288 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



world's great waterways, and along it there is an ever- 

 lasting procession of steam and sailing craft. In fine 

 bright weather the buoys and lightships serve as guides 

 to pilots, but let one of the stealthy North Sea fogs 

 envelop the ravenous region, and there is little hope of 

 keeping clear of danger. 



On Good Friday, 1909, the steamship Mahratta, 

 homeward bound from Calcutta, with a valuable cargo, 

 and in the care of an experienced pilot, struck the South 

 Goodwins. A fleet of tugs got hold of her and held her 

 fast ; but the pitiless Goodwins gripped tighter, and, 

 just as a boa-constrictor will not let its victim go when 

 once the monster's jaws have got it, so the Goodwins 

 began to swallow the noble craft. Soon she broke her 

 back, her steel decks arching as the fore and aft parts 

 settled in the quicksands, and when, from Ramsgate 

 East Pier, through the good clear telescope of Charles 

 Fish, the famous lifeboatman, I looked at her, more than 

 a year after the Goodwins began to swallow her, only her 

 four masts were visible. 



The Mahratta is the biggest ship that was ever 

 wrecked on these fatal sands. Hers, however, is not 

 the saddest case of loss, for probably of all the Goodwins' 

 victims, none has become more widely known than the 

 Indian Chief. Fish was coxswain of the lifeboat 

 Bradford when, in a bitter winter gale, she rescued the 

 frozen survivors of the ship and brought them safely 

 home. 



The Indian Chief, a vessel of 1200 tons, was bound 

 from Middlesbrough to Yokohama. She sailed on a 

 Sunday afternoon, with twenty-nine souls, including the 

 north-country pilot. All the way down the grim North Sea 



