262 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



coasting trade, sailed from Hull for Dundee on the 

 evening of 5th September 1838. She carried sixty-three 

 passengers and crew, as well as a considerable quantity 

 of cargo. Steamships of those days were crude and 

 imperfect craft, especially in their boilers and machinery, 

 and shortly after the H umber had been left it was found 

 that the boilers of the Forfarshire were leaking. The 

 weather, too, was bad. 



A strong wind was blowing, there was a nasty sea, 

 and, worse than all, the air was thick. All the elements 

 of danger were present, even to the proximity of a 

 deadly coast. Throughout the day after sailing, how- 

 ever, the steamer managed to forge laboriously ahead. 

 She struggled past the Fame Islands, or Staples, off the 

 coast of Northumberland, north-east of Bamborough 

 Castle, and separated from the mainland by the Fairway 

 Channel. The leakage in the boilers increased so rapidly 

 that when the Forfarshire was off Berwick the water 

 was up to the furnaces and putting out the fires. Still 

 the master held on, but when St. Abb's Head was abeam 

 the engineer reported that the machinery was useless 

 and could not be worked any longer. Some sail was 

 accordingly set, and the Forfarshire was got round and 

 began to run south, before the wind, in the hope of 

 reaching shelter a hard thing on that inhospitable 

 coast, which, then as now, is unprovided with harbours 

 of refuge. 



The steamer surged and blundered down as far as 

 the dangerous Fairway, and the captain tried to steer 

 her through the channel. It was a forlorn hope in that 

 black night, and in a heavy gale. She was swept 

 repeatedly by savage seas, she refused to obey her helm, 



