Fifty-two years ago, one stormy morning, a young Deal boatman was going
to be married, and the church bells were ringing for the ceremony, when
suddenly there was seen away to the southward and eastward a little
schooner struggling to live in the breakers, or rather on the edge of
the breakers, on the Goodwins. The Mariner lugger was lying on the
beach of Deal, and there being no lifeboat in those days a rush of
eager men was made to get a place in the lugger, and amongst them,
carried away by the desire to do and to save, was the intended
bridegroom.

By the time they plunged into the awful sea on the sands the schooner
had struck, and was thumping farther into the sands, sails flying
wildly about and the foremast gone. The crew, over whom the sea was
flying, were clustered in the main rigging. It was a service of the
most awful danger, and the lugger men, well aware that it was a matter
of life and death, put the question to each other, 'What do you say, my
lads; shall we try it?' 'Yes! Yes!' and then one and all shouted,
'Yes! We'll have those people out of her!' and they ran for the
drifting, drowning little Irish schooner. They did not dare to
anchor--a lifeboat could have done so, but for them it would have been
certain death--and as they approached the vessel and swept past her
they shouted to the crew in distress, 'Jump for your lives.'

They jumped for life, as the lugger rose on the snowy crest of a
breaker, and not a man missed his mark. All being rescued, they again
fought back through the broken water, and when they reached Deal beach
they were met by hundreds of their enthusiastic fellow townsmen, who by
main force dragged the great twenty-ton lugger out of the water and far
up the steep beach. The interrupted marriage was very soon afterwards
carried out, and the deserving pair are alive and well, by God's mercy,
to this day.

The luggers are about forty feet long and thirteen feet beam, more or
less. The smaller luggers are called 'cats.' There is a forecastle or
'forepeak' in the luggers where you can comfortably sleep--that is, if
you are able to sleep in such surroundings, and if the anguish of
sea-sickness is absent. I once visited in one of these luggers, lost
at sea with two of her crew on November 11, 1891, the distant Royal
Sovereign and Varne lightships, and had a most happy three days' cruise.

There is a movable 'caboose' in the 'cats' right amidships, in which
three or four me