With the rising tide the gale came on again with renewed fury, and it soon became a question not of saving the vessel, but of saving their own lives. The sea dashed furiously over the wreck, lifting her, and then letting her fall with terrific violence on the sands. Her timbers quivered and shook, and a hole was quickly knocked in her side. She filled with water, and settled on one side. “The waves began now to break with great force over the deck; the lugger’s boat was speedily knocked to pieces and swept overboard; the hatches were forced up; and some of the cargo which floated on the deck was at once washed away. The brig began to roll and labour fearfully, as wave after wave broke against her, with a force that shook her from stem to stern, and threatened to throw her bodily upon her broadside; the men, fearing this, cut the weather rigging of the mainmast, and the mast soon broke off short with a great crash, and went over the side.” All hands now had to take to the fore-rigging; nineteen souls with nothing between them and death but the few shrouds of a shaking mast! The waves threw up columns of foam, and the spray froze upon them as it fell. The Margate and Whitstable men were caught in a trap, for neither lugger nor smack would have lived five minutes in the sea that surrounded the vessel. Would the life-boat come?
As soon as the news of the wreck reached Margate, the smaller of the two life-boats was manned and launched. By an oversight in the hurry of preparation, the valves of the air-tight boxes had been left open, and she was fast filling. Although she succeeded in getting within a quarter of a mile of the brig, she had to be speedily turned towards shore, or she would have been wrecked herself. After battling for four hours with the sea and gale, she was run ashore in Westgate Bay. There the coastguardmen did their best for them. Meantime, when it was learned in Margate that the first boat was disabled, the larger one was launched. Away they started, the brave crew doing all they could to battle with the gale, but all in vain; their tiller gave way, and they had to give up the attempt. They were driven ashore about one mile from the town. Next, two luggers attempted to get out to the wreck. The fate of the first was soon settled: a fearful squall of wind struck her before she had got many hundred yards clear of the pier, and swept her foremast clean out of her. The second lugger was a little more fortunate; she beat out to the Sands, but only to find the surf so heavy, that it was impossible to cross them, or to get near the wreck. “The Margate people became full of despair; and many a bitter tear was shed for sympathy and for personal loss as they watched the wreck, and thought of the poor fellows perishing slowly before their eyes, apparently without any possibility of being saved.” And now let us change the scene to Ramsgate.