Lifeboat Heroes: Outstanding RNLI Rescues from Three Centuries

by Edward Wake-Walker

  When the lifeboat arrived, she made her approach on the leeward side of the wreck, negotiating a strong tide and a heavy cross-sea which was strewn with debris. In spite of the risks, she got alongside the rigging long enough for the men, who had been clinging on for their lives, to be taken aboard and returned without further mishap to dry land.

  The story of this rescue was included in the report of his Irish sojourn, submitted by Captain Gray Jones to the General Committee of the RNLI at their March meeting. One can only imagine his reaction when they emerged from the meeting announcing that both he and Coxswain Hall had been awarded the Silver Medal for their exertions.

  At the very end of that same year, Charles Gray Jones was once again on his travels. This time it was the West Country in December and once again his report to the General Committee at the end of his trip gave them more to ponder than routine matters such as the condition of the boats, their equipment and the well-being of stations visited.

  Ever the man to find himself in the right place at the right time, Gray Jones was in Bude on Cornwall’s north coast on 6 December 1874 when a westerly gale sprang up. The smack Charlotte was caught out in it and driven helplessly into Widemouth Bay, about two miles to the south of the town. The vessel soon became a wreck but Gray Jones was among the people who had hurried down on to the beach and, ignoring its icy temperature, waded into the crashing surf and helped to haul the smack’s master out of the sea and to safety.

  The launch of the pulling lifeboat John Cleland, which saw service at Newcastle, County Down, between 1917 and 1932. (RNLI)

  Ten days later he had progressed up the coast to Ilfracombe where stormy weather was, once again, threatening commercial traffic at sea. This time it was an easterly gale so that by the early morning of Wednesday 16 December, heavy seas had built up and were surging through the Bristol Channel, making the north east-facing entrance to Ilfracombe harbour a frightening place to be. Already the Swansea steamer, Henry Southan, had abandoned her attempt to leave the harbour with a number of sheep and cattle aboard.

  Then news reached the town that an unidentified brig was brought up at anchor to the north east, attempting to ride out the gale in an extremely exposed position. Before long she had disappeared from her mooring and lookouts in the town could see her running down the Channel, just off Ilfracombe, with her fore-topmast and all head-gear and head-sails dragging in the sea under her bows. Her maintop-gallant yard had apparently also gone and she was clearly out of control with the cliffs of Morte Point only about three miles ahead of her.

  Once again, nothing could have stopped the Second Assistant-Inspector from donning a cork lifejacket and clambering aboard the town’s lifeboat, Broadwater, as she was got ready for launching at the top of the slipway. It was a titanic struggle against a flood tide and the head-on gale for the men at the oars to clear the harbour. They eventually succeeded, though, where a steam vessel had earlier failed and were able to hoist a sail as they turned eastward in pursuit of the runaway brig.

  The brig, the Dublin based Annie Arby with seven men aboard, was wallowing in heavy seas right under the cliffs to the north of Morte Point when the lifeboat caught up with her. Once they had manoeuvred their boat alongside, members of the lifeboat crew boarded the brig and set about cutting away the wreckage while others worked the remaining sails. Inch by inch the vessel wore clear of the cliffs and, with the local expert knowledge of one of the lifeboat crew, she took a narrow passage through the rocks which litter Morte Point and was brought into the comparative shelter of Morte Bay where a safe anchorage was possible. The brig would eventually be taken in tow by a tug when the weather eased.

  Unbeknown to the lifeboat crew, another brig, the Utility of Workington had also run into trouble astern of them while they were chasing the Anny Arby. On their return to Ilfracombe they happened upon a ship’s boat with five men aboard drifting helplessly off Rockham Bay. When they pulled the survivors aboard the lifeboat they were told that their vessel had filled and sunk as it struck the rocky foreshore and that they had barely had time to scramble into their boat.

  The RNLI General Committee realised, when they considered his latest report, that they could not possibly ignore the fact that on his latest tour of inspection, the remarkable Captain Gray Jones had this time presided over the saving a total of 13 lives, all in extreme circumstances. The award of another Silver Medal seemed the only appropriate course of action for them to take.

  5. Ramsgate, 6 January 1881

  After two harrowing nights aboard the rapidly disintegrating barque Indian Chief, aground in a gale on the Long Sand off the North Kent coast, 11 men are rescued by the Ramsgate lifeboat. The lifeboat crew, led by Coxswain Charles Fish, have to survive a night at sea aboard the lifeboat in mountainous seas before they can find the wreck.

  This grim description of the scene on Ramsgate pier on the afternoon of Thursday 6 January 1881 was given to readers of the Daily Telegraph following one of the greatest tests of endurance ever faced by survivors and rescuers alike in the history of the RNLI.

  One by one the survivors came along the pier, the most dismal procession it was ever my lot to behold — 11 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 the same salt filled the hollows of their eyes and streaked their hair with lines that looked like snow.

  The first man, who was the chief mate, leaned heavily on the arm of the kindly-hearted harbour master, Captain Braine. The second man, whose collarbone 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.

  The 11 men and one corpse were all that were left from a proud ship’s company of 28 who set sail from Middlesbrough on New Year’s Day aboard the three-masted barque Indian Chief, bound with a general cargo for Yokohama in Japan. An icy north-easterly gale had carried them down the east coast and the crew were no doubt looking forward to reaching more southerly latitudes on their long voyage to the east. By the early hours of Wednesday 5 January they were negotiating the tricky waters off the Thames Estuary where hidden sandbanks lurk, menacing any ship that wanders off her course.

  Captain Fraser of the Indian Chief had just sighted the Knock Light when the wind shifted to the east and they were hit by a heavy squall of rain. Concerned that he was drifting towards the Long Sand, he ordered that the ship go about but, in the suddenly strengthening wind, he lost control of the manoeuvre. By the time he had the ship making headway again, she had drifted too far and the next thing he felt was a judder so severe that he thought the hull would disintegrate beneath his feet. They had struck the Long Sand broadside on.

  The ship was under almost full sail and the grounding put huge strain on her rigging. Canvas thundered and beat above their heads, the masts buckled and jumped like fishing rods but no one could go aloft to bring in the sails for fear of being knocked to the deck by a flailing sheet or loose spar. Instead they lit a flare and put up rockets and were relieved, after a few moments, to see answering signals from both the Sunk and the Knock lightships. Recalling the experience after the event, the mate of the Indian Chie
f, William Meldrum Lloyd, said, ‘We could see one another’s faces in the light of the big blaze, and sung out cheerily to keep our hearts up; and although we all knew that our ship was hard and fast and likely to leave her bones on that sand, we none of us reckoned upon dying.’

  What they hoped was that the lightships would be able to signal to passing shipping that help was required on the Long Sand. All they could now do was wait for the dawn to come, huddled together in the deckhouses, shivering in the freezing temperatures and listening to the strengthening gale hurling massive seas against the side of the hull.

  At first light a cheer rose from the ship. They had spotted the sail of what they took to be a lifeboat dodging about in the heavy seas a few hundred yards away. The men of the Indian Chief lined the rails, staring, unblinking, into the spray and ferocious wind, willing the boat to come closer and to brave the much larger seas which were breaking over the sands which held them so fast. But the boat, not a lifeboat as they later learned, but a fishing smack, eventually turned away, unable to help other than carry the news of the grounding back to her home port.

  The tide was low when the sun came up that morning and there had been too little water to move the barque, slumped at an awkward angle on the sands. As the tide came in, her crew began to feel her shift uneasily until a larger sea rolled in, lifting her off the bottom for a second before dropping her like a brick back on the sand to the sound of splitting timbers and cargo breaking loose in the hold. The captain put out the starboard anchor in the hope that the tide might sweep the stern round so that the ship lay head to wind. But still she remained broadside on to the weather, with water pouring through the cracks opening up in her hull.

  Then, with a bone-jarring crash, the ship broke her back. On the verge of panic, the crew set to work launching the three ship’s boats, but each was swamped as soon as it touched the water. With no other means of escape, the desperate crew now returned to the deck cabins. Seas broke more and more frequently over the ship until, at about 5pm, a massive wave swept over the deck removing everything in its path except a few uprights of the deckhouses.

  The hull was now completely awash with water and large parts of the deck had been blown out. The rigging was the only bleak refuge now. Some men chose to climb the foremast against the advice of the captain. He believed the mizen was less likely to be brought down by the main mast which was rocking in its step and threatening to crash to the deck at any moment. Seventeen men, including the captain, his brother who was the second mate and the mate, swarmed up the mizen mast, cutting ropes from the rigging in order to lash themselves firmly to their perch. William Lloyd, the mate, recalls:

  I was next the captain in the mizentop, and near him was his brother, a stout-built, handsome young fellow, 22 years old, as fine a specimen of the English sailor as ever I was shipmate with. He was calling about him cheerfully, bidding us not to be down-hearted, and telling us to look sharply around for the lifeboats. He helped several of the benumbed men to lash themselves, saying encouraging things to them as he made them fast.

  As darkness fell, the icy wind chiselled away at the men’s will to survive. Words of encouragement between them ceased and they were left to their own feverish thoughts as the sails, ripped to shreds, thundered in the wind above their heads. In the middle of the night the mate, for a reason he could not explain, became gripped by an urge to leave the mizen mast and join the ten men who had taken to the foremast. His only route was an aerial one via the main mast, but he achieved it, swinging from cross-trees to stays with the strength of a desperate man.

  His new refuge seemed, if anything, worse than his last. The foremast was rocking sharply as the wind tore at its sails and the mate at last began to give up hope. Then, as a massive wave broke over the hull of the ship, the mainmast toppled and fell with the sound of splintering wood and piercing cries. It had fallen aft onto the mizen mast and brought that down with it. The mate and the other men on the foremast looked aghast at the sight of their shipmates, still lashed to the mizen, slowly drowning as waves swept over the fallen mast, which slanted over the side into the sea.

  The mate knew that it was now only a matter of time before he and the others would meet the same fate. Even the appearance a little later of a light, thought to be that of a steamer, did not encourage them much. How could anyone reach them in these conditions, even if it were a rescue attempt? But at least it gave them an incentive to hang on until dawn which revealed that it was indeed a steamer they had seen which had obviously stood by all night. The mate could still not see what help it could bring until he heard a loud cry from one of his shipmates. A lifeboat, under sail, was heading straight for them. As he later recounted:

  It was a sight to make one crazy with joy, and it put the strength of ten men into every one of us. The boat had to cross the broken water to fetch us, and in my agony of mind I cried out, ‘She’ll never face it! She’ll leave us when she sees that water!’ For the sea was frightful all to windward of the sand and over it, a tremendous play of broken waters, raging with one another, and making the whole surface resemble a boiling cauldron. Yet they never swerved a hair’s breadth.

  Oh, sir, she was a noble boat! We could see her crew — 12 of them — sitting on the thwarts, all looking our way, motionless as carved figures, and there was not a stir among them as, in an instant, the boat leapt from the crest of a towering sea right into the monstrous broken tumble.

  In fact, through various means, lifeboats from Aldeburgh, Clacton, Harwich and Ramsgate had been alerted to the plight of the Indian Chief. However, it was only the Ramsgate boat that had been able to make it to the scene of the wreck. This 42ft pulling and sailing lifeboat, the Bradford, had set out the afternoon before with her coxswain, Charles Fish, in command. On this occasion, his fate and that of his crew lay in the hands of one Alf Page, the master of the steam-tug Vulcan, which was towing the lifeboat the considerable distance she had to cover to the Long Sand into the teeth of the north-easterly gale.

  Both tug and lifeboat were climbing and plunging over a heaving mountain range of sea, with clouds of water flying high over them as they struck a wave, soaking every man on board to the skin. In his account of the passage out to the wreck, Coxswain Charles Fish had never encountered such a cold wind: ‘It was more like a flaying machine than a natural gale of wind. The feel of it in the face was like being gnawed by a dog. I only wonder it didn’t freeze the tears it fetched out of our eyes.’

  Although a teetotaller himself, Fish allowed his 11 crewmen to pass around the rum they kept on board, although they were under strict instructions to leave the majority of it for those they had set out to rescue. Progress was painfully slow as the tug negotiated the ever-greater seas which rampaged unrestrained, clear of the lee of North Foreland. However, by 4.30pm they had sight of the Kentish Knock lightship and drew as close as they dared, so as to get within hailing distance. They were just about able to ascertain from the lightship crew what direction to steer for the wreck, but the dusk was beginning to fall now and it soon became obvious that they would never find her in darkness.

  So, with extraordinary stoicism, the crew of the tug and the lifeboat agreed that their only option was to ride out the storm for the night. ‘We’re here to fetch the wreck’, said Bob Penny, one of the lifeboat crew, ‘and fetch it we will if we wait a week’. Therefore, while the tug kept her head to sea, her paddles turning just enough to prevent her from dropping astern, the lifeboat crew did all they could to prepare for a night of extreme discomfort and anxiety. It was not a matter of getting any rest or sleep, merely of surviving a constant drenching and saving themselves from being thrown overboard as the lifeboat leapt and twisted like a hooked salmon on the end of her towline.

  They did manage to rig a sort of shelter for themselves using the foresail; ten men huddled together under this while two took turns to stand in the stern, lifelines attached, to keep a lookout. Charles Fish later gave this wry account of their misery:

  We
all lay in a lump together for warmth, and a fine show we made, I dare say; for a cork jacket, even when a man stands upright, isn’t calculated to improve his figure, and as we all of us had cork jackets on and oilskins, and many of us sea boots, you may guess what a raffle of legs and arms we showed, and what a rum heap of odds and ends we looked, as we sprawled in the bottom of the boat upon one another.

  Sometimes it would be Johnny Goldsmith growling underneath that somebody was lying on his leg; and then maybe Harry Meader would bawl out that there was a man sitting on his head; and once Tom Friend swore his arm was broke; but my opinion is that it was too cold to feel inconveniences of this kind, and I believe that some among us would not have known if their arms and legs really had been broke, until they tried to use ’em, for the cold seemed to take away all feeling out of the blood.

  Seas breaking over the boat were constantly filling the sail stretched over the men with water which pushed down on them so that some had to lie flat on their faces. When the pressure got too great, they would all heave upwards with their back to shed the water overboard. The coxswain’s account continued:

  ‘Charlie Fish,’ says Tom Cooper to me, in a grave voice, ‘what would some of them young gen’lmen as comes to Ramsgate in the summer, and says they’d like to go out in the lifeboat, think of this?’ This made me laugh and then young Tom Cooper votes for another nipper of rum all round; and as it was drawing on for one o’clock in the morning, and some of the men were groaning with cold, and pressing themselves against the thwarts with the pain of it, I made no objection and the liquor went round.