Lifeboat Heroes: Outstanding RNLI Rescues from Three Centuries

by Edward Wake-Walker

  The lifeboat arrived intact under the lee of the ship and all 17 people aboard her dropped with their luggage into the lifeboat. The considerable extra weight now made the lifeboat far too low in the water for her to attempt a run in to the shore. Fortunately, the Royal Navy’s boat had got close to the wreck as well and so Hillary steered in her direction. Somehow the two boats avoided serious damage as they came together, their oarsmen struggling to keep head to sea while also avoiding hitting their opposite number in the other boat with the blade of an oar. A number of the survivors were bundled into the Navy boat and the two vessels headed for the shore which they reached without further mishap.

  Sir William wasted little time, once back ashore, to record his adventure at his writing desk and to send the report to the Committee of the Shipwreck Institution. Here was just the sort of lifeboat rescue that he was determined the organisation should be facilitating throughout the land. When the Committee met to review their correspondence the following month, they were clearly impressed. Three years previously they had awarded him the Gold Medal as founder of the Institution, now they decided he should receive a second for his bravery. (Sir William Hillary would go on to win two more Gold Medals for bravery, both in 1830 when he was nearly 60.) Three Silver Medals were also awarded for this rescue: one to Lt William Strugnall who was aboard the Royal Navy boat, one to Robert Robinson who was aboard the lifeboat and one to Augustus Hillary, no doubt to the great delight of his father and his fiancée.

  2. Skerries, Co Dublin, 17 November 1858

  Henry Alexander Hamilton, honorary secretary of Skerries and Balbriggan lifeboats and the only Irishman to win a Gold and two Silver Medals for gallantry, saves the crew of the Austrian brig, Tregiste, in a rescue mission which lasts nearly two days.

  On the wall of St George’s Church in the coastal town of Balbriggan, which lies some 20 miles north of Dublin, there is a brass plaque which reads:

  In loving memory of Henry Alexander Hamilton DL of Hampton in this parish, second son of Henry Hamilton of Tullylish, County Down, born 5 October 1820, died 30 March 1901. Honorary secretary to the General Synod of the Church of Ireland 1871-1894; Diocesan nominator for Dublin 1875-1892. For heroism in saving life at sea he was awarded 8 medals.

  Quit you like men, be strong.

  Research has so far not yet revealed the provenance of five of those eight medals, but three of them, a Gold and two Silver Medals were awarded by the RNLI.

  Henry Alexander Hamilton was a member of an extended and highly influential Irish Protestant family whose ancestors were among the many Scots who crossed the Irish Sea in the early 17th century and settled in the north of Ireland. Henry’s branch of the family settled in the Balbriggan area and built Hampton Hall, a large house and estate to the south of the town. They led and financed the development of the town with the establishment of a cotton mill in the late 18th century and by extending the harbour in the 1820s. One of Henry’s cousins, George Hamilton, was first a Westminster MP and then became permanent Financial Secretary to the Treasury in Whitehall in 1859.

  Henry, a bachelor all his life, pursued his interests closer to home, working not only as a pillar of the local church but as a magistrate and, from 1854 to 1900, as the honorary secretary of the RNLI lifeboat based at Skerries, about two miles south of Balbriggan. His obvious enthusiasm for the lifeboat service led to the opening of another lifeboat station at Balbriggan itself in 1874 where he was also the honorary secretary.

  Shipwreck was a depressingly common occurrence on the Leinster coast in the mid-1800s. From 1850 to 1858 there were no fewer than 142 merchant shipping casualties on the stretch between Carlingford Lough and Dublin Bay, more than one a month on average. It was Henry Hamilton’s personal involvement in one of these shipwrecks at Benhead, between Balbriggan and Drogheda, which is what led him to dedicate so much of the rest of his life to the lifesaving cause.

  When the Whitehaven brig, Agnes, was driven ashore in a heavy gale early in the morning of 20 December 1853, there was no ready rescue service in the vicinity. Henry Hamilton was one of the group who had gathered on the shore to watch helplessly as the six-man crew signalled to them in desperation from the rigging. Hamilton and one or two of the others tried to launch local shoreboats to get out to the wreck but were hurled back onto the beach by the crashing surf.

  A lifeboat was what they needed but the nearest available one was in Dublin, more than 20 miles away. On many parts of the coast, that would have meant the end for the crew of the Agnes but here, as chance would have it, the Dublin to Drogheda railway ran right past the scene of the wreck. If the men could hold on long enough to their icy perch for someone to take the message into Dublin on the next train and for a lifeboat to be transported back on a railway carriage by return, maybe they could still be saved.

  When the lifeboat finally arrived on the following day, Hamilton and five other men, including an American who happened to be on the spot, got the boat to sea but were beaten back to the shore by the strong winds and heavy seas. Their second attempt, made in darkness at 7.30pm was more successful and they came alongside the brig, some 36 hours after she had run aground. Two of the crew had earlier lost their fight to stay alive and dropped from the rigging and a boy also died just minutes before the lifeboat reached him. However, the master and two seamen were still alive and were brought safely ashore.

  Henry Hamilton’s account of this incident which was sent to the RNLI headquarters in London brought about two things: a Silver Medal for gallantry for himself and a resolution to build a lifeboat shed at Skerries at a cost of £98 18s 7d to house a 29ft James Peake-designed, ten-oared, pulling and sailing lifeboat at a further cost of £142 10s. The RNLI would pay half the cost and the local committee was to find the rest.

  The lifeboat arrived in March 1854 and Henry Hamilton began his long service as honorary secretary. There was not a great amount of activity for the lifeboat station to begin with and it was, in fact, an incident in the summer of 1858 off Kingstown, (now Dun Laoghaire), the other side of Dublin, which brought Henry Hamilton once more to the attention of the RNLI General Committee. They had been sent a letter from a Mrs Burden, (who at the time wished to remain anonymous), and who was, ‘desirous to show her gratitude to the Almighty by presenting to the RNLI the sum of £300, to be employed by it in stationing an additional lifeboat on the Irish coast.’

  Although there are tantalisingly few details, it seems that on 21 July 1858, the lady had been in a boat off the port of Kingstown when she fell overboard. Who should be on hand but the ever-alert Henry Alexander Hamilton who dived into the water and hauled her to safety. The Committee minuted their grateful acceptance of ‘the lady’s munificent offer’ and also resolved to award Hamilton with a Second Service Clasp to his Silver Medal ‘in acknowledgement of his gallant conduct’.

  Little did he or the Committee know that, barely four months later, yet another report of outstanding service, this time by the Skerries lifeboat, would be landing on the desk of the chief inspector of lifeboats in London. It was on 14 November 1858 that an Austrian brig, the Tregiste, carrying a cargo of coal from Troon to her home port of Trieste, was caught in a violent easterly gale and ran for shelter under Lambay Island, which lies two miles off the coast, north of Dublin.

  By the next day, with the gale still raging, the ship had dragged her anchor half way across the sound between the island and the main. As the vicious rocks on the Portrane peninsular grew ever closer, the English pilot on board the Tregiste strongly advised her skipper to cut her two masts away to give the ship less resistance to the wind. The captain agreed to this drastic and hazardous action but, unfortunately, he and one of his crew were severely injured as the masts fell.

  The harbour at Skerries. When the alarm was raised about the plight of the Tregiste, the lifeboat had to be transported on her carriage five miles south along the coast to Rush. (Hunting Aerofilms)

  Word of the brig’s predicament soon reached Henry Hamilton and, prob
ably cursing the fact that, as usual, the emergency was as far as possible from the nearest lifeboat, he began to organise horses and Coast Guard men to transport the lifeboat on her launching carriage to Rush, a fishing village some five miles to the south which would be in sight of the ship in trouble.

  At 2pm on 15 November the lifeboat launched from the strand to the south of Rush. Chief Boatman of Coast Guard, Joseph Clarke took up his position as coxswain and beside him, ignoring any convention that the honorary secretary remain ashore, was Henry Hamilton. For the men at the oars, it was an impossible task to get across the bay to reach the Tregiste. They were rowing broadside on to the weather and as they got into deep water, seas began to fill the boat. Hamilton later recounted: ‘Twice, many of us were nearly washed out of the boat, the green water falling at times unbroken on the top of us.’

  After two hours the lifeboat was still a long way from her objective; the crew were utterly exhausted and Hamilton realised that if she didn’t now turn for the shore, she could well end up on the rocks herself. They headed eastward, downwind, for the entrance to Rogerstown Stream. Crossing the bar, they narrowly avoided broaching and eventually arrived in calm water at 5.30pm.

  Fortunately there was a Coast Guard watch-house in the vicinity and so the lifeboat was moored in the river and the crew trudged wearily towards it for shelter. Hamilton’s plan was to obtain food and dry clothing for his men while they all remained at the watch-house, keeping a close eye on the Tregiste in case her anchor dragged or the cable parted. With the storm as strong as ever, no muscle-propelled vessel had a chance of reaching her in her present position; the only hope was to wait for a lull in the weather.

  Miraculously, when dawn broke with the wind still howling off the sea, the hull had not moved any closer to the rocks overnight. The men camping in the Coast Guard lookout watched with some hope as a little later that morning a large steamer hove into view in the bay. She had been summoned from Holyhead to try to take the men off the ship and had survived a torrid crossing of the Irish Sea. But the seas which continually broke over her thwarted her captain’s efforts to veer down on the casualty to get alongside and eventually he had to slip his cables, leaving his anchors on the seabed, and make for the safety of Kingstown Harbour. As the second night set in, Hamilton and his men could only watch as the Tregiste’s crew worked feverishly at the pumps while waves broke over them, if anything, more heavily than before.

  Then, at about three o’clock the following morning, the men in the watch-house sensed a change in the weather. There were still angry gusts pummelling the roof but they were less prolonged and lacked their earlier menace. Hamilton decided it was time to try the lifeboat again, and at 4.30am he and his crew were heading out into the bay once more. For the first hour it seemed that they should never have set out as seas met the lifeboat head-on with as much violence as before. Gradually, though, they seemed to come through the worst and after two-and-a-half hours of agonising effort, the oarsmen reached the Tregiste. They now had to find more strength to haul the survivors over the stern of the ship and into the lifeboat, timing the moment to perfection as the decks of the two vessels drew level.

  All 13 people aboard, including the injured captain and crewmember, were safely transferred and the lifeboat was able to land them all at Rogerstown at 9.30am.

  The ship survived the storm and was eventually towed to Kingstown for repair. Neither the rescuers nor her crew could ever have been certain of such an outcome and it certainly did not detract from the admiration afforded Hamilton and his men on their safe return. The RNLI presented Henry Hamilton with their highest honour this time, the Gold Medal for gallantry, placing him among the elite in the history of the organisation to have won so many accolades.

  By the time Henry Hamilton retired as the honorary secretary of Skerries at the age of 80, the station, which he had been largely responsible for establishing, had launched its lifeboat on 18 rescue missions and saved 52 lives in the process.

  3. Appledore, 28 December 1868

  Appledore lifeboat is twice launched into the raging surf in a north-westerly gale to rescue the crew of the grounded Austrian barque, Pace. On the first attempt, nine people are brought ashore at the expense of the lifeboat’s rudder which is torn off as the two vessels are thrown together. Joseph Cox, the Appledore coxswain, in spite of an injury received in the same collision, puts out to sea again to try to reach the rest of the ship’s crew. This time the lifeboat capsizes just short of the wreck, but all of her crew manage to get back on board and return to shore.

  When the wind is blowing hard from the north west into Bideford Bay, it is a very inhospitable place for a ship to be under sail. Joseph Cox knows this only too well as he peers out across Bideford Bar where the rivers Torridge and Taw join forces to confront the unforgiving Atlantic. The view is one of angry white water stretching into the distance as currents and wind provoke the sea into a foaming frenzy over the sandbanks of the bay.

  Cox has been coxswain of the lifeboat at Appledore for more than 16 years and has seen every kind of mishap in that time. Twenty-seven people from five different shipwrecks owe him and his crew their lives after rescues in weather not as threatening as today. Five years ago the RNLI saw fit to award Joseph Cox its Silver Medal ‘for his long and gallant services’ but he is hoping that they will not be called upon this raw December lunchtime as he heads home for a bite to eat.

  He is scarcely indoors when, at 1pm, he hears hefty knocking at his door. A breathless messenger from the Coastguard brings the news he hoped he would not hear: two large sailing ships have been swept into Bideford Bay and are fighting what looks like a losing battle to sail clear of the shore. One, if not two, shipwrecks are imminent.

  The coxswain immediately gives the alarm, grabs an extra jersey, and sets off across the low sandy scrubland of Northam Burrows to where the lifeboat is kept, ready for launching, either into the estuary or the open sea to the west. The lifeboat’s name is Hope, not through sentiment, however appropriate, but in honour of her donor, Mrs Ellen Hope, whose clergyman husband had made the gift of a lifeboat his dying wish.

  The boat is a 34ft self-righter which is light enough to be propelled by six oarsmen but wide enough for 12 short oars when conditions dictate. She has been at Appledore for seven years and has proved herself an excellent boat, especially after two recent incidents. One was only last year when she reached the three-man crew of a sunken brig in heavy seas and they were plucked from the rigging and got to safety. The other was the year earlier when another brig came to grief inside the bar; the lifeboat was able to tow the ten survivors in their ship’s boat through a mass of broken water to the shore.

  Walking briskly along the rough road that leads to the lifeboathouse, Joseph Cox hears the sound of other men running up behind him and the more distant pounding of horses’ hooves. The first to catch him up and clap a hand on his shoulder is his son, also Joseph, and a regular member of the crew. Father imparts the scant information he has to his son by which time they and a dozen other men have reached the station, are donning oilskins and cork lifejackets and are preparing the lifeboat carriage for a launch.

  The launchers arrive and set to work harnessing the horses to the carriage. In a matter of moments the lifeboat is out of the shed and trundling across the sands to the water’s edge. Everyone on the beach can now see the two barques in difficulties. One of them, an Austrian vessel, the Pace of Fiume (nowadays Rizeka in Croatia), on her way home from Glasgow carrying pig-iron and coal, is desperately close to the bar, trying to claw her way out into open sea but losing ground with every breaking sea.

  Horses, lifeboat and men move slowly along the beach, following the barque’s southward drift until, at about 2pm, she comes to an abrupt halt and seas begin to break in white plumes over her. She is aground. The lifeboat crew scramble up into the boat, the carriage is hauled over a ridge of shingle and into the sea so that launchers and horses are half submerged in the roaring, icy surf. The oars
are swung outboard at the ready, the coxswain bellows, the carriage tips and the lifeboat’s bow plunges into the breakers.

  Immediately the 12 oars begin to work as if driven by a single machine. The lifeboat crashes through one breaker, disappears completely in the trough beyond, then rears up to the angle of a ladder against a wall as she hits the following wave head-on. And all the time, the oars keep up their perfect rhythm, each man knowing that if he were to miss a single beat, it could be enough to throw the lifeboat broadside on to the breakers causing an instant capsize.

  No one on board hears the cheers from the shore as the lifeboat finally makes it through the surf into less broken water. Somehow they now have to get alongside the wreck, her hull only sometimes visible as seas sweep clean over her. The oarsmen summon up their dwindling breath to pull just close enough to the Pace for the lifeboat bowman to throw a grapnel which, to everyone’s relief, catches in the rigging. He heaves on the line to bring the lifeboat in close.

  Joseph Cox, Snr, is concerned. The rigging is where he expected to see the survivors, assuming there are some; it is the only relatively safe place to be in these circumstances. Held fast to the wreck by the bow, the lifeboat is rising and falling with the waves and all on board are constantly deluged as the seas which pound the barque then cascade into the open lifeboat. If the Pace’s crew are still on deck, wonders the coxswain, why has no one stepped forward to take the lifeboat’s stern rope to bring her closer alongside?

  He shouts; his crew shout, but there is no movement, no sound in response. Are they frozen? Unconscious? All dead? Surely that’s impossible when they were under sail only a short while ago. Then they hear an angry shout coming from the for’ard end and moments later the pallid face of a boy appears at the ship’s rail. Scarcely before anyone can move aboard the lifeboat, the boy has clambered onto the rail and has jumped. He lands in the bow of the lifeboat, the bowman just able to break his fall.