all night, and brought her back safe on the following
afternoon. The tug had suffered much from the frightful tossing she
had received, and her injuries had not yet been dealt with; she had
lost her sponsons, her starboard side-house was gone, the port side of
her bridge had been started and the iron railing warped, her decks
still seemed dank from the remorseless washing, her funnel was brown
with rust, and the tough craft looked a hundred years old. Remembering
what these vessels had gone through, how they had but two days since
topped a long series of merciful and dangerous errands by as brilliant
an act of heroism and humanity as any on record, it was difficult to
behold them without a quickened pulse. I recalled the coming ashore of
their crews, the lifeboatmen with their great cork-jackets around them,
the steamer's men in streaming oilskins, the faces of many of them
livid with the cold, their eyes dim with the bitter vigil they had kept
and the furious blowing of the spray; and I remembered the bright smile
that here and there lighted up the weary faces, as first one and then
another caught sight of a wife or a sister in the crowd waiting to
greet and accompany the brave hearts to the warmth of their humble
homes. I felt that while these crews' sufferings and the courage and
resolution they had shown remained unwritten, only half of the very
stirring and manful story had been recorded. The narrative, as related
to me by the coxswain of the lifeboat, is a necessary pendant to the
tale told by the mate of the wrecked ship; and as he and his
colleagues, both of the lifeboat and the steam-tug, want no better
introduction than their own deeds to the sympathy and attention of the
public, let Charles Edward Fish begin his yarn without further preface.
No. 2.--_The Coxswain's Account_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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