The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-01-22 00:00:00

THE "COXSWAIN'S YARN."

"News had been brought to Ramsgate, as you know, sir,
that a large ship was ashore on the Long Sand, and Captain
Braine, the harbour-master, immediately ordered the tug
and lifeboat to proceed to her assistance. • It was blowing a
heavy gale of wind, though it came much harder some hours
afterwards ; and the moment we were clear of the piers we
felt the sin. Our boat is considered a very fine one I know
there is no better on the coasts, and there are only two in
Great Britain bigger. She was presented to the town by the
people •,f Bradford, and is called after that place.
But it. is ridiculous to talk of bigness when it means
only forty-two feet lour, and when a sea is raging
round you heavy enough to swamp a line-of-battle
ship. I had my eye on the tug—named the Vulcan,
sir—when she met the first of the seas, and she was thrown
up like a ball, and you could see her starboard paddle re-
volv:nggin the air high enough for a coach to pass under:
and when she struck the hollow she dished a sea over her
bows that left only the stern of her showing. We were
towing head to wind, and the water was flying over the boat
in clouds. Every man of us waS soaked to the skin, in
spite of our overalls, by the time we had brought the Rams-
gate Sands abeam; but there were a good many miles to
be gone over before we could fetch the Knock Light-
ship, and so you see, sir, it was much too early for
us to take notice that things were not over and above com-
fortable. We got out the sail cover—a piece of tarpaulin—
to make a shelter of, and rigged it up against the mast,
seizing it to the burtons ; but it hadn't been up two minutes
when a heavy sea hit and washed it right aft in rags.; so
there was nothing to do but to hold on to the thwarts and
shake ourselves when the water came over. I never re-
member a colder wind. I don't say this because I hap-
pened to be out in it. Old Tom Cooper, one of the best
boatmen in all England, sir, who made one of our crew,
agreed with me that it was more like a flaying machine
than a tatural gale of wind. The feel of it in the
face was like Leing gnawed by a dog. I only wonder it didn't
freeze the tears it fetched out of our eyes. We were heading
N.E.' and the wind was blowing from N.E. The North Fore-
land had been a bit of shelter, like; but when we had gone
clear of that, and the ocean lay ahead of us, the seas were
furious -they seemed miles long, sir, like an Atlantic sea,
and it was enough to make a man hold his breath to watch
how the tug wallowed and tumbled into them But
there was to be no giving up With the tug's crew any more
than with the life-boat's; she held on, and we followed.
"Somewhere abreast of the Elbow Buoy a smack that was
running ported her helm to speak us. Iler skipper had just
time to yell out, vessel on the Long Sand ' and we to
wave our hands, when she was astern and out of sight in a
haze of spray. Presently a collier named the Fanny with
her foretopgallant yard gone passed us. She was cracking
on to bring the news of the wreck to Ramsgate, and was
making a heavy sputter under her topsail% and foresail.
They raised a cheer, for they knew our errand, and then like
the smack, in a minute she was astern and gone

"By half-past four o'clock in the afternoon it was drawing
on dusk, and about that hour we sighted the revolving
light of the Kentish Knock Lightship, and a little after live
we were pretty close to her. She is a big red hulled boat,
with the words 'Kentish Knock' written in lung white
letters on her sides, and, dark as it was, we could see her
flung up, and rushing down Mt() roll her over and ove • ; and
the way she pitched and went out of sight, and then ran up on
the black heights of water, gave me a bettet notion of the
fearfulness of that sea than I had got by watching the tug or
noticing our own lively dancing. The tug hailed her first,
and two men looking over her side answered; but what they
said didn't reach us in the' lifeboat. Then the steamer
towed us abreast, but the tide caught our warp and gave us
a sheer that brought us much too close alongside of her.
When the sea took her she seemed to hang right over us,
and the sight of that great dark hull, looking as if, when it
fell, it must come right atop of us, made us want to sheer
off, I can tell you. I sung out, Have you seen the ship?'
And one of the men bawled back, 'Yes.' 'flow does
she bear ? " Nor'-west by north.' Have you seen
anything go to her ? ' The answer I caught was, A
boat.' Some of our men said, the answer was, A
lifeboat,' but most of us only heard, A boat.'
The tug was now towing ahead, and we went
Past the lightship, but ten minutes after Tom Friend sings
out, 'They're burning a light aboard her I ' and looking
astern I saw they had fired a red signal light that was
blazing over the bulwark in a long shower of sparks. The
tug put her helm down to return, and we were brought
broadside to the sea Then we felt the power of those waves,
sir. It looked a wonder that we were not rolled over and
drowned, every man of us. We held on with our teeth
clenched, and twice the boat was filled, and the water up to
our throats. 'Look out for it, men ! ' was always the cry.
But every upward send emptied the noble little craft,
like pulling out a plug in a washbasin, an in a few minutes
we were again alongside the light-vessel. This time there
were six or seven men looking over the side. What 010 you
want?' we shouted. 'Did you see the Sunk Lightship's
rocket?' they all yelled out together. Yes. Did you
say you saw a boat?' 'No,' they answered, showing -ve
had mistaken their first reply. On which I shouted to the
tug, 'Pull us round to the Long Sand Head Buoy 'and then
we were under weigh again, meeting the tremendous seas.
There was only a little bit of moon, westering fast, and what
there was of it showed but now and again, as the heavy
clouds opened and let the light of it down. Indeed, it
was very dark, though there was some kind of glimmer in
the ffam which enabled us to mark the tug ahead. Bitter
cold work, Charlie,' says old Tom Cooper to me: 'but,' says
he. 'it's colder for the poor wretches aboard the wreck, if
they're alive to feel it. The thought of them made our own
sufferings small, and we kept looking and looking into
the darkness around, but there was nothing to be spied,
only now and again, and long whiles apart the flash of a
rocket in the sky from the Sunk Lightship. Meanwhile,
from time to time, we burnt a hand-signal
They burned hand-signals on the tug, too, but nothing
came of them, There was no sign of the wreck, and staring
over the edge of the boat, with the spray and the darkness,
was like trying to see through the bottom of a well. So
we began to talk the matter over, and Tom- Cooper says,
We had better stop here and wait for daylight.' 'l'm for
stopping,' says Steve Goldsmith; and Bob Penny says,
'We're here to fetch the wreck, and fetch it we will, if
we wait a week." Right,' says I; and all hands be-
ing agreed—without any fuss, sir, though I dare say
most of our hearts were at home and our wishes alongside
our hearths and the warm fires in them—we all of us put
our hands to our months and made one great cry of Vulcan
ahoy ! ' The tug dropped astern. What do you want?'
sings out the skipper, when he gets within speaking distance.
'There's nothing to be seen of the vessel, and so we had
better lie-to for the night,' I answered. Very good,' he says,
and then the steamer, without another word from her crew,
and the water tumbling over her bows like cliffs, resumed her
station ahead, her paddles revolving just fast enough to keep
her from dropping astern. As coxswain of the lifeboat
sir, I take no credit for resolving to lie-to all night. But I
am bound to say a word for the two crews, who made up
their minds without a murmur, without a second's hesita-
tion, to face the bitter cold and fierce s,as of that long
'winter darkness, that they might be on the spot to help
their fellow-creatures when the dawn broke and showed
them where they were. I know there are scores of sailors
round our coasts who would have done likewise. Only
read, sir, what was done in the North, Newcastle
way, during the gales last October. But surely, sir,
no matter who may be the men who do what
they think their duty, whether they belong to the North or
the South, they deserve the encouragement of praise A
man likes to feel when he has done his best that his fellow-
men think well of Isis work. If I had not been one of that
crew I should wish to say more; but no false pride shall
make me say less, sir, and I thank God for the resolution He
put into us, and for the strength He gave us to keep that
resolution. _ . -

"All that we had to do now was to make ourselves as com-
fortable as we could We turned to and got the
foresail aft, and made a kind of roof of it. This was no easy
job, for the wind was so furious that wrestling even with
that bit of a sail was like fighting with a steam engine.
When it was up ten of us snugged ourselves away
under it, and two men stood on the aftergrating thwart
keeping a look-out, with the life-lines round them
As the seas flew over the boat the water tilled the sail that
was stretched overhead and bellied it down upon us, and
that gave us less room, so that some had to lie flat on' their
faces; but when this bellying got too bad we'd all get up and
make one heave with our backs under the sail, and chuck the
water out of it in that way Nothing was said, and
so we lay ill a heap, hugging one another tor warmth, until
the morning broke.. . . . .

"The fir si man to look to leeward was old Tom's son—
young Tom Cooper—and in a moment he bawled out, 'There
she is !' pointing like a madman. The morning had only
just broke, and the light was grey and dim, and down in
the west it still seemed to be night; the air was full of spray,
and scarcely were we a-top of a sea than we were rusning
like an arrow into the hollow again, so that young Tom must
have had eyes like a hawk to have seen her. Yet the moment
he sung out and pointed, all hands cried out, There she
is ! ' But what 'vas it, sir ? Only a mast about three
miles off—just one single mast sticking up out of the
white water, as thin and faint as a spider's line. Yet that
was the ship we had been waiting all night to see. There
she was, and my heart Thumped in my ears the moment my
eye fell on that mast But Lord, sir, the fearful sea that
was raging between her and us I for where we were was
deepish water, and the waves regular; but all about the
wreck was the Sand and the water on it was running in
fury all sorts of ways, rushing up in tall columns of foam as
high as a ship's mainyard, and thundering so loudly that.
though we were to wind-ward, we could hear it above the gale
and the boiling of the seas around us. It might have shook
even a man who wanted to die to look at it, if he didn't know
what the Brad ford can go through. I ran my eye over the
men's faces. "Let slip the tow-rope,' bawled Dick Goldsmith.
'Up foresail.' I shouted, and two minutes after we had
sighted that mast we were dead before the wind, our
storm foresail taut as a drum-skin, ourboat's stem heading
full for the broken seas and the lonely stranded vessel in the
Intelsat of them. It was well that there was something in front
of us to keep our eyes that way, and that none of us
thought of looking astern, or the sight of the high and
frightful seas which raged after us might have played old
Harry with weak nerves. Some of them came with such
force that they leapt right over the boat, and the air was
dark with water flying a dozen yards high over us in broad
solid sheets, which fell with a roar like the explosion of a
gun ten and a dozen fathoms ahead. But we took
no notice of these seas even when we were in the
thick 'of the broken waters, and all the hands hold-
ing on to the thwarts for dear life. Every thought
was upqn the mast that was growing bigger and
clearer, and sometimes when. a sea hove us high
we could just see the hull, with the water as
white as milk flying over it. The mast was what they call
' bright,' that is, scraped and varnished, and we knew that
if there was anything living aboard that doomed ship we
should find it on that mast ; and we strained our eyes with
all our might, but could see nothing, that looked like a man
But on a sudden I caught sight of a length of canvas stream-
ing out of the via, and all of us seeing it, we raised a shout,
and a few minutes after we saw the men. They were all
dressed in yellow oilskins, and the mast being of that
colour was the reason why sve did not see them
sooner. They looked a whole mob of people, and
one of us roared out, All hands are there, men I' and
I answered, 'Aye, the whole ship's company, and we'll have
them all !' for though, as we afterwards knew, there were
only eleven of them, yet, as I have said, they looked a great
number huddled together in that top, and I made sure the
whole ship's company were there. By this time we were
pretty close to the ship, and a fearful wreck she lurked,
with her mainmast and mizenmast gone, and her bulwarks
washed away, and great lumps of timlser and
ripping cur, of her and going overboard with every
pour of planking ripping
seas. We let go our anchor fifteen fathoms to
we saw the poor fellows
windward of her, and as we did so N
wreck
unlashing themselves an
rts? h d droppin,g one by one over the top
teorettieonen
ultcaol trkovtoe
bend a piece of wood on to a line and throw it overboard for
oi nte under leeh rigging.
gs
Lug.) , lAsshowucte veered
e
st, and I feared for the poor half,perishest creatures again
us to lay hold of. They did this. but they had to get aft
firand again as I saw them scrambling along the ee
stoppiag and holding on as the mountainous seas swept over
l
the hull, and then creeping a bit further aft in the pause.
There was a horrible muddle of spars and torn canvas and
rigging under her lee, but we could not guess what a fearful
sight was there until our hawser having been made fast to
the wreck, we had hauled the lifeboat close under her
quarter. There looked to he a whole score of dead bodies
knocking about among the spars. It stainned me for a
moment, for I hail thought all hands were in the foretop,
and never dreamt of so many lives having been lost.
Seventeen were drowned, and there they were, most
of them, and the body of the captain lashed to the
head of the mizenmast, so as to look as if he were leaning
over it, his head stiff upright and his eyes watching us, and
the stir of the seas made him appear to be struggling to get
to us. I thought he was alive, and cried to the men to
hand him in, but some one said he was killed when the
mizenmast fell, and had been dead four or five hours. This
was dreadful shock; I never remember the like of it. I

I can't hardly get. those fixed eyes out of my siglit, sir,. and I
lie awake for hours of a night, and so does Tom Cooper, and
others of us, . seeing those bodies torn by the spars and
bleeding, floating in the water alongside the miserable
I ship.
"Well, sir, the rest this 'lamentable story has been
told by theieitb of the vessel, and 1 don't know that I
could aid anything to it: We saved the eleven men, and I
have since heard that all of them are doing well. If I may
'speak, as coxswain of the lifeboat. I would like to say that all
h mds concerned in this rescue, them in the tug as well as the
crew of the boat, did what might be expected of English sailors
—for such they are,whether you call some of them, boatmen or
not ; and I know in my heart, and sa,y it without fear, that
from the hour of leaving Ramsgate Harbour to the moment
when we sighted the wreck's mast, there was only one
thought in all of us, and that was that the Almighty would
give us the strength and direct us how to save the lives of
the poor fellows to whose assistance we had been sent."