the
boatmen.

The dress of the boatmen in those days, _i.e._ their 'longshore
toggery'--and there are still among the older men a few, a very few
survivals--was finished off by tall hats and pumps; and in answer to my
query 'why they formerly always wore those pumps?' I was told, ''Cos
they was always a dancin' in them days'--doubtless with Jane and Bess
and black-eyed Susan.

There was smuggling, too, of spirits and tobacco, and all kinds of
devices for concealing the contraband articles. Not very many years
ago boats lay on Deal beach with hollow masts to hold tea--then an
expensive luxury, and fitted with boxes and lockers having false
bottoms, and all manner of smuggling contrivances.

It was hard to persuade those wild, daring men that there was anything
wrong in smuggling the articles they had honestly purchased with their
own money.

'There's nothing in the Bible against smuggling!' said one of them to a
clerical friend of mine, who aptly replied: 'Render therefore unto
Caesar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God the things that be
God's.'

'Is it so? you're right,' the simple-minded boatman replied; 'no more
smuggling after this day for me!' And there never was.

But that which has given the Deal boatmen a niche in the temple of fame
and made them a part and parcel of our 'rough island story,' is their
heroic rescues and their triumphs over all the terrors of the Goodwin
Sands.

There was no lightship on or near the Goodwin Sands till 1795, when one
was placed on the North Sand Head. In 1809 the Gull lightship, and in
1832 the South Sand Head lightships, were added, and the placing of the
East Goodwin lightship in 1874 was one of the greatest boons conferred
on the mariners of England in our times.

It is hard even now sometimes to avoid the deadly Goodwins, but what it
must have been in the awful darkness of winter midnights which brooded
over them in the early part of this century is beyond description.

Nor was there a lifeboat stationed at Deal until the year 1865. Before
that time the Deal luggers attempted the work of rescue on the Goodwin
Sands. In those days all Deal and Walmer beach was full of those
wonderful sea-boats hauled up on the shingle, while their mizzen booms
almost ran into the houses on the opposite side of the roadway. The
skill and daring of those brave boatmen were beyond praise. Let me
give in more detail the incident alluded to in the account of the
Ganges.