comparative shelter of the Downs. Those vessels had everything made as
snug as possible to meet the gale, and were mostly riding to two
anchors and plunging bows under. Here and there a vessel was dragging
and going into collision with some other vessel right astern of her; or
perhaps slipping both her anchors just in time to avoid the crash; or
away to the southward could be seen in the rifts of the driving rain
squalls, a large ship drifting, with anchors gone and sails blown into
ribbons.

Deal beach was alive with the busy crowds of boatmen either launching
or beaching their luggers. The smaller boats, the galley punts, which
are seven feet beam and about twenty-eight feet in length, found the
wind and sea that day too much for them, especially in the afternoon.
They had been struggling in the Downs all day with two or three reefs,
and in the 'smokers' with 'yardarm taken,' but in the afternoon the
mercury in the barometers began to jump up and

First rise after low
Foretells a stronger blow.

Then the galley punts had to come ashore, and only the luggers and the
'cats' were equal to cruising among the storm-tossed shipping,
'hovelling' or on the look-out for a job.

Some of the vessels might need a pilot to take them to Margate Roads or
northwards, or some might require a spare yard, or men to man the
pumps, or an anchor and chain, the vessels in some cases riding to
their last remaining anchor--or perhaps their windlass had given way or
the hawse pipe had split, and in that case their own chain cable would
cut them down to the water's edge in a few hours. To meet these
various needs of the vessels, the great luggers were all day being
continuously beached and launched, and it was hard to say which of the
two operations was most perilous to themselves or most fascinating to
the spectator. Once afloat they hovered about, on the wing as it were,
among the vessels, and from the beach it could be seen how crowded with
men they were, and how admirably they were handled.

The skill of the Deal boatmen is generally supposed to be referred to
in the lines:

Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands,
They claim the danger, proud of skilful bands;
Fearless they combat every hostile wind,
Wheeling in mazy tracks with course inclined.

The passage has certainly a flavour of the Goodwins but at any rate the
sea-bird does not sweep to the raging summit of a wave, or glide more
easily from its seething