wondrous story of the sea. It may be fairly said that no storms
that blow in these latitudes can keep the Ramsgate tug and lifeboat
back, when summoned to the rescue.

I had the privilege of standing on Ramsgate pier-head on November 11,
1891, when amidst the cheers of the crowd, who indeed could hardly keep
their feet, the tug and lifeboat slowly struggled out against the great
gale which blew that day. The lifeboat is towed a long way astern of
the tug-boat, to the full scope of a sixty fathom, five inch, white
Manilla hawser, and on the day I speak of, as the lifeboat felt the
giant strain of the tug-boat and was driven into the seas outside the
harbour, every wave broke into wild spray mast high over the lifeboat
and into the faces of her crew.

The crew are obtained from a body of 150 enrolled volunteers. The
first ten of these who get into the lifeboat when the rocket signal
goes up from the pier-head form on that occasion the crew of the
lifeboat. In addition to these the two coxswains, by virtue of their
office, raise the total number to twelve. The celebrated coxswain,
Charles Fish, was also harbour boatman at Ramsgate, and slept in a
watch-house at the end of the pier in a hammock. He was always first
aroused by the watch to learn that rockets were going up from some
distant lightship signifying 'a ship on the Goodwins.' With him rested
the decision to send up the answering rocket from the pier-head, upon
seeing which the police and coastguard called the lifeboat crew. Then
would come the rush for a place.

The coxswain had to decide what signals were to be regarded as false
alarms, and there are many such; sometimes, it is said in Ramsgate, the
flash of the Calais lighthouse is taken for a ship burning flares and
in distress on the Goodwins, and draws the signal guns from the
lightships. Sometimes a hayrick on fire is mistaken for a vessel's
appealing signal; sometimes the signals, of enormous and unnecessary
size, which the French trawlers burn to each other at night around the
Goodwins, set both the lightships and lifeboats all astray; and the
coxswains of the lifeboats, both at Ramsgate and Deal, have to be on
their guard against these delusive agencies. As the coxswains in both
of these places are men of exceptional shrewdness and ability, mistakes
are few and far between. The coxswain of a lifeboat ought to have the
eye of a hawk and the heart of a lion, and, I will add, the tenderness
and