Heroes of the Goodwin SandsTreanor, Thomas Stanley
History
Heroes of the Goodwin Sands
Treanor, Thomas Stanley
Goodwin Sands (England); Lifesaving -- Great Britain; Shipwrecks
Now rose the glorious sun, darting his golden javelins high up into the
blue majestical canopy; and cheerily into the water, now burnished by
the sunbeams, sprang Alfred Redsull, danger and hardship all forgotten,
with a line round his waist, to guide and help the exhausted man away
from the deadly 'fox-falls,' which were full of swirling water, and at
last into the lifeboat. Then with bated breath they learned the
story,--that all the rest were gone, and that the captain himself was
the solitary survivor. His hands were in gloves; they cut those off,
and also his boots, so swelled were hands and feet. They gave him a
dry pair of long stockings and woollen mittens, and they let down the
mizzen and made a lee for him under its shelter, for he was half
perished with the cold of that bitter night. After a few minutes he
insisted on again searching the sands for his lost crew, and the
coxswain and others of the lifeboatmen went with him.
The lifeboat was by this time high and dry, for the water was falling
with great rapidity, and there was a mile of dry sand on each side of
her. The company of men now searched the sands, and a long way off the
coxswain saw a dark object.
'What's that?' he said.
That's my ship's rudder,' replied the captain, 'and I walked round it
yesterday evening when death was staring in my face.'
Then they came to the wreck; her decks were gone, every atom of what
had once been on board her was swept clean out of her: she was split
open at her keel, and lay in halves, gaping.
Inside this wrecked skeleton ship lay her foremast, and so crushed and
flattened out was the vessel that the men stepped from the sand at once
into the hollow shell--and there they saw, still holding together, the
little spot of planking, ten feet above them, on which the rescued man
had stood, and where he had been lashed: and they took down and brought
away as a memento the piece of canvas which he had fastened to the
pole, and which had caught the eyes of the boatmen at Deal; but the
bodies of the drowned crew were never seen again.
When the tide rose the lifeboat got up anchor and made for home.
Crowds were assembled at the beach, expecting, as the British ensign
was hoisted at the peak, to find a rescued crew 'all saved' on board;
but, alas! only one wearied, overwrought man struggled up the beach.
I led him to get some hot coffee and to give him a few minutes' repose;
but he could eat nothing, and he laid his head on his arms and sobbed
as if his heart would break for the friends that were gone, and
overwhelmed by the mercy of his own preservation.
All honour to the brave coxswain and his lifeboat crew who sought and
searched for him through and through that dreadful midnight surf, and
stuck to their task with determined resolution, and who found and
rescued this poor Norwegian stranger from the very grasp of death!
All honour to the brave![1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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