Heroes of the Goodwin SandsTreanor, Thomas Stanley
History
Heroes of the Goodwin Sands
Treanor, Thomas Stanley
Goodwin Sands (England); Lifesaving -- Great Britain; Shipwrecks
The men of the lifeboat, now cold, wearied, and hungry, managed to get
an exceedingly frugal meal of tea and some bread and meat, and about 4
or 5 p.m. the light N.W. breeze fell away to a calm. Towards 7 p.m.
the Champion lugger at anchor hoisted her light, to indicate the
channel or swatchway by which the Mandalay would have to come out if
ever she moved at all. The wind now came strong from the S.W. and then
backed to S. and by W., and there was heard the far-off moan of
breaking surf, making it plain that there was a heavy sea rolling in
from the S.W. on a distant point of the Sands. The sea was evidently
coming before the wind, 'the moon looked,' the men said, 'as if she was
getting up contrary,' and Roberts said, 'We'll have trouble before
morning.' At 10 p.m. the wind came. The calm was 'but the grim repose
of the winter whirlwind,' and it soon blew a gale from the S.W. Before
this some Deal galley punts had also wisely made their way for the
shore, and the lifeboat and the Champion lugger were left alone on the
scene--than which nothing could now be wilder. Fortunately another
tug-boat, the Cambria, had anchored about 7 p.m. in deep water outside
the Goodwins, as close as was prudent to the swatchway before
described; but the inevitable struggle was regarded with the greatest
anxiety by all hands, notwithstanding the proffered help of the
tug-boat and the lightening of the ship.
About midnight the rising tide had again covered the Goodwins, but the
surface, no longer fair and calm, was now lashed into fury by the gale.
The seas were breaking everywhere, and as the moon emerged from behind
a flying cloud, far as the eye could see was one sheet of tumbling,
raging breakers, except the narrow channel in which the brave Champion
rode with her guiding light, plunging heavily even in the deep channel.
But the most furious sea raged on the western jaw of the deep
swatchway; there currents and cross seas met, and the breakers rose up
and clashed and struck together in weightier masses and with especial
fury. Now a black cloud covered the moon, and again as it swept away
came the clear moonlight, but in the darkness and in the moonlight the
scene was equally tremendous.
As the water deepened round the ship, sea after sea broke over her with
such increasing fury that the work of jettisoning the cargo, which had
been carried on under great difficulties, had to be given up, and the
hatches had to be put on and battened down tight, to keep the ship from
filling. The same seas that broke over the Mandalay also struck and
buried the lifeboat as she rode alongside to the full scope of her
cable, and as each breaker went roaring past she as regularly freed
herself from the water which had been hurled into her the moment before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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