THE LOSS OF THE "LINDA," AND THE RACE TO THE RESCUE.
"A sudden crash, the mast is gone,
And with it goes all hope;
No longer can the fated crew
With the surging waters cope.
"Now they commit their souls to God,
As men about to die;
For vain seems all the help of man
In this extremity."
_G. Ward._
At daylight, in the morning after the destruction of the _Albion_
lugger, the weather grows worse and worse; the grey misty gloom that
hangs over the sea is scarcely broken by the swift gleams of light that
find a faint way through the fast drifting clouds.
And the weather continues to grow more tempestuous still as the night
grows on. Many ships come scudding northward before the gale; they make
the South Sand Head light, and steer their course for the narrow Gull
channel that runs between the Goodwin and Brake Sands. The South Sands
Head light-ship is moored at the southern extremity of the Goodwin
Sands; it is about three miles from the South Foreland light.
In thick misty weather, which so often prevails in the Channel during
westerly gales in winter time, it is often very difficult for vessels to
make either of these lights.
And as the edge of the Goodwin Sands is very steep at this part, and has
deep water close to it, keeping the lead going scarcely affords
sufficient protection, for between two casts of the lead a vessel
running fast may well pass out of deep water on to the Sands, and there
be lost.
So it often happens that vessels running through the Downs in such
weather, suddenly find themselves in a position of great peril.
On the night in question, the men on board the light-ship keep an
especially vigilant watch, as the darkness of the night adds to the
gloom which spreads its folds over the raging sea, and the direction and
force of the wind, and the many ships that are flying before the gale,
suggest the probability of disaster.
About midnight, the men on watch make out, in the lift of the mist, a
fine brig not far from them, driving before the gale, and making
straight for the Sands; the alarm is given, and a gun at once fired to
give the unfortunate crew warning of their danger.
The look-out men fancy, by the changing of the position of the brig's
lights, that the crew are making an effort to alter the vessel's course,
and to weather the Sands; but it is too late! nothing can save her! The
crew of the light-ship lose sight of her in the darkness, and make all
ready to signal for the life-boat to come to the rescue of her crew;
they wait a minute or two, watching, in the direction they think the
brig must strike, for the usual signals of distress, and almost
immediately see the bright flare of a tar-barrel; they fire a signal-gun
from the light-ship, and its warning voice booms loudly above the storm;
then they send up rockets; the shipwrecked are thus encouraged to hope,
while the ready boatmen on shore are called to action.
The signals are seen at the Walmer life-boat station, one mile from
Deal; and at the Kingsdown station, three miles from Deal; at both
places the call is promptly and eagerly obeyed; the life-boats are got
ready with all haste; they are speedily manned and launched, and
struggle their way through the boiling surf, which is rolling upon the
beach. They spread all the canvas they can stagger under, and the two
boats fly before the gale straight for the light-ship; there they learn
the position in which the signals of distress were seen, and cruise
round the edge of the Goodwin in all the fierce tumble of sea, and skirt
the ring of surf which marks where the rollers are breaking with
terrible force upon the Sands; but they can obtain no guide, no clue to
where the wreck is; no signal light shines out of that drear darkness
pleading for help, and no sound can the men hear, listen as they will,
other than the ceaseless roar of the storm. Still the brave boatmen will
not abandon the search, and for some hours the boats continue their vain
efforts.
The crew of the Kingsdown boat determine at last that further search is
useless, and as it is not possible for them to beat back to their
distant station in the teeth of the gale, they run for Ramsgate,
arriving there just before dawn. The Walmer boat continues cruising in
the neighbourhood of the Sands until after daylight, when her crew,
seeing no signs of the wreck, also determine to make for the shore.
The seas have been steadily increasing in violence, and are now running
very high, and as they curl and break, the crest of each wave is caught
by the fierce wind, and dispersed in a cloud of spray.
Bravely the boat sails on through the troubled seas; she is constantly
overrun by the waves, and filled with water, but each time she speedily
regains all her buoyancy, and bounds on over the seas. The men have
almost too much confidence in her, as if no amount of sea and wind could
possibly capsize her; they carry on a press of canvas, until the stout
masts bend and the ropes strain again, and they make the sheet fast; but
now a fierce huge wave comes rushing along, catches the boat broadside
on, lifts the boat high on its crest, and then completely curls her over
and passes, leaving the boat capsized, and all the men struggling in the
water.
But it is however only a passing victory, after all, that the sea can
boast over the life-boat; at once she rights herself, gets rid of the
water that fills her, and rides upon the seas as bravely as ever.
Happily all the men have on their cork jackets, and in them they float
breast high; never was there such a wild dance as they now seem to
dance; tossed high and poised for a moment on the cone of a leaping
wave, again engulfed in the hollow trough of a sea, with a wall of
tumbling water all around; rising and falling in quick succession, their
arms beating broken time as they struggle to swim towards the boat,
which begins to drift fast away; it is fortunate that some of the men
have retained hold of the life-lines, the ends of which are fastened to
the boat, by these they haul themselves alongside her, and all soon
succeed in getting on board.
Away again through the Downs, across the high rolling seas, making for
the shore, but their troubles are not yet at an end; a blast of wind,
fiercer than its fellows, strikes the sail, the boat careens over; at
that moment a huge wave leaps on the boat, strikes it with such force
and so high, that it fills the sail with water and drives the boat
bodily over, and the second time she is capsized, and the men, before
they have recovered from the exhaustion caused by their former struggle,
are the second time plunged into the sea, to find themselves battling
for their lives with the waves. The cork jackets keep them afloat as
before, but the waves run over them, and they are almost smothered in
clouds of foam, until they are thoroughly worn out by the rush and beat
of the seas which break over their heads. Up and down, tumbling here and
there in the turmoil of the seas, pale and gasping for breath, almost
too faint to make any struggle to regain the boat, becoming rapidly
unconscious; this time the wild dance mid the raging seas becomes truly
too much like a dance of death.
Happily a powerful Deal lugger is near the scene of the disaster; her
crew at once do their best to pick up and return to the life-boat those
of the men who are themselves unable to gain it.
The life-boat, self-righted, is floating high on the waves quite ready
for action as soon as her crew can again take charge of her, and speed
her on in her course.
The men are, at last, all once more on board, the boat is again got
under weigh, and speeds safely to the land.
But how, all this while, fared the unfortunate crew of the vessel, in
the vain effort to render assistance to whom the life-boat men had
incurred such hardship and peril.
The unfortunate ship was the brig _Linda_: the captain fancied the ship
was in a safe course, free from any immediate danger; the storm fog was
too thick for them to see the land, or any of the numerous signal lights
that guard the coast, but they kept the lead going, and sped on before
the gale; suddenly all hands are alike startled and terrified by the
loud report of a gun fired quite close to them, and at seeing the light
of a light-vessel very near; they at once realize their danger, for they
know that the dread Goodwin Sands must be right under their lee; with
frantic haste they attempt to wear the ship, but it is too late; as she
feels the helm she plunges in among the surf, crashes upon the Sands,
and the great seas begin to fly over her; the ship must be lost, it is
beyond all hope that she can be saved; is there any hope for the crew?
They will not despair, or be lost without making what small efforts they
are able to obtain assistance; they know, from the violence with which
the ship rises and thumps upon the Sands, that she must very speedily go
to pieces. They get a tar-barrel, fill it with canvas, grease, and rags,
light it, and have the satisfaction of seeing it flare up with a
brilliant flame; that, at all events, must sufficiently penetrate the
surrounding darkness and gloom to make known their distress to the
neighbouring light-vessel.
Again, and almost immediately, they hear the loud boom of the gun; but
as previously it seemed to them the signal of death, so now it affords
them a faint--a very faint hope; rockets too are fired by the
light-vessel; surely the signals will be heard and seen on shore, and
the life-boat will come out in search of them; but where will they be
then? There is no time--no time; the seas are washing over the deck, the
fierce fire of the tar-barrel is at once extinguished, and the men
hasten to take refuge from the sweeping seas in the cross-trees and
shrouds of the masts. Seven men spring to the foremast shrouds, and
climb to the cross-trees, the captain and four men cling to the
mainmast; time after time the vessel lifts and falls with a crash that
wrenches her from stem to stern, and makes all her timbers groan and
rend, and nearly shakes the sailors from their hold. Now the ship begins
to work and writhe, the timbers break with loud reports, planks are
wrenched from her side in the fierce tear of the sea, stout iron bolts
are torn from their hold and twisted like so much thread--the ship is
breaking up fast; the masts sway about, the men have to hold on their
hardest to prevent being shaken into the sea, so are they tossed and
swung about in the roll of the mast and the sway of the vessel. Each
wave leaping higher than those that have gone before, seems to claim
them for its prey; everything on the deck is swept away; the deck itself
opens, the water gets down into the hold, and soon the deck breaks up,
and pieces float away in the wash of the sea; the bulwarks are torn off,
and now a piece of the side of the vessel is wrenched away; the vessel
must be torn to fragments in a few short minutes, and death seems very
near to all the crew.
A tremendous wave rushes over the wreck, a crash louder than a thunder
peal; the foremast has broken off close to the deck, it falls over; a
few loud despairing cries, and the seven poor fellows who clung to the
mast are hurled into the sea, and are at once lost in the wild rage of
water.
The five men on the mainmast shudder in their terror and despair, and
cling closer and closer to the mast as it sways and jerks from side to
side; there may be a few minutes yet to live; they think of home and
wife and children, and hold on the more convulsively while the seas
break over them with increasing violence; it takes but a short time, and
the wreck beneath them seems in absolute fragments; the poop-deck is
wrenched up, and a large piece of it is torn away; at the next sea the
wreck heels over, the mainmast is carried away, and the captain and the
four men are hurled from it into the sea; the captain is thrown against
a large fragment of deck with such force that both his legs are broken;
he, however, manages to hold on to the piece of wreck, the other four
men are also swept to it, and there cling; they find themselves
surrounded by the hundred fragments of wreck into which the stout brig
has been so rapidly torn.
The tide sweeps away the piece of deck to which the five men are so
desperately clinging--away from the scene of the sad, swift, tragedy,
and, by God's mercy, into an eddy of the current away from the surf and
breakers which are thundering down in all their fury upon the Sands, and
which would have swept the poor sailors at once to destruction if their
frail raft had come within their reach. Away in the rough but not now
broken seas the men are borne, their only hope the shattered, heaving
piece of wreck that forms their raft; the horrors of the dark night are
added to by the roar of the breakers as they crash down upon the Sands,
and the poor sailors know not but that at any moment they may be met by
some fresh eddy of the swift tide, and swept into the midst of that
fatal surf. The fierce gale howls over them, the men are exhausted and
hopeless, but they manage to lash the captain to the piece of wreck, his
two broken legs make him faint and sick with agony; and on and on they
float during the long dreary hours of the night.
They pass the Gull light-ship, watch its bright and, to them, mocking
light, then they are carried to the north-east of the Sands; there they
meet the changing tide, and it sets them to the southward, and, to their
great joy, away from the fatal Goodwin, away in the direction of Calais,
the seas still wash over them. The agony of the captain is almost
unendurable, as every wash of the sea, every heave of the frail piece of
wreck jars his broken legs; the men have their nails torn from their
fingers with the desperate energy with which they clutch the smooth
timbers of the piece of deck on which they are lying. Hour after hour
passes, and for fifteen hours they thus float about, cold and wet, and
wounded, and faint with hunger and thirst; the poor fellows become
almost unconscious, and can only just manage to hold on mechanically to
their frail support; the morning passes, and they have no energy to look
for a passing sail, and no means of signalling if they saw one.
Suddenly a loud shout surprises them, and they lift their heads and see,
with boundless joy, a large cutter almost alongside the raft; they seem
called back from death, and begin to arouse themselves from the swoon
into which they were all so rapidly sinking.
The cutter is a pilot-boat from Antwerp; they are got on board her not
without much difficulty, so helpless are they, and so high is the sea
still running; the kind-hearted Belgians have every pity for the most
miserable condition of the poor men, and do all they can to restore
them; as soon as possible the pilots land them at Deal, and they are
taken to the hospital and receive all possible medical care and
attention; they soon revive, the captain's broken limbs are set, and he
ultimately recovers; and while they mourn over the sad loss of their
comrades, they cannot feel too much wonder, or be too deeply thankful,
for their own most marvellous escape.