ctacle of a ship on
fire in a midnight 'hurricane from the west.' There was no one on
board of the burning ship, and no one knows the fate of her crew.
Sadly the lifeboatmen returned to the land.

Again Jarvist Arnold is summoned to the rescue, and this time with a
different result. On February 12, 1870, all the vessels in the Downs
were driven ashore, with the exception of one, which the skill and
pluck of E. Hanger, second coxswain of the Deal lifeboat, safely
piloted away to safety, through the tremendous sea.

There was a great gale from E.S.E. with bitter cold and snow. Vessel
after vessel came ashore, and some were torn into matchwood along the
beach. One large vessel, the ship Glendura, having parted her anchors
in the great sea that was running, was driving landwards. The captain,
foreseeing the inevitable, and determined, if he could not save his
vessel, to save precious lives--his wife and child being on
board--boldly set his lower foretopsail, to force his vessel stem on as
far ashore on the mainland as possible; and about 9 p.m., in this dark
freezing snowstorm, the stem of his large vessel, drawing about
twenty-three feet of water, struck the land.

[Illustration: Scene on Deal Beach February 13, 1870. From a painting
by W. H. Franklin.]

The engraving shows this ship in the act of striking. Facing the
picture, the Glendura lies farthest from the spectator. Between her
and the land would be about 100 fathoms, or 200 yards of water; but
that water was one furious mass of advancing billows hurled landwards
by this great tempest.

Fortunately, as I have said, the Glendura struck the beach unlike the
other vessels in the engraving, not broadside on, but stem on. They
were broken up very soon; but the Glendura held together, burning
flares and sending up appealing rockets. Still more fortunately--but
in truth providentially is the word to use--she struck right opposite
Kingsdown lifeboat house, where lay head to storm-blast, the Kingsdown
lifeboat Sabrina, and where, grouped round her, Jarvist Arnold and the
lifeboat crew stood ready.

Had the wrecked ship come ashore at any distance from the spot where
the lifeboat lay, either to the right or left, that is, either west or
east of where she did strike, the probability is that all on board
would have perished. With a heavy gale dead on shore, if the lifeboat
had succeeded in launching, she would not have fetched the wreck, had
she lain any dist