THE GREAT MARCH GALE 221 



locality explored was, I believe, Hoxton, on the memory 

 of which Ben dwells fondly, calling it London. Ben said 

 that of course I had heard of Mr. Somebody, of Hoxton, 

 and I assured him that I had, though I was honest enough 

 to admit that I had no personal acquaintance with the 

 driver. It was a hot summer day when I talked with Ben, 

 on board an old smack in harbour. Beyond us was the 

 vast blue placid stretch of the North Sea, with the ever- 

 lasting procession of steamships tramping north and south ; 

 inland were the purple moors, withering in the blazing sun. 

 Old Ben smoked and did a bit of rough joinery ; and 

 when his mind could be taken from the lurid lights of 

 Hoxton and the wild, odd things that the bus-driver had 

 said, he would glance towards the Dogger and jerk out 

 fragments of the story of the great March gale. I had 

 many talks with him ; and put together and told, not in 

 his own way, which would not be understandable in print, 

 but in the ordinary tongue, his tale was this 



" During my life as a North Sea smacksman I saw 

 as much wind and weather on the Dogger as most men ; 

 but I never saw anything so savage as the great March 

 gale. I've known other breezes as bad in some ways, 

 but never one that brought up such a deadly sea as that, 

 and in such a short time did so much mischief and caused 

 such heavy loss of life. 



" I remember the great winter gale of 1861, when the 

 Whitby lifeboat was lost with all hands in trying to save 

 some sailors, and the coast hereabouts was strewn with 

 battered wrecks and dotted with drowned men. There was 

 a famous disaster within a few hundred yards of us, and out 

 at sea smacks went down bodily, and those that escaped only 

 came home to report loss of life or show how badly they'd 



