THE SEA. 



lobsters of which the present writer can testify, having both caught and eaten them there 

 is a pretty little fishing-village, with " Fisherman's Inn " embowered in trees, at the base of 

 lofty cliffs. Here the preliminary borings for the possible Channel Tunnel of the future 

 were made. Farther on is Kingsdown, a fishing village and lifeboat station, the men and 

 boat of which have done specially good service in saving life. Visible from thence is 

 Walmer Castle and quaint old Deal, so often mentioned in these pages in connection with 

 lifeboat work on the Goodwin Sands, themselves also plainly in sight. Riding at anchor in 

 Deal Roads, or outward bound, or on the homeward tack, are seen ships, great and little, 

 flying the colours of every maritime nation under the sun. The trip from Dover to Deal 

 and back can be made by any tolerable pedestrian in a day, allowing time for visits to all 

 the points just named. That part of the trip from Dover to St. Margaret's Bay can be 

 made over the Downs only, but thence to Deal the coast can be easily followed. 



Coming nearer home, the writer must record a case of " derring-do/' which will prove if after 

 what these pages have recorded of the men of Deal and Walmer and Kingsdown, of Ramsgate 

 and Margate, further proof were needed that the men of the North and South Foreland are 

 not degenerate descendants of their forefathers, who sailed and fought and died with Blake and 

 Nelson. It occurred in Deal on a Sunday morning in bleak December. A whole gale was 

 blowing from the south-west and vessels in the comparatively sheltered Downs were riding to 

 both anchors. As the various congregations were leaving their respective places of worship 

 umbrellas were blown inside out, and children were taken off their feet or clung frightened 

 to their parents' limbs, the wind and spray along Deal beach being blinding. Let the 

 " Chaplain " (nom de plume of the excellent clergyman who superintends the Missions to 

 Seamen) tell the tale. " Just then," he writes, "in answer to the boom of the distant gun, the 

 bell rang to man the lifeboat, and the Deal boatmen gallantly answered to the summons. 

 A rush was made for the life-belts and for the coxswain's house. The coxswain, Robert 

 Wilds, has for fifteen years held the yoke-lines through the surf on the sands, and knows the 

 powers of the boat to save. Fourteen men besides the coxswain were the crew, and with a 

 mighty rush they launched the good boat down the steep beach to the rescue. There were 

 three vessels on the Goodwins. The crew of one took to their boats, and not being in the 

 worst part of the sands got safe round the North Foreland to Margate. Another schooner, 

 supposed to be a Dane, disappeared, and was lost with all hands. The third, a German barque, 

 the Leda, with a crew of seventeen ' all told/ was stuck fast in the worst part of the sands 

 viz., the South Spit, on which even on a fine day the writer has encountered a dangerous and 

 peculiar boil or tumble of seas. The barque's main and mizen masts by this time wei*e gone, 

 and the crew were clinging to the weather bulwarks, while sheets of solid water made a clean 

 breach over them so much so that from cold and long exposure the captain was almost 

 exhausted. The Deal life-boat, the Van Kook, fetched a little to windward of the devoted 

 barque, and dropping anchor, veered down on her. One cable being too short, another was 

 bent on to it, and closer and closer came the lifeboat. If the cable parted and the lifeboat 

 struck the ship with full force, not a man would probably have survived to tell the tale; or if 

 they got to leeward of the barque the crew of the wreck would have been lost, as the lifeboat 

 could not again have worked ' to weather ' to drop down as before. No friendly steam-tug was 

 at hand to help the lifeboat to windward in case of failure in this their first attempt, and both 



