Lifeboat Heroes: Outstanding RNLI Rescues from Three Centuries Page 5
To his dismay, when he reached into the locker for his own non-alcoholic sustenance — a bar of Fry’s chocolate — Charles Fish found that the sea had got in and reduced it to inedible pulp. There was no other food to be had on board and they were not going to try hauling themselves close to the tug for fear of being smashed to pieces against her side.
At last the sky began to brighten in the east and before too long there was a shout; someone had seen what looked like a solitary mast protruding from a mass of white water, about three miles off. They soon realised that that was all that remained of the ship they had come looking for. Fish looked at the wild confusion of the sea surrounding the wreck; waves rose up in great columns as high as a house and the thunder of their self-destruction on the sands was audible even over the howling of the gale. Then he looked at his men’s faces; ‘let slip the tow rope’, one of them urged, and, with that assurance, the coxswain ordered, ‘up foresail!’ and the lifeboat set out on her own, downwind, towards the wreck.
With all eyes fixed on the mast, the lifeboat crew were probably better off not seeing the towering seas which rose up astern of them and which spilt whole sheets of spray that flew in the wind high over their heads to land with an explosion in their path ahead. First it looked as if no-one had made it into the rigging of the wreck’s remaining mast. Then, as they drew closer, the lifeboat crew realised that there was a cluster of men clinging to it but that their yellow oilskins had camouflaged them against the yellow varnished mast.
The lifeboat put out an anchor and veered in towards the remnants of the ship’s stern. The men in the rigging scrambled down to the deck and picked their way aft along the rail, dodging the waves that washed across the waterlogged hull as best they could. Someone from the ship threw a piece of wood attached to a line into the water and it was grabbed by one of the lifeboat crew. Now they could make themselves fast alongside the wreck and the survivors could leap aboard.
Coxswain Fish was not prepared for the ghastly sight of all the bodies knocking about in the water among the fallen spars of the mizen mast. He thought that the entire ship’s company had been in the foremast and were therefore saved. One of those bodies, that of the second mate, was still just living and two of his shipmates shinned along the fallen mast to cut him clear and carry him to the lifeboat. Fish recalled:
The body of the captain was lashed to the head of the mizen mast, so as to look as if he were leaning over it, his head stiff upright and his eyes watching us, and the stir of the seas made him appear to be struggling to get to us. I thought he was alive and cried to the men to hand him in, but someone said he was killed when the mizen mast fell and had been dead four or five hours.
This was a dreadful shock; I never remember the like of it. I can’t hardly get those fixed eyes out of my sight and I lie awake for hours of a night, and so do others of us, seeing those bodies torn by the spars and bleeding, floating in the water alongside the miserable ship.
The lifeboat’s return through the tumultuous waters over the sands only added to the trauma of the 12, soon to be 11, survivors on board. They made it back to the tug, however, and, a few hours later, the safety of Ramsgate Harbour. Charles Fish was later awarded the RNLI Gold Medal; his crew and the entire crew of the tug, Vulcan, received the Silver Medal, an unprecedented number of awards for a single rescue. The mate of the Indian Chief, William Lloyd, paid this memorable tribute to his saviours:
When I looked at the lifeboat’s crew and thought of our situation a short while since, and our safety now, and how, to rescue us, these great-hearted men had imperilled their own lives, I was unmanned; I could not thank them, I could not trust myself to speak.
How can such devoted heroism be written of, so that every man who can read shall know how great and beautiful it is? Our own suffering came to us as part of our calling as seamen. But theirs was bravely courted and endured for the sake of their fellow-creatures. Believe me, it was a splendid piece of service; nothing grander in its way was ever done before, even by Englishmen. I am a plain seaman and can say no more about it all than this. But when I think of what must have come to us 11 men before another hour had passed, if the lifeboat crew had not run down to us, I feel like a little child, and my heart grows too full for my eyes.
Charles Fish (centre) and the crew of the Ramsgate lifeboat who helped him to save the survivors from the Indian Chief in January 1881. Each crewman received the Silver Medal for his part in the rescue. (RNLI)
6. The Mexico disaster, 9 December 1886
Three lifeboats launch to the wrecked Mexico in a gale in the Ribble Estuary; one of them, Lytham lifeboat, rescues the entire crew and lands them safely ashore while Southport and St Anne’s lifeboats are capsized with the loss of 27 men. This, the worst disaster in RNLI history, brings about major changes in the operation of the lifeboat service and the way it is funded.
When Coxswain Thomas Clarkson stepped over the side of the brand new Lytham lifeboat, just after 3 o’clock on the morning of Friday 10 December 1886, and dropped onto the beach to lend a hand with the boat’s recovery, he let out the long exhalation of an exhausted but deeply gratified man. To the cheers of a sizeable crowd which had been waiting through the night in the wind and rain, he had just put ashore the entire 12 man crew of the German barque Mexico, which had run aground on a sand bank in the Ribble Estuary. In very heavy, breaking seas caused by a gale from the north west meeting a powerful ebb tide head on, he and his crew had successfully negotiated the lethal shoals of the estuary and, in spite of a near capsize when four oars were broken, he had located the wreck in total darkness, got alongside and rescued the crew. He would later be awarded the RNLI Silver Medal for his gallant services that night.
Although the survivors were in a pretty bad way after several hours lashed to the rigging of their ship, they would all live to tell the tale and for that reason they, their rescuers and everyone ashore were exultant. Maybe the captain of the Mexico, G. Burmester, was more pensive than some. He had, after all, lost his ship and, to his great concern, all his ship’s papers. He was also possibly playing over in his mind a very strange co-incidence: only a few weeks earlier, while his ship was in Liverpool, he had visited the Liverpool International Exhibition, opened by Queen Victoria and displaying the very latest technology of the age. One exhibit that had particularly impressed him was a new RNLI lifeboat, a 37ft self-righting, 12-oared, pulling and sailing boat, fitted with the latest development in improved stability, namely water-ballast tanks running along the keel amidships. This lifeboat was none other than the Charles Biggs, just out of the builder’s yard and destined for Lytham lifeboat station as soon as the exhibition was over. Captain Burmester could scarcely have expected to find himself and his crew the very first people to benefit from its use, just a few weeks later on the sandbanks of the Ribble.
However bewildered he was by the night’s events, the Captain had not lost the art of diplomacy; the crowd on the beach had followed him and his crew to the steps of the Railway Hotel where they were to be given medical treatment and be looked after for the rest of the night; at the hotel entrance the captain turned to the people gathered and, in a thick German accent, addressed them: ‘I do thank you very much, and everyone in your town, for the gallant manner in which you have this night rescued me and my crew.’
Little did he, or anyone around him cheering his words, realise the full extent of the debt the captain and his crew would actually owe the fishing communities on either side of the Ribble Estuary. Nobody knew in Lytham that two other lifeboats, from Southport and from St Anne’s, had also responded to the signals of distress fired by the Mexico when she hit the Horse Bank off Southport. While the crowds whooped in celebration outside the Railway Hotel in Lytham, a white upturned hull glowed in the moonlight, high and dry on the sands on the estuary’s southern shore and a sombre search party picked its way among lifeless oilskin-clad bodies scattered in the vicinity. Another identical hull, also across the estuary and as yet undiscovered,
was floundering in the surf, her keel exposed to the heavens, with limp corpses, tossed about like kelp in the sea around her, entirely at the mercy of the waves.
Lytham’s triumph was about to be totally eclipsed by the worst disaster in the history of the RNLI. Twenty-seven lifeboatmen lost their lives that night in a tragedy which would have a profound effect on the future of the lifeboat service.
Thanks to the inquests and investigations which followed the disaster, there are a number of recorded first-hand accounts of what happened and these, pieced together, help to tell the full story. First to speak is Captain Burmester of the Mexico to explain the circumstances of his shipwreck:
My ship is the Mexico of Hamburg. We were bound from Liverpool to Guayaquil in Ecuador with a valuable mixed cargo. The ship is iron built and barque rigged and her tonnage is 491. We left Liverpool on Sunday morning (5 Dec), engaged a pilot at the bar lightship on Monday and he remained with us till Tuesday noon. We had to beat against a heavy north-north-westerly gale and our canvas was blown away.
On Thursday morning we saw the Orme’s Head (by Llandudno, N. Wales). At noon we sounded 14 fathoms, at two o’clock, ten fathoms and at four, eight fathoms. I called my crew together and we decided to cut away the fore and main masts and let go both anchors. We got one anchor out at 19 fathoms and the other at five fathoms, but the ship continued to drift. After 105 fathoms of cable were out, she steadied for half an hour, but again began to drag. At about 9.30pm we struck the bank. We at once burned our lights and then we lashed ourselves to the remaining portion of the rigging to save ourselves from being washed overboard by the seas which were sweeping the decks.
Now Lytham’s coxswain, Thomas Clarkson, takes up the story:
We set out at 10.05pm having seen the signals at 9.30pm. We steered south west. There was a gale of wind blowing. The sea near Southport was very high and, shortly before getting to the ship, it was mountains high. Sometimes it was breaking, sometimes it was not. In its course it was running all one way. On the bank the water was properly broken. After we had gone about five miles we lost sight of the ship’s lights and I said to my crew, ‘Show a bright light’. They did so and it was answered immediately.
We went for about 20 minutes and lost the sight of the ship’s light again. As we approached, the water broke and four or five times our boat was full. I said, ‘Take the masts and sails down.’ As soon that was done, the sea gave her a lurch and we broke four oars. She got partly on her beam ends. I said, ‘Keep her head to the sea’, and she made for the ship with her shoulder on the sea. I fancy the tide was taking us towards Southport Pier.
When we got to the Mexico the captain threw a black box about a foot square to the lifeboat but it went into the water. He said, ‘That is the ship’s statements.’ I said, ‘You are done, you can’t get them now.’ One of the men then made an attempt to get into the lifeboat and he slipped down the ship’s side. He was beginning to go down and this poor fellow let go the rope just as a heavy sea was coming. It took the boat from the ship and he was knocked between the boat and the ship. Our crew pulled him in head first.
The next one came right into the middle of the boat, the next the same but the next one broke the rope and we had to get another rope. Two came down together next on one rope. The next one fell across one of the rudders and hurt his leg. The captain was next and he put the rope round his waist and the mate lowered him down. We got hold of him and swung him into the middle of the boat. I said to the captain, ‘Have you seen any other boats before we came?’ He said, ‘No, yours is the first boat.’ We could see a crowd assembled on the shore then.
These were the people of Southport who were presumably looking out anxiously for their own boat which had indeed been launched at about 11pm. They would not have been able to see what was happening at the wreck. At about 12.15am, with all survivors on board, Coxswain Clarkson worked the Lytham lifeboat clear of the wreck which was now heeled right over on her beam ends with massive seas washing over her decks. In spite of being full of water, the lifeboat, with all sails set, began to claw herself away from the lee shore. The coxswain takes up the story once more:
The sea was not so heavy now. I said to the men, ‘Go along the shore with the boat; show a green light and let those on the shore see that we have got the crew all right.’ I said to the captain, ‘Do you wish to be put ashore here or to go along with us?’ He said, ‘Where you go, I will go. You have a very good boat.’ All in the boat were wet through and half drowned. We reached home about 15 minutes past three o’clock. I have been in the lifeboat service 32 years. I consider the stability of the boat on which I am coxswain better than any boat I have ever sailed in.
I saw nothing at all of the Southport and St Anne’s boats. I knew nothing about them till a telegram came next morning stating that the Southport boat was capsized.
Then, when the news came that their neighbouring St Anne’s lifeboat, Laura Janet, had also launched but had not returned, the same Lytham crew put immediately to sea at 10.30 on the Friday morning. Many of them had relatives aboard the missing boat and their search was therefore a desperate one. When they drew alongside Southport pier they learned the full extent of the town’s loss: 13 out of 16 men aboard the lifeboat drowned. (A fourteenth would die in hospital the next day).
Then someone on the pier spotted a white shape in the estuary near the deserted wreck of the Mexico. To the despair of the Lytham crew who went immediately to investigate, it was the upturned hulk of the Laura Janet, partly stove in with three of her lifeless crew trapped underneath. The remaining ten bodies were subsequently found strewn along the tideline.
The sea almost claimed yet another life that day; Blackpool lifeboat had also put out when the crew heard that the St Anne’s boat was missing. Her coxswain, Robert Bickerstaffe, was swept overboard when the lifeboat, identical in design to the Southport and St Anne’s boats, nearly capsized as she shipped a heavy sea. Luckily the coxswain retained a hold on the yoke line and, after being dragged some 60 yards before the sails could be lowered, he was hauled back on board.
What, then, befell the two lifeboats that were lost? No one can be certain about the St Anne’s boat because all 13 men aboard her died. She was watched by many as she set off from St Anne’s at 10.30 on the Thursday night, having seen the same distress signal as had the Lytham crew. Spectators watched as she was pulled away from the shore under oars until, about 100 yards out, sail was set and she disappeared into the night.
About an hour after the launch, the people who still watched and waited on the shore saw a light about a mile to windward of the one assumed to be the ship in distress. Was this, they wondered, another ship in distress or was it a lifeboat, maybe theirs, driven from her course and calling for assistance? They would never know. At about two o’clock they saw another light much nearer them which they were sure was a lifeboat. It was, but it was the Lytham boat signalling her success to her own station. Surely this meant that the Laura Janet would soon be following? Their agonised wait lasted until 1pm on the Friday when a telegram arrived from Southport with dreaded news that bodies from their lifeboat had been found. Exactly how the lifeboat came to grief can only be surmised. If she had capsized, she should have righted herself, unless it had been in the shallows. Maybe she struck the Horse Bank and somehow became disabled. A silver watch found on the body of one of the crew had stopped at twenty past two which suggests that the men of St Anne’s struggled aboard their boat for many hours before finally succumbing to their fate.
Only two men survived the capsize of the Southport lifeboat, Eliza Fernley. One was Henry Robinson, one of three brothers to put out that night, and the other, John Jackson, who also had a brother aboard the boat. It is thanks to this account, given by John Jackson on the day after his ordeal, that a vivid record remains of their disastrous mission.
The barque Mexico was seen by a number of people at about three o’clock yesterday afternoon, riding at anchor about five miles from the spot where
she came to grief. There was no reason to believe that she was in distress at the time. A gale was blowing at the time and a lookout was kept. She was kept in sight a good portion of the afternoon but as dusk crept on, we lost sight of her. The crew kept about ready to put out at a moment’s notice. At last signals of distress were observed; the barque, evidently standing nearer shore, sent up rockets and flashed lights for help. Captain Hodge (the coxswain) lost no time in getting the boat out. At ten minutes to ten the horses set off with the boat and, after experiencing considerable difficulty, we launched the boat at 11 o’clock. A large crowd saw us off and the excitement was tremendous. The boat was launched successfully and went nicely for a time.
Soon, though, the sea began to assert its brutal self over the lifeboat and her crew. The oarsmen stuck grimly to their task, fighting to keep to their seat as wave after wave washed over them. Several times they were beaten back and the coxswain had to scour the darkness to find, once more, the faint glimmer of the lamp, hung from the Mexico’s mizzen top, their only point of reference in the storm.
Eventually they drew to within 30 yards of the ship and could see that she had lost her foremast and her mainmast. Even if anyone had been shouting to them from her deck, the lifeboat crew would have heard nothing; they could scarcely hear their own voices above the wind which was now stronger than ever. John Jackson had the anchor in his hand, ready to let it go so that the lifeboat could veer down to the Mexico, when a mountainous sea caught the boat amidships, picked her up and turned her upside-down. Jackson recalled: