lifeboat, too late to avert the
disaster they had witnessed.

They had left Deal at 3.15, but not having the aid of steam, were
half-frozen and much later on the scene of action than the Ramsgate tug
and lifeboat, to whom the honour of this grand rescue belongs.

They reached Ramsgate Harbour at 7.30 a.m. and at 9 o'clock, without
having gone ashore to breakfast, almost worn out, but borne up by
dauntless spirit within, in response to a telegram from Broadstairs,
the same steam-tug, lifeboat, coxswain and crew, again steamed out of
Ramsgate Harbour. A collier, the Glide, had gone to the bottom after
collision with another vessel, named the Glance--such strange
coincidences there are in real life--and the crew of the Glide had
taken to their own small ship's boat, while the crew of the Glance had
been saved by the Broadstairs lifeboat.

The crew of the Glide in their little boat were in great peril in the
mountainous seas which run off the North Foreland in easterly gales,
and it was feared they were lost.

Once more into the teeth of the icy gale, without rest and with only
snatches of food taken in the lifeboat, after the long exposure of the
preceding night and its terrible scenes, the Ramsgate men were towed
behind their tug-boat to the rescue. They found the boat of the Glide
riding in a furious sea to a sea-anchor, the very best thing they could
have done. A sea-anchor may be rigged up by tying sails and oars
together, with, if possible, a weight attached just to keep them under
water, and then pitching the lot overboard.

To this half-floating, half-submerged mass, the boat's painter was made
fast, and as it dragged through the water much more slowly than the
boat, the latter checked in its drift came head to sea, and yielding to
the send of each wave rode over crests and combers which would
otherwise have swamped her.

Hardly hoping for deliverance, they saw the steam-tug and lifeboat
making for them and ranging to windward of them to give them a lee, and
they were all dragged at last safely into the Bradford. Soon they were
towed in between Ramsgate piers, and this time the flying of the
British red ensign denoted, 'All saved.' Shouts of rejoicing hailed
the double exploit of the hardy lifeboatmen, and their fellow townsmen
of Ramsgate proudly felt they had done 'by no means a bad piece of work
before breakfast that morning.'

'Storm Warriors' of unconquered Kent, rivals in a hundred deeds of
mercy