Chapter XIII The Ramsgate Lifeboat
Not once or twice in our rough island story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
A book bearing the title of Heroes of the Goodwin Sands, would hardly be complete without a chapter devoted to the celebrated Ramsgate lifeboat and her brave coxswain and crew. To them, by virtue of Mr. Gilmore’s well-known book, the title of Storm Warriors almost of right belongs, but I am well aware they will not deny their daring and generous rivals of Deal a share in that stirring appellation, and I know that their friends, the Deal boatmen, on their part gladly admit that the Ramsgate lifeboatmen are also among the ‘Heroes of the Goodwin Sands.’
The first lifeboat placed in Ramsgate was called the Northumberland. The next was called the Bradford, in memory of the interesting fact that the money required to build and equip her, about L600, was subscribed in an hour on the Bradford Exchange, and within the hour the news was flashed to London. Since then the rescues effected by the Ramsgate lifeboat have become household words wherever the English tongue is spoken.
Nor less celebrated than the lifeboat is her mighty and invaluable ally the steam-tug Aid, so often captained in the storm-blast by Alfred Page, her brave and experienced master. This powerful tug boat has steam up night and day, ready to rush the lifeboat out into the teeth of any gale, when it would be otherwise impossible for the lifeboat to get out of the harbour. The names of Coxswain Jarman, and more recently of Coxswain Charles Fish, the hero of the Indian Chief rescue, will long thrill the hearts of Englishmen and Englishwomen who read that wondrous story of the sea. It may be fairly said that no storms that blow in these latitudes can keep the Ramsgate tug and lifeboat back, when summoned to the rescue.
I had the privilege of standing on Ramsgate pier-head on November 11, 1891, when amidst the cheers of the crowd, who indeed could hardly keep their feet, the tug and lifeboat slowly struggled out against the great gale which blew that day. The lifeboat is towed a long way astern of the tug-boat, to the full scope of a sixty fathom, five inch, white Manilla hawser, and on the day I speak of, as the lifeboat felt the giant strain of the tug-boat and was driven into the seas outside the harbour, every wave broke into wild spray mast high over the lifeboat and into the faces of her crew.
The crew are obtained from a body of 150 enrolled volunteers. The first ten of these who get into the lifeboat when the rocket signal goes up from the pier-head form on that occasion the crew of the lifeboat. In addition to these the two coxswains, by virtue of their office, raise the total number to twelve. The celebrated coxswain, Charles Fish, was also harbour boatman at Ramsgate, and slept in a watch-house at the end of the pier in a hammock. He was always first aroused by the watch to learn that rockets were going up from some distant lightship signifying ‘a ship on the Goodwins.’ With him rested the decision to send up the answering rocket from the pier-head, upon seeing which the police and coastguard called the lifeboat crew. Then would come the rush for a place.
The coxswain had to decide what signals were to be regarded as false alarms, and there are many such; sometimes, it is said in Ramsgate, the flash of the Calais lighthouse is taken for a ship burning flares and in distress on the Goodwins, and draws the signal guns from the lightships. Sometimes a hayrick on fire is mistaken for a vessel’s appealing signal; sometimes the signals, of enormous and unnecessary size, which the French trawlers burn to each other at night around the Goodwins, set both the lightships and lifeboats all astray; and the coxswains of the lifeboats, both at Ramsgate and Deal, have to be on their guard against these delusive agencies. As the coxswains in both of these places are men of exceptional shrewdness and ability, mistakes are few and far between. The coxswain of a lifeboat ought to have the eye of a hawk and the heart of a lion, and, I will add, the tenderness and pity of a woman.
Never was the possession of these qualities more finely exhibited than by coxswain Charles Fish and the crew of the Ramsgate lifeboat in the rescue of the survivors of the Indian Chief from the Long Sand on January 5 and 6, 1881. The following account has been taken by permission from the Lifeboat Journal for February, 1881, including the extracts from the Daily Telegraph and the admirable engraving.
The accompanying graphic accounts of the wreck of the Indian Chief, and of the noble rescue of a portion of her crew by the Bradford self-righting lifeboat, stationed at Ramsgate, appeared in the Daily Telegraph on January 11 and 18, as related by the mate of the vessel and the coxswain of the lifeboat. The lifeboats of the National Lifeboat Institution stationed at Aldborough (Suffolk), Clacton and Harwich (Essex), also proceeded to the scene of danger, but unfortunately were unable to reach the wreck. Happily the Bradford lifeboat persevered, amidst difficulties, hardships, and dangers hardly ever surpassed in the lifeboat service; but her reward was indeed great in saving eleven of our fellow-creatures, who must have succumbed, as their mates had a few hours previously, to their terrible exposure in bitterly cold weather for nearly thirty hours.
Indeed, Captain Braine, the zealous Ramsgate harbour-master, states in an official letter of January 8, in reference to this noble service, that—
‘Of all the meritorious services performed by the Ramsgate tug and lifeboat, I consider this one of the best. The decision the coxswain and crew arrived at to remain till daylight, which was in effect to continue for fourteen hours cruising about with the sea continually breaking over them in a heavy gale and tremendous sea, proves, I consider, their gallantry and determination to do their duty. The coxswain and crew of the lifeboat speak in the highest terms of her good qualities; they state that when sailing across the Long Sand, after leaving the wreck, the seas were tremendous, and the boat behaved most admirably. Some of the shipwrecked crew have since stated that they were fearful, on seeing the frightful-looking seas they were passing through, that they were in more danger in the lifeboat than when lashed to the mast of their sunken ship, as they thought it impossible for any boat to live through such a sea.’
The following are the newspaper accounts of a lifeboat service that will always be memorable in the annals of the services of the lifeboats of the National Lifeboat Institution; and many and many such services reflect honour alike on the humanity of the age in which we live, and on the organisation and liberality which have prompted and called them into existence.
‘On the afternoon of Thursday, January 6, I made one of a great crowd assembled on the Ramsgate east pier to witness the arrival of the survivors of the crew of a large ship which had gone ashore on the Long Sand early on the preceding Wednesday morning. A heavy gale had been blowing for two days from the north and east; it had moderated somewhat at noon, but still stormed fiercely over the surging waters, though a brilliant blue sky arched overhead and a sun shone that made the sea a dazzling surface of broken silver all away in the south and west. Plunging bows under as she came along, the steamer towed the lifeboat through a haze of spray; but amid this veil of foam, the flags of the two vessels denoting that shipwrecked men were in the boat streamed like well-understood words from the mastheads. The people crowded thickly about the landing-steps when the lifeboat entered the harbour. Whispers flew from mouth to mouth. Some said the rescued men were Frenchmen, others that they were Danes, but all were agreed that there was a dead body among them. One by one the survivors came along the pier, the most dismal procession it was ever my lot to behold—eleven live but scarcely living men, most of them clad in oilskins, and walking with bowed backs, drooping heads and nerveless arms. There was blood on the faces of some, circled with a white encrustation of salt, and this same salt filled the hollows of their eyes and streaked their hair with lines which looked like snow. The first man, who was the chief mate, walked leaning heavily on the arm of the kindly-hearted harbour-master, Captain Braine. The second man, whose collar-bone was broken, moved as one might suppose a galvanised corpse would. A third man’s wan face wore a forced smile, which only seemed to light up the piteous, underlying expression of the features. They were all saturated with brine; they were soaked with sea-water to the very marrow of the bones. Shivering, and with a stupefied rolling of the eyes, their teeth clenched, their chilled fingers pressed into the palms of their hands, they passed out of sight. As the last man came I held my breath; he was alive when taken from the wreck, but had died in the boat. Four men bore him on their shoulders, and a flag flung over the face mercifully concealed what was most shocking of the dreadful sight; but they had removed his boots and socks to chafe his feet before he died, and had slipped a pair of mittens over the toes, which left the ankles naked. This was the body of Howard Primrose Fraser, the second mate of the lost ship, and her drowned captain’s brother. I had often met men newly-rescued from shipwreck, but never remember having beheld more mental anguish and physical suffering than was expressed in the countenances and movements of these eleven sailors. Their story as told to me is a striking and memorable illustration of endurance and hardship on the one hand, and of the finest heroical humanity on the other, in every sense worthy to be known to the British public. I got the whole narrative direct from the chief mate, Mr. William Meldrum Lloyd, and it shall be related here as nearly as possible in his own words.