3-016-878 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Ramsgate Life-boat: Morning after a Heavy Gale - Weather Moderating" - from the picture by E.W Cooke. R.A., 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'The crews of a pilot-boat and life-boat of Ramsgate, after hearing at daybreak signal-guns from the Goodwin floating light- vessel, have communicated with it, and now bear up for a water-logged Indiaman, the crew and passengers of which have perished during the night, when their boats were knocked to pieces. The Captain, who would not desert his ship, is rescued by the lifeboat just before the vessel founders on the North Sandhead of the Goodwin. The life-boat...is the Ramsgate "self-righting" boat, one built on the plan of those of the Life-boat Institution. This is the same boat which...performed a most important service by saving a hundred and twenty persons, being the whole of the crews and passengers of the emigrant-ship Fusilier, and the ship Demerara, wrecked on the Girdler Sands, off Margate... To be sixteen hours hard at work in the raging waves, fighting a December hurricane, while tons of water are now and then dashed over the boat, and the soaked clothes of the men are frozen stiff by the icy wind - that is a performance which we cannot sufficiently praise'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.