The next day the storm was over; sea and sky were bathed in sunshine, and the swift-winged breezes just rippled the surface of the deep into the countless dimples of blue and gold.
[Greek] _Pontiôn te kumatôn_ _Anerithmon gelasma_
was the exact description, more easily felt than translated; but close to the North Bar buoy, in deep water, and just outside the Brake Sand, there projected from out of the smiling sea the grim stern spectacle of the masts of a barque whose hull lay deep down on its sandy bed. She it was which had been burning flares for help the night before in vain, and she had been beaten off the Brake Sand and sank before the lifeboat came. She was a West India barque, with a Gravesend pilot on board, and his pilot flag was found hoisted in the unusual position of the mizzen topmast head, a fact which was interpreted by the Deal boatmen as a message--a last message to his friends, and as much as to say, 'It's me that's gone.'
But the brave men in the lifeboat did their best, and by their extraordinary exertions, although they did not reach this poor lost barque in time, yet by God's blessing on their skill and daring they did save, Swedes and Frenchmen, seventeen souls that night from a watery grave.
Not once or twice in our rough island story The path of duty was the way to glory.
A book bearing the title of _Heroes of the Goodwin Sands_, would hardly be complete without a chapter devoted to the celebrated Ramsgate lifeboat and her brave coxswain and crew. To them, by virtue of Mr. Gilmore's well-known book, the title of _Storm Warriors_ almost of right belongs, but I am well aware they will not deny their daring and generous rivals of Deal a share in that stirring appellation, and I know that their friends, the Deal boatmen, on their part gladly admit that the Ramsgate lifeboatmen are also among the 'Heroes of the Goodwin Sands.'
The first lifeboat placed in Ramsgate was called the Northumberland. The next was called the Bradford, in memory of the interesting fact that the money required to build and equip her, about L600, was subscribed in an hour on the Bradford Exchange, and within the hour the news was flashed to London. Since then the rescues effected by the Ramsgate lifeboat have become household words wherever the English tongue is spoken.