Goodwin Sands

“ To sink the seamen with unmanly fear;
Though their firm hearts no pageant-honour boast,
They scorn the wretch that trembles in his post.
The smart and trim three-masted schooner, the Golden Island, was bound from Antwerp to Liverpool, with a cargo of glass-sand, and was running before a favouring gale to the southward. At midnight, on May 14, 1887, or the early morning of May 15, with a heavy sea rolling from the N.E., suddenly, no notice being given and no alarm felt, she struck with tremendous force the outer edge of the Goodwin Sands. ”

“ There is a broad bay called Trinity Bay in the heart of the Goodwins, out of which leads due north-east the chief swatch or passage through the Sands. It is four or five fathoms deep at low water, and from about three-quarters to a quarter of a mile wide, and it is called the Ramsgate Man's Bight. Close to the outer entrance of this great passage rides, about twelve feet out of water, the huge north-east Whistle buoy of the Goodwins, which ever moans forth in calmest weather its most mournful note. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We need scarcely point out that when several reasons are given for anything it is an indication that nothing very satisfactory is forthcoming.
That "Tenterden Steeple is the cause of the Goodwin Sands" is a proverb that was at one time often brought forth when any ridiculous cause was assigned as an explanation of anything. We have already [159] seen how very colloquial Bishop Latimer could be on occasion, and he tells us that a "Mr Moore was once sent with commission into Kent to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin's Sands which had stopped up Sandwich Haven. ”

“ In fourteen years from his death only one of his brave band of sons survived, and he was a miserable captive, who spent his whole existence in the dungeons of his chief enemy. It seemed as if nothing that Godwin had acquired could be enduring, for the very lands he left behind him no longer exist, his chief estate on the coast of Kent was swallowed by the sea, and now forms the dangerous shoal called the Goodwin Sands.
“Wise men also die and perish together, as well as the ignorant and foolish, and leave their riches for other. ”

“ This is the corpse that was buried in the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago, according to the will of the deceased.”
Much has already been said of the dangers of the Goodwins, but they are not altogether evil. Like human beings, they are compact of good and ill. Their useful and beneficent function is to provide a kind of natural breakwater forming the roadstead famous for centuries in naval and mercantile shipping annals as “the Downs”:
“All in the Downs the fleet lay moored,”
as the song goes, in Gay’s “Black-eyed Susan.” ”

“ Many a stormy struggle after this rescue was gone through by Jarvist Arnold and his Kingsdown lifeboat crew on the Goodwin Sands during the years 1870-1873. Holding the honourable but arduous post of coxswain of the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabrina, he also manfully earned his living as Channel pilot, being a most trustworthy and skilful seaman. He did well that which came to his hand; he did his best and his duty. I speak after the manner of men, and as between man and man. More than that no man can do. ”

“ Swirling and eddying in the strange currents on the Goodwins, and beaten of the winds and waves, on came the old cork fender towards the lifeboat. They had not another bit of cable to spare on board the lifeboat; every inch of their one hundred and sixty fathoms was paid out. Breathless the coxswain, and the man in the bows, rigid as his own boat-hook with the anxiety of the moment, lashed to his position, a life line round his waist, watched the approach of the fender. ”

“ When the tide fell, about 8.45, flares and rockets were seen coming from the Brake, a very dangerous and partially rocky 'Sand' lying close to the Goodwin Sands. Then the Gull lightship also fired guns and rockets. There being obviously a vessel in danger on or near either the Goodwins or the Brake Sand, the Deal lifeboat bell was rung; and a crew was obtained out of the hundred men who rushed to get a place. The beach was smoothed to give the lifeboat a run, she was let go, and, in contrast with the failure of other boats, launched successfully. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the lifeboat services to the Goodwins are invariably effected under sail. In other places, where the wreck lies close to the land, and the lifeboats are comparatively light, services are performed with oars, but not to the Goodwin Sands, which have to be reached under sail, and from which the lifeboats have to get home by sail, often against a gale off shore, eight miles to windward—with no steam-tug to help them, but by their own unaided skill, 'heart within and God o'erhead.' ”

“ Three feet per annum is said to be no uncommon rate for soft strata in these localities to be carried away; and the geologist may point to the famous Goodwin Sands—notorious alike in ancient and modern history—as another example of the results of sea-action, and of the wear and tear exercised by the mighty deep. The contemplation of such actions fits us in a singularly apt manner for the realisation of the full force and meaning of the Laureate's words:
There rolls the deep where grew the tree. ”

“ Contrast the freezing midnight scene of storm and surf, eight miles from the nearest land, with the quiet sleep of millions.
Here was a January midnight, black as a wolf's throat—thermometer 15° below freezing, a mountainous surf on the Goodwins, and only twelve brave men to face it all; but those twelve men were the heroes of a hundred fights, and were determined to save the men on the wreck or die for it.
Therefore, though swept to leeward, they got sail on the lifeboat and got her on the starboard tack, ten men sheeting home the fore sheet. ”

“ To remain standing in one place for a short time is to find one’s self sinking gradually, and sometimes even suddenly, for these are in many places quicksands; and innocent-looking pools, apparently quite shallow, give the incautious a bad shock by often proving to be perhaps anything from six to sixteen feet deep. They are locally known as “fox-falls,” and form but one of the many unpleasant surprises the Goodwins are capable of giving. Another strange thing is the extraordinary steepness of the Sands on the north side of the North Goodwin. ”

“ All the boatmen hung back, so the story ran, from the work of rescue, and shrank from the black fury of the gale, when the hero appeared on the scene, and roundly rating the coxswain and crew, sprang into the lifeboat, pointed out exactly what should be done, gave courage to all the quailing boatmen, and seizing an oar—those heroic youths always 'seize' or 'grasp' an oar—pulled to the Goodwin Sands 'in the teeth of a gale.' I notice these heroes always prefer the 'teeth of a gale,' especially when pulling in a lifeboat ”

“ All hands now fled to the bridge of the steamer, watching for a favourable moment to get into the Walmer lifeboat, still riding alongside, while each mad billow lifted her up almost to the level of the bridge and then smothered the lifeboat in its foaming bosom as she descended into the depths.
Any one who carefully observes a succession of waves either breaking in charging lines on a beach, or in the wilder turmoil of the Goodwins, must notice how frequently they differ in shape and in size. ”

“ On March 29, 1878, the wind blew strong from the E.N.E., and only one vessel, the Royal Arch, lay in the Downs. The great roadstead, protected from the full fetch of an easterly sea by the natural breakwater of the Goodwins—for without those dreaded sands neither the Downs as a sheltered anchorage would exist, nor in all probability the towns of Deal and Walmer—was nevertheless on that day a very stormy place, and as the wind freshened towards evening, as the east wind nearly always does in this locality, it eventually came on to blow a whole gale dead on shore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With me stood the coxswain of the celebrated Deal lifeboat, Richard Roberts. Intently he gazed at the projecting anchor fluke—shaft and chain had long been sucked down into the Goodwins—and then, after a good long look all round, taking the bearings of the deadly thing, at last he said, 'What a dangerous thing on a dark night for the lifeboat!'
Just think, good reader! The lifeboat, close reefed, flies to the rescue on the wings of the storm into the furious seas which revel and rage on the Goodwins. Her fifteen men dauntlessly face the wild smother. ”

“ Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands,
They claim the danger.
Ever since fleets anchored in the Downs, the requirements of the great number of men on board, as well as the needs of the vessels, would have a tendency to maintain the supply of skilled and hardy boatmen to meet those needs. Pritchard, in his History of Deal, which is a mine of interesting information, gives a sketch of events and battles in the Downs since 1063. Tostig, Godwin, and Harold are noticed; sea fights between the French and English in the Downs from 1215 are described ”

“ At 2 p.m., tiles flying in the streets, and houses being unroofed, it was most difficult to keep one's feet; crowds of Deal boatmen in sou'-westers and oilskins were ready round the lifeboat, and in the gaps of the driving rain and in the smoking drifts of the howling squalls which tore over the sea, they saw that a small vessel which had anchored inside the Brake Sand about two miles off the mainland had parted her anchors, and, being helpless and without sails, was drifting towards and outwards to the Brake. ”

“ To them, the lifeboatmen and coxswains of Deal, Walmer, and Kingsdown, friends and comrades, I dedicate these true histories of splendid rescues wrought by them, the 'Heroes of the Goodwin Sands.'
[1] Crew of the Deal lifeboat on her first launch to the rescue of the Iron Crown:—R. Wilds, R. Roberts, E. Hanger, G. Pain, J. Beney, G. Porter, E. Foster, C. Larkins, G. Browne, J. May, A. Redsull, R. Sneller, T. Goymer, R. Erridge. ”

“ Nor can any one realize how furious and terrible is the aspect of the sea in a gale off shore, and especially in the surf of the Goodwins, who has not been personally through such an experience.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution pay the men who form the lifeboat crew on each occasion generously and to the utmost limit their funds will admit. No one who knows the facts of the case and the management of this splendid Institution can have any doubt on this subject. Each man is paid L1 for a night service, and 10s. for service in the daytime. If he be engaged night and day, he is paid 30s. ”

“ Just then, in answer to the boom of the distant gun, the bell rang to 'man the lifeboat,' and the Deal boatmen answered gallantly to the summons. A rush was made for the lifebelts. The first and second coxwains, Wilds and Roberts, were all ready, and prepared with the key of the lifeboat house, as the rush of men was made.
The first thirteen men who succeeded in getting the belts with the two coxwains formed the crew, and down the steep beach plunged the great lifeboat to the rescue. There were three vessels on the Goodwins: the fate of one is uncertain ”

“ Right and left galloped the riders, beating the mob over the heads with their Winchesters, or cutting them with their quirts, riding down [252] men beneath the weight of their horses. The mob scattered and fled in every direction. The leader of the horsemen swung out of the saddle in front of the steps, and Winchester in hand, walked up to Loring.
“Are you Mr. Loring?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Stephen.
“Well, it seems as if we were just in time—not much too early, are we? We just got your telegram in Dominion in time to raise a big posse, and pack them onto the evening train. ”

“ It was Godwin who spoke again, for now that it had come to this struggle for life and their lady, Wulf, whose tongue was commonly so ready, had grown strangely silent, and fierce-faced also.
“Listen, Rosamund, and do not turn your eyes,” said Godwin. “There is but one chance for you, and, poor as it is, you must choose between it and capture, since we cannot kill you. The grey horse you ride is strong and true. Turn him now, and spur into the water of Death Creek and swim it. It is broad, but the incoming tide will help you, and perchance you will not drown.” ”

“ Next morning when they had finished breakfast, Sedgwick asked Jordan what his idea was by that time as to the best course to proceed.
Jordan shook his head, and said: "I'm afeerd we must try to build ther road or invent a berloon."
From the spring there ran a considerable stream off at right angles from the mine, and in exactly the opposite direction from whence they had come.
Sedgwick said: "Tom, that stream, unless it sinks, finds its way to the sea after awhile. We are in for it; a day or two more will not count. Suppose for awhile we follow that stream and see where it leads us." ”