The ’longshoremen of all these sixteen miles of roaring storm-bitten coast between the Forelands are men of a courage and endurance proved so long ago that it has become proverbial. Nowhere have those fearless and staunch qualities been displayed to such a degree as at Deal. The “Deal boatmen” are a race famous in the troubled annals of the sea. Between their windy and exposed foreshore, from whose unprotected beach no howling gale has been fierce enough to daunt their putting off, between their shore and the Goodwins they have earned a hard-won livelihood, or have dared the worst of weathers in life-saving, for no reward. There is a nice distinction between the ’longshoremen of Ramsgate and Margate and Dover, and those of Deal; for while all have that “’longshore” appellation, only those of Deal are “boatmen.” All own boats, it is true; but the boats of Deal are different from those of the other towns, and only at Deal did the “hoveller” flourish. It is to be feared the day of the hoveller is done, now that steam is superseding sails. There are those who consider that the word “hoveller” is a corruption of “hoverer,” and it was the business-- and a highly remunerative business too--of these men, in their stout luggers, to put forth in stormy weather and cruise about amid the tempest-tossed waters in search of distressed vessels that might wish to be navigated into port. In these modern times of surveillance and overmuch governing no man may, without a licence from the Trinity House, or other port authorities, take a piloting job, and pilots form a class of men who are chosen by examination and may only charge according to scale. This is by no means to say that the law against “illicit piloting” is not very frequently set at defiance. It is, in spite of penalties; for, given a ship’s captain of a saving disposition and a Deal boatman of pressing needs--and the boatmen of Deal are too often in that category--a bargain is sure to be struck between the two, when they are in hailing distance of one another, somewhere out yonder in the Channel, for something under official rates; and although the offender be not, in fact, licensed and has never gone up for examination, he commonly knows the coast round between Deal and Gravesend, and all its many shoals, swins, and swatchways, as well as the certificated pilots, though it is not in human nature--in official human nature, at any rate--to allow the truth of it.