At 3 a.m. then the Ramsgate rocket went up in answer to the signals from the Gull lightship; on that bitter night the lifeboat was manned in eight minutes. The lifebelts and oilskins were handed into the lifeboat; shivering, the brave hearts got their clothes on, and in less time than this page has been written, the tow rope had been passed into the lifeboat from the Aid, and that tug was out of the harbour, dragging the lifeboat, head to sea, 110 yards astern of her.
It was black midnight, and no man in the boat could see his neighbour; the pier was like a great iceberg and sheeted with ice; the sea was flying over the oilclad figures in the lifeboat and freezing almost as it fell, rattling against the sails or on the deck, or fiercely hurled into the faces of the men; indeed, every oilskin jacket was frozen stiff before they had been towed a quarter of a mile against the furious sea, which drenched them 'like spray,' as the coxswain expressed it, 'from the parish fire engines.' The brave fellows were more than drenched--they were all but frozen, but no one dreamed of turning back, for though the lightship's rockets had stopped they could see the piteous flares from the distant wreck now and then, as the snow squalls broke, beckoning them on.
The vessel on the Goodwins was the three-masted schooner or barquentine The Crocodile, laden with stone from Guernsey to London, and when about a mile or so north of the Goodwins 'reaching' on the port tack, 'missed stays' in the heavy sea, and before they had time to 'wear' ship, she struck the northern face of the Goodwins, against which a tremendous sea was driven by the black north-easter that was blowing from the Pole. She struck the Goodwins bows on with her head to the south-east, and she heeled over to starboard, the sea which rolled from the E.N.E. beating nearly on her port broadside.
The wrecked crew knew their position, and that their only chance was the advent of some lifeboat, and they burned flares, which consisted on this occasion of their own clothes, which they tore off and soaked in oil. They were soon beaten off the deck as the tide rose, and in the darkness had to take to the rigging, the captain, who was an elderly man, and his crew all together climbing in the mizzen weather rigging. The weather rigging was of course more upright than the lee rigging, which leaned over to the right or starboard hand as the vessel lay.