uccess in her work. Her sister-lifeboats of
Broadstairs and Margate may, indeed, be as often called to act, but they
lack the attendant steamer, and sometimes, despite the skill and courage
of their crews, find it impossible to get out in the teeth of a tempest
with only sail and oar to aid them.

Early in December, 1863, an emigrant ship set sail for the Antipodes;
she was the Fusilier, of London. It was her last voyage, and fated to
be very short. The shores of Old England were still in sight, the eyes
of those who sought to "better their circumstances" in Australia were
yet wet, and their hearts still full with the grief of parting from
loved ones at home, when one of the most furious storms of the season
caught them and cast their gallant ship upon the dangerous Sands off the
mouth of the Thames. This happened on the night of the 3rd, which was
intensely dark, as well as bitterly cold.

Who can describe or conceive the scene that ensued! the horror, the
shrieking of women and children, and the yelling of the blast through
the rigging,--for it was an absolute hurricane,--while tons of water
fell over the decks continually, sweeping them from stem to stern.

The Fusilier had struck on that part of the sands named the Girdler. In
the midst of the turmoil there was but one course open to the crew--
namely, to send forth signals of distress. Guns were fired, rockets
sent up, and tar-barrels set a-blaze. Then, during many hours of agony,
they had to wait and pray.

On that same night another good ship struck upon the same sands at a
different point--the Demerara of Greenock--not an emigrant ship, but
freighted with a crew of nineteen souls, including a Trinity pilot.
Tossed like a plaything on the Sands--at that part named the Shingles--
off Margate, the Demerara soon began to break up, and the helpless crew
did as those of the Fusilier had done and were still doing--they
signalled for aid. But it seemed a forlorn resource. Through the
thick, driving, murky atmosphere nothing but utter blackness could be
seen, though the blazing of their own tar-barrels revealed, with awful
power, the seething breakers around, which, as if maddened by the
obstruction of the sands, leaped and hissed wildly over them, and
finally crushed their vessel over on its beam-ends. Swept from the
deck, which was no longer a platform, but, as it were, a sloping wall,
the crew took refuge in the rigging of one of the masts which still hel