Deal lifeboatmen,
who on this occasion were the means of saving both valuable property
and precious human lives.

CHAPTER X

THE MANDALAY

The leak we've found, it cannot pour fast;
We've lightened her a foot or more--
Up and rig a jury foremast,
She rights! She rights, boys! Wear off shore!

The case of the Mandalay here recorded so far resembles that of the
Royal Arch and of the Edina, that in all three cases the vessels, the
cargoes, and the lives of all on board, were saved by the Deal
lifeboatmen, and by their courage and seamanlike skill, and intimate
local knowledge of the Goodwins and other places and sands in their
dangerous vicinity, brought safe to port. The Royal Arch was drifting
at night from her anchorage in the Downs, in an easterly gale towards
the surf-beaten shore. The Edina was in the most imminent peril on the
edge of the Brake Sand. The Mandalay was on the Goodwins itself, and
to save a vessel and her cargo from the Goodwins is no easy task.

On December 13, 1889, the Mandalay was passing the North Sand Head
lightship a little after midnight. She was outward bound from
Middlesbrough to the River Plate with a cargo of railway iron sleepers.
They hailed the lightship as its great lantern rapidly flashed close to
them, but the reply was lost in the plash of the sea and the flap of
the sails and the different noises of a ship in motion. At any rate
the Mandalay mistook her bearings, and managed to get into the very
heart of the Goodwin Sands.

In the darkness she probably sailed into what is called the Ramsgate
Man's Bight, though this is only a conjecture. This bight is a
swatchway of deep water, and the Mandalay then struck the Sands on the
eastern jaw of another channel into the Goodwins. This swatchway runs
N.E. and S.W., and leads from the deep water outside the Goodwins into
the inmost recesses of the Sands; that is, into a shallowish bay called
Trinity Bay; and it is much harder to get out of this bay than to get
in, like many a scrape of another kind. The swatchway leading into
Trinity Bay was about seven fathoms deep, but only fifty fathoms or one
hundred yards wide. On the eastern bank or jaw of this channel the
Mandalay ran aground. She ran aground at nearly high water, when all
was covered with the sea, on a fine, calm night, there being no surf or
ripple or noise to indicate the shallow water or the deadly proximity
of the Goodwin Sands.

Some of the