THE FREDRIK CARL
There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.
On October 30, 1885, the small Danish schooner, the Fredrik Carl, ran
aground on the Goodwin Sands. She struck on the outer part of the
North Sand Head, about eight miles from the nearest land, and two miles
from the well-known Whistle Buoy, which ever and always sends forth its
mournful note of warning--too often unavailing.
Summoned by the lightship's guns and rockets to the rescue--for the red
three-masted North Sand Head lightship was only two miles from the
wreck--the Ramsgate lifeboat, towed by the steam-tug Aid, came to the
spot, and, after a long trial, failed to get the schooner afloat, and,
having taken her crew out of her, returned to the shore.
At low water the next day, October 31, the vessel lay high and dry on
the Goodwin Sands. She was tolerably upright, having bedded herself
slightly in the sand, and all her sails were swinging loose as the wind
chose to sway them. There was no rent in her side that could be seen,
and to all appearance she was safe and sound--only she was stranded on
the Goodwins, from which _vestigia nulla retrorsum_. As in the Cave of
Cacus, once there, you are there for ever, and few are the cases in
which vessels fast aground on the Goodwins ever again get away from the
great ship-swallower.
[Illustration: The anchor of death. From a photograph by W. H.
Franklin.]
The schooner had a cargo of oats, and if she could be got off would be
a very valuable prize to her salvors. But 'if'--and we all know that
'there's much virtue in your "if".'
However, when morning broke on October 31, many of the Deal boatmen,
whose keen eyes saw a possibility of a 'hovel,' came in their powerful
'galley punts' to see about this 'if,' and try if they could not
convert it into a reality. Accordingly, two of the Deal boats, taking
different directions, the Wanderer and the Gipsy King, approached the
Goodwin Sands near the north-west buoy.
On this day there was just enough sea curling and tumbling on the edge
of the sands to make landing on them difficult even for the skilled
Deal boatmen. For the inexperienced it would have been dangerous in
the extreme.
There were four Deal men in each boat, and they only got ashore with
difficulty, one of the boats' cables having parted; and they had all to
jump out and wade waist-deep in the surf, as they dared not let their
weighty boats touch the bottom.
Two boatmen remained in each boat, for neglect of this precaution has
caused accidents frightful to think of, on the Goodwins; and the
remaining four boatmen, daring fellows of the sea-dog and amphibious
type, walked across the sands, dripping with the brine. As a matter of
fact, two of them were not only Deal boatmen, but were sailors who had
been round and round the world, and one was an old and first-rate
man-o'-war's man.
Sometimes they met a deep gully with six feet of water in it, which
they had to make a circuit round, or to swim; and farther on a shallow
pond, in the midst of which would be a deep-blue 'fox-fall,' perhaps
twenty feet deep of sea-water. Then, having avoided this, more dry,
hard sand, rippled by the ebbing tide, and then a dry, deep cleft--for
the Goodwins are full of surprises--and then came more wading.
Wading on the Goodwins conveys a very peculiar sensation to the naked
feet. The sand, so dense when dry, at once becomes friable and
quick--indeed, it is hard to believe there is not a living creature
under the feet--and if you stand still you slowly sink, feet and
ankles, and gradually downwards. As long as you keep moving, it is
hard enough, but less so when under water.
The surroundings are deeply impressive. The waves plash at your feet,
and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious
as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place,
and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep sullen roar, and
the memories of the long sad history of the sands, oppress your soul.
Tragedies of the most fearful description have been enacted on the very
spot whereon you stand. Terror, frozen into despair, blighted hope,
faith victorious even in death, have thrilled the hearts of thousands
hard by the place where you stand, and which in a few hours will be ten
feet under water. Here you can see the long line of a ship's ribs
swaddling down into the sands, and there is the stump of the mast to
which the seamen clung last year till the lifeboat snatched them from a
watery grave.
Buried deep in the sands are the cargoes of richly-laden ships, and
their 'merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and pearls,
and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet.' 'To dig there' (if
that could be done, say the Deal boatmen), 'would be all as one as
going to Californy;' and who should know the Goodwins or the secret of
the sea better than they do? 'Only those who brave its dangers
comprehend its mystery.'
Keenly intent on getting to the wreck, the four men hastened on, and
they perceived that other boatmen had landed at similar risk, at other
points of the sands, and were also making for the wreck.
The four boatmen reached the vessel, found ropes hanging over her side,
all sails set, and a part of the Ramsgate lifeboat's cable chopped off
short, telling the tale of her unsuccessful efforts the night before to
get the vessel off. They clambered up, and found others there before
them, and soon more came, and eventually there were twelve boatmen on
board.
All eagerly discussed the chances of getting her off. To the
unpractised eye she seemed sound enough; but, after a thorough
overhaul, some saying she could be kept afloat, and others the reverse,
it was found that the water had got into her up to the level of her
cabin-seats, and that a bag of flour in one of her cabin-lockers was
sodden with salt-water. Judging by these signs that the water would
again come into her when the tide rose, and that she was broken up, the
four men whose journey across the sands has been described, decided
with sound judgment to leave her to her fate, and with them sided four
other men, who also came to the conclusion that it was beyond the power
of their resources to save her.
George Marsh and George Philpot with six others took this view.
Looking overboard, they found the rising tide just beginning to lap
round her.
'Best for us to bolt,' said Marsh; and seeing there was no time to
lose, the eight men came down the ropes and made for their boats, more
than a mile off; leaving the four others, who took a different view, on
board. The eight men ran, and ran the harder when they found the wind
and sea had increased, and having run and waded as before half the
distance, they made a halt and called a council of war. There were now
serious doubts whether they would be able to reach their boats, which
they could see a long way off heaving on the swell, which was becoming
heavier every minute.
Some said, 'Best go back to the ship--we'll never reach the boats.'
And indeed it was very doubtful if they could do either; for the
flood-tide was now coming like a racehorse over the sands, and hiding
its fox-falls and gullies. Others said, 'You'll never get back to the
ship now; there's deep water round her bows by this time! Come on!'
But some of the men had left brothers on the vessel, and this attracted
three of the company back to the wreck, and Marsh was persuaded to join
the returning band. And so they parted, there being danger either way:
Marsh with three others back to the ship, and Philpot with three others
to the boats; and both parties now ran for their lives.
Looking back, they saw Marsh standing in uncertainty, and they waved to
him. But he finally decided--little knowing at the time how momentous
was his decision--for the ship. He and his party reached it with great
difficulty, finding deep water around it, and they were at the last
minute pulled on board through the water by lines slung to them from
their friends.
Of the others, each man for himself, as best he could, 'pursues his
way,'--
And swims or sinks or wades or creeps,
till they all come as close as the rough sea permits them to their
boats, and stand breathless on a narrow and rapidly contracting patch
of sand.
'Upon this bank and shoal' clustered the four men. The sea was so
heavy that the weighty Deal boats did not dare to back into it. The
men at first thought of trying to swim to them; but a strong tide
running right across their course rendered that out of the question.
Fortunately a tug-boat hove in sight, bound to the wrecked schooner,
and seeing the men waving and their dangerous plight, eased her
engines. Deal boats were towing astern, and Deal boatmen were on
board, and out of their number Finnis and Watts bravely volunteered to
go to the rescue in the tug-boat's punt.
This boat being light and without ballast, they at considerable risk
brought off the four men to their own boats, when they forthwith,
forgetting past hardship and perils, got up sail for the wrecked
schooner, to see how their comrades who had returned, and those who
remained on board, were faring.
They found the tug-boat close to the wreck--say half a mile off--and
also many other Deal boats; but none ventured nearer than that
distance, and none could get nearer.
The wind, which had been blowing from south-west freshly, was dropping
into a calm, while great rollers from an entirely opposite quarter were
tumbling in on the Goodwins. In fact, a great north-easterly sea was
breaking in thunder on the sands, and around and over the vessel. The
eight men on board her were therefore beset as if in a beleaguered
city, and as nothing but a lifeboat could live for a moment in that
tremendous surf, the crews of the Deal boats, astounded at the sight,
were simply helpless spectators of their comrades' danger, and torn
with distress and sympathy, as they saw them take to the rigging of the
vessel.
An hour before this pitch of distress had been reached, a galley punt
had gone to Deal for the lifeboat, and in the afternoon, about 3 p. m.,
the boat reached Deal beach with one hand on board. He jumped out, and
staggered up the beach to tell the coxswain of the lifeboat that eight
boatmen were on board the wreck, and that nothing but a lifeboat could
reach the vessel, as there was a dreadful sea all round her, and that
his own brother was among the number on board.
The Deal boatmen are not slow to render help when help is needed, and
indifference to the cry of distress is not one of their failings; but
when they heard of their own friends and neighbours, their comrades in
storm and in rescue and lifeboat work, thus beset and in imminent
peril, their eagerness was beyond the power of words to describe. From
the time the bell rang to 'man the lifeboat' to the moment she struck
the water only seven minutes passed!
A fresh south-west breeze brought her to the North Sand Head, and round
and outside it to the melancholy spot where, in the waning autumnal
light, they could just discern the wreck. They passed through the
crowd of Deal boats, and close to the tug-boat; but no one spoke or
hailed the other, as all knew what had to be done, and the nature of
the coming struggle.
The south-west breeze had now dropped completely, and they encountered,
as explained before, the strange phenomenon of a great windless swell
from the north-east, rolling in before the wind, which was evidently
behind it, and which indeed blew a gale next day, though it was now an
absolute calm. Great tumbling billows came in from different quarters,
and met and crossed each other in the most furious collision. There
was tossing about in the sea at the time an empty cask, which was
caught in the clash together of two such waves, and was shot clean out
of the water as high as the wrecked schooner's mast, or thirty feet
into the air, by the force of the blow. The water-logged wreck was now
nearly submerged, or just awash, her bulwark-top-rail being now and
then exposed and covered again with the advance and recoil of each wave.
Aft there were a raised quarter-deck and a wheel-house, behind the
remains of which three of the boatmen took refuge, while the five
others climbed into the rigging, but over them even there the sea broke
in clouds.
As there was no tide and no wind, it was impossible to sheer the
lifeboat, and, whatever position was taken by anchoring, in that only
the lifeboat would ride after veering down before the sea. The
coxswains, therefore, had to try again and again before they got the
proper position to veer down from.
At last, however, they succeeded, and anchoring the lifeboat by the
stern, they veered down bows first towards the wreck into the midst of
this breezeless but awful sea--bows first, lest the rudder should be
injured.
The cable was passed round the bollard or powerful samson-post, and
then a turn was taken round a thwart; and the end was held by Roberts,
the second coxswain, with his face towards the stern, and his back to
the wreck, watching the billows as they charged in line, and easing his
cable or getting it in when the strain had passed.
The heavy rollers drove the lifeboat before them like a feather, and
end on towards the wreck, till her cable brought her up with a jerk.
The strain of these jerks was so great, that, even though Roberts eased
his cable, each wave seemed to all hands as if it would tear the after
air-box out of the lifeboat, or drag the lifeboat itself in two pieces.
They veered down to about five fathoms of the wreck; closer they dared
not go, lest a sea should by an extra strain dash their bows into the
wreck, when not one of all the company would have been saved, and the
lifeboat herself would have perhaps been broken up.
Then they saw their friends and comrades and heard them cry, 'Try to
save us if you can!' And the men said afterwards, 'We got in such a
flurry to save them, that what we did in a minute we thought took us an
hour.'
At last the cane and lead were thrown from the lifeboat by a stalwart
boatman standing in the bows. A heavier line was then drawn on board
by the light cane line, and the boatmen came down from the rigging,
and, having made themselves fast to pins and staunchions, sheltered
behind the bulwark and the wheel-house, seeing the approach of rescue.
Enough of the slack of the weightier line was kept on board the
wreck--the end being there made fast--to permit the middle of the rope
being fastened round a man and of his being dragged away from the wreck
through the sea into the lifeboat. A clove-hitch was put by George
Marsh over the shoulders of the first man, who watched his chance for
'a smooth,' jumped into the waves, and, after a long struggle--for the
line fouled--was hauled safe into the lifeboat. Marsh on the wreck saw
after this that the line was clear, and that no kink or knot stopped
its running freely.
Reading these lines in our quiet homes, and in a comfortable arm-chair
by the fireside, it is hard to realise the position of those eight
boatmen. They were drenched and buried in each wallowing sea, which
strove to tear them from the pin to which each man was belayed by the
line round his waist; and their ears were stunned with the bellow of
each bursting wave. But, on the other hand, their eyes beheld the
grand and cheering spectacle of their brethren in the lifeboat
struggling manfully with death for their sakes, and they heard their
undaunted shouts.
If for a moment they cast off or lengthened their lifelines, they were
washed all over the slippery deck; and brave George Marsh, who was
specially active, was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, having been
dashed against a corner of the wheel-house.
The wheel-house up to this time had afforded some shelter to the men
who ventured on the deck of the wreck, lashed as just explained, of
course, to some pin or bollard; and even they had now and then to rush
up the rigging when a weighter [Transcriber's note: weightier?] wave
was seen coming. But just at this time a great mass of water advanced
and wallowed clean over the wreck, carrying the wheelhouse away with
it, and bursting, where it struck the masts and booms, into a cloud: it
was too solid to burst much, but it just 'wallowed' over the wreck.
Successive seas are, of course, unlike in height, volume, and
demeanour. One comes on board and falls with a solid, heavy lop--there
may be twenty tons of blue water in it--the next rushes along with wild
speed and fury.
Roberts in the lifeboat now saw a great roller of the latter
description advancing; ready to ease his cable, he cried, 'Look out!
Look out! Hold on, my lads!'
But before Wilds, the coxswain, who was not a young man, could turn
round and grasp a thwart, the sea was on him, and drove him with great
force against the samson-post, breaking over and covering the lifeboat
fore and aft in fury. This sea would have washed every man off the
wreck if they had not had ropes round their waists, and fastened
themselves to something; and it most certainly stupefied them and
half-drowned them, fastened as they were.
The blow which Wilds in the lifeboat received would have killed him but
that he was wearing his thick cork life-belt. His health was so much
affected that he never came afloat again, and he never recovered the
strain, the shock, and the exposure of this day. He was a brave man,
and a stout, honest Englishman.
Faithful below he did his duty,
And now he's gone aloft.
And the writer has good reason for sure and certain hope that this is
so. His post as coxswain has since been filled, and nobly filled, by
R. Roberts, for many years second coxswain.
In meeting this sea, which struck down poor Wilds with such force, the
lifeboat stood straight up on her stern and reared, as the men
expressed it, 'like a vicious horse'; and so much did the cable spring,
that the lifeboat was driven to within a fathom, or six feet, of the
wreck, and was withdrawn the next instant to fifteen fathoms distance
by the recoil of the cable.
One by one the men were dragged through the breakers into the lifeboat,
until at last only two remained on the wreck, George Marsh and another
man. It was Marsh, it will be remembered, who in the earlier part of
the day had been persuaded to return to the wreck across the sand, and
it was Marsh now who in each case had passed the clove-hitch round his
comrades, sending them before himself. He was a very smart sailor and
a brave man, and with wise forethought he had also passed the end of
the veering line, on which the men were dragged through the surf, over
the main boom of the wreck, to let it run out clear of anything which
might have caught it, and, in fact, was the leader of the men in peril
on the wreck.
The last two men intended to come together, when another great billow,
notice of its advance being given by Tom Adams, came towering and
seething, filled the lifeboat, as usual, and covered the ship--indeed,
breaking right into her fore-top-sail! That is, thirty feet above her
deck!
When the sea passed, the two remaining men, who had been tied together,
were not to be seen.
The men in the lifeboat pulled at the line, but it was somehow and
somewhere fast to something. And then they shouted, and minutes went
by, hours as it seemed to them. At last one of the men--but not
Marsh--slowly raised his head and seemed to move about in a dazed
condition.
'Where's Marsh?' cried the lifeboatmen.
'Can't find him!' he replied.
'Is he drowned?'
'Is he washed away?'
And the reply was, 'I can't find him.'
And then this man was pulled into the water, and was the last man
saved--and that with great difficulty, for the line fouled and
jammed--from the wreck of the Fredrik Carl, which had proved a
death-trap to poor Marsh, and so nearly to the seven others who were
saved.
Still the lifeboat waited in the gathering darkness, and hailed the
wreck, hoping against hope to see Marsh appear; but he was never seen
again alive. Short as was the distance between the lifeboat and the
wreck, it was impossible to swim to her, lying broadside as she was to
the swell. Anyone attempting it would either have been dashed to
pieces against her, or lifted bodily over her, brained very possibly,
and certainly washed away to leeward, return from which would have
been, even for an uninjured man, impossible.
And still the lifeboatmen waited and called; but there was no answer.
Poor Marsh had been suddenly summoned to meet his God. The oldest man
of the number, and for some years a staunch total abstainer, he had
manfully stuck to his post, he had sent the others before himself, and
had shown throughout a fine spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of the best
traditions of the Deal boatmen.
Slowly and sadly the lifeboat got her anchor up, and never perhaps did
the celebrated Deal lifeboat return with a more mournful crew; for they
had seen, in spite of their best efforts, one of their comrades perish
before their eyes.
The next day it blew a gale of wind from the north-east, and it was not
till several days afterwards that Marsh's body was recovered, entangled
in the wreckage, to leeward of the vessel, and sorely mangled. Wrapped
in a sail, and with the rope still round him which ought to have drawn
him into safety, lay the poor 'body of humiliation' in which had once
dwelt a gallant spirit; but a good hope burned within me as the
triumphant lines rang in my ears--
Deathless principle, arise!
Soar, thou native of the skies.
Pearl of price, by Jesus bought,
To His glorious likeness wrought!
In telling the story of this gallant struggle to save their comrades,
made by the Deal lifeboatmen, I lay this tribute of hope and regard on
the grave of brave George Marsh.
[Illustration: Deal boatmen on the lookout for a hovel.]