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Updated: June 8, 2025
The coxswains barked their orders; sixteen oars rattled in their locks; the glistening shells moved slowly homeward. Tingling from his plunge in the river, Jim Deacon walked up the bluff from the boathouse to the group of cottages which constituted Baliol's rowing-quarters.
He brought along, in seventy-three galleys, five thousand men at arms; of darters, archers, and slingers, not less than three thousand; with the glittering of their armor, the flags waving from the galleys, the multitude of coxswains and flute-players giving time to the rowers, setting off the whole with all possible warlike pomp and ostentation to dismay the enemy.
They had no coxswains, and Wilton, at the bow oar of the professors' barge, could not see what was ahead, though he kept the pursuing boats in full view. The nearest land, not more than half a mile from the ship, was a point covered with salt marsh, above which was a cove, whose opening was about ten rods in width.
Every one was more eager than his neighbour to leap into the boats, and it required a good deal of management on the part of the coxswains to get men unaccustomed to a boat to take their places for rowing and at the same time trimming her properly. The landing-master and foreman went into one boat, while the writer took charge of another, and steered it to and from the rock.
It was to take place within the Seraglio. The first incident in the day was that my boat met the Russian Minister's caique at the landing-stage, and as neither of our coxswains would yield to the other there was an awful bump, which damaged the dignity of our attitudes by knocking us down like card houses.
It was about midnight, and there was 'a terrible nasty sea, and a great run under the lifeboat as she neared the land; and the coxswains made out the dim form of a large vessel burning her flare, with masts gone and the sea beating over her.
The coxswains had written instructions from the commodore to keep red ones on the starboard side, and blue on the port side, going up the river, and vice versa coming down. The Zephyr took position near the rocks to see that every boat approached the channel in the right direction, as, if they did not, they would be sure to strike.
Leger Stake, could not produce a greater scene of excitement than did our top-gallant forecastle and forward gangways, during the preparations for a race; the claims of different candidates for an oar would be carefully canvassed, and the coxswains became, for the nonce, men of vast importance, for upon their ipse dixit in selecting the crews, the success of the boats was thought mainly to depend.
But it is our happy privilege to record the successful issue of thirty-five hours' struggle against the terrors of a winter's gale on the Goodwin Sands, and of doing some small justice to the seamanlike skill and daring of the Deal coxswains and lifeboatmen, and of all engaged in the task.
On my way I met and passed half a dozen gangs of hilarious ex-prisoners and equally hilarious townsmen escorting them to the waterside, where the coxswains of the transport's boats were by this time blowing impatient calls on their whistles. But the upper end of the street was well-nigh deserted.
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