The townspeople of Deal, in particular, were blamed for their inhumanity in leaving many to their fate who could have been rescued. Boatmen went off to the sands for booty, some of whom would not listen to poor wretches who might have been saved. Many unfortunate shipwrecked persons could be seen, by the aid of glasses, walking on the Goodwin Sands in despairing postures, knowing that they would, as Defoe puts it, “be washed into another world” at the reflux of the tide. The Mayor of Deal, Mr. Thomas Powell, asked the Custom House officers to take out their boats and endeavour to save the lives of some of these unfortunates, but they utterly refused. The mayor then offered, from his own pocket, five shillings a head for all saved, and a number of fishermen and others volunteered, and succeeded in bringing 200 persons on shore, who would have been lost in half an hour afterwards. The Queen’s agent for sick and wounded seamen would not furnish a penny for their lodging or food, and the good mayor supplied all of them with what they required. Several died, and he was compelled to bury them at his own expense; he furnished a large number with money to pay their way to London. He received no thanks from the Government of the day, but some long time after was re-imbursed the large sums he had expended. [Illustration: THE STORM IN THE THAMES AT WAPPING.] “Nor,” says Defoe, “can the damage suffered in the river of Thames be forgot. It was a strange sight to see all the ships in the river blown away, the Pool was so clear, that, as I remember, not above four ships were left between the upper part of Wapping and Ratcliffe Cross, for the tide being up at the time when the storm blew with the greatest violence, no anchors or landfast, no cables or moorings, would hold them, the chains which lay across the river for the mooring of ships, all gave way. “The ships breaking loose thus, it must be a strange sight to see the hurry and confusion of it; and, as some ships had nobody at all on board, and a great many had none but a man or boy just to look after the vessel, there was nothing to be done but to let every vessel drive whither and how she would. “Those who know the reaches of the river, and how they lie, know well enough that the wind being at south-west-westerly, the vessels would naturally drive into the bite or bay from Ratcliffe Cross to Limehouse Hole, for that the river winding about again from thence towards the new dock at Deptford runs almost due south-west, so that the wind blew down one reach and up another, and the ships must of necessity drive into the bottom of the angle between both. “This was the case, and as the place is not large, and the number of ships very great, the force of the wind had driven them so into one another, and laid them so upon one another, as it were in heaps, that I think a man may safely defy all the world to do the like.