290 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



throughout the long night the lifeboat and the tug 

 wallowed in the freezing waters. 



Then the dawn came, and for the first time the 

 Indian Chief was seen, gripped in the Goodwins but 

 not all of her. For twenty-four hours and more the seas 

 had thrashed her, and the Sands had tumbled her, and 

 all that the lifeboatmen could see was a solitary mast. 

 That lonely vestige of the wreck was still three miles 

 away, and it was not till the lifeboat had slipped her 

 tow-rope, and got down to the Long Sand under 

 her storm-foresail, that the pity of the tragedy was 

 realised. 



Eleven oil-skinned men were lashed in a bunch in the 

 top of the mast which was the mizzen all that was left 

 of the twenty-nine. These survivors unlashed themselves 

 and dropped, one by one, into the lifeboat. Not all, 

 however, came away, for the captain, though he seemed 

 to watch the operations of rescue, was frozen dead. 

 The second mate, when he was got into the lifeboat, was 

 raving mad. He died as the ice-clad craft was towed 

 back to Ramsgate Harbour, which was reached after 

 the Bradford had been out for twenty-six hours in some 

 of the worst weather known to living memory. 



That famous wreck will show something of the 

 fierce doings of the Goodwins ; but no one knows how 

 many ships and lives have been swallowed by these 

 mysterious and treacherous Sands. They are always 

 shifting and changing, and are full of hidden dangers 

 even to the men who are constantly working in their 

 neighbourhood. The Sands at low-water often bristle 

 with the skeletons of wrecks, and the jagged ironwork 

 or rotting timbers of lost vessels. 



