It was just midnight on March 11, 1875, when the schooner Punch, on her voyage from Newcastle to Dublin, ran upon the shoals off Caister. It was a ‘dirty’ night, pitch dark, and blowing hard from the east. The sands, partially uncovered at low water, are quicksands as the tide flows, and a ship once fairly driven on them has little hope of getting off again; as for her crew—well, there is now this hope for them, that the lifeboat-men will see the signals of distress and hazard their lives to save them. The crew of the Punch knew what the grasp of Caister sands meant, and up flared their signal fires so soon as she struck. The waves, as though eager to secure for the greedy sands their prey, broke over the vessel in quick succession and dimmed the fire; but there was a plentiful supply of tar and oil on board, and their signals blazed up again. Then the lifeboat-men saw it and hastened to them. As their boat neared the sands her crew could see, by the fire flaring on deck, that the hulk was gradually sinking down, and that there was a stretch of uncovered sand still around the ship. Before their eyes, almost within speaking distance, the Punch would be sucked into the sand, and with her the half-dozen men on board! There was but one thing for it—anchor the lifeboat to the sand and jump on to the shifting mass. Leaving a couple of men in the lifeboat, her coxswain, heaving-line in hand, leaped overboard, followed by a number of his crew, and went staggering and stumbling towards the wreck—at one moment only ankle-deep in water and the next high up to their shoulders. And so they waded on for a hundred yards in the fury of the winter storm. They called to the crew, and the crew answered them. Think what the feelings of those sinking men must have been, their gratitude to their deliverers. One threw a line from the deck, and it was clutched by the foremost of the rescuers, and, a communication once established, the schooner’s crew were one by one hauled through the broken water over the quicksand to the lifeboat, and with them the lifeboat-men rowed to shore. Yes, to shore, but not to rest! They had barely got to their homes when the cry was raised again. ‘Another ship on the sands!’ It was morning then, and back to the lifeboat they hastened, and a second time rowed out. Alas! their journey was in vain. Help had come too late, and only masses of tangled rigging, planks, and broken spars floated over the sands—the ship and her crew lay buried within them.