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Updated: June 16, 2025
This was not a self-righting boat, and it did not belong to the Lifeboat Institution, most of whose boats are now built on the self-righting principle. Moreover, the unfortunate men had not put on lifebelts. It may be added that the men who work the boats of the Institution are not allowed to go off without their cork lifebelts on. Take another case.
I returned with them to F deck, the lady who had addressed me holding my arm all the time in a vise-like grip, much to my amusement, and we found a steward in her gangway who took them in and found their lifebelts.
He watched the scolding tugs and the ferryboats that crawled over the top of the water; he stood in rapt contemplation of the electric signs in Jersey, while the ship's bells marked the passage of time to eternity, while the Quartermaster slept in his bed, while the odours of the river stank in their nostrils and the pressure of the ship's lifebelts weighed like lead on their clammy bodies.
The only other woman on board was an army sister, who came and stood near us. Lifebelts were ordered to be put on, and as I tied Heasy's the aforementioned Sister turned to me and said: "You ought to tie that tighter; it will come undone very easily in the waves!" Heasy and I were convulsed, and so were all the people within earshot. "You mustn't be so cheerful," I said, as soon as I could speak.
Everything seemed strangely unaltered, the same old train down to Folkestone, the same porters there, the same old ship and lifebelts; and when I got to Boulogne nearly all the same old faces on the quay to meet the boat! I rubbed my eyes. Had I really been away two years or was it only a sort of lengthy nightmare?
They made for it, and their worst fears were realised the remnant of the brig's hull was there with ropes and wreckage tossing wildly round it but no lifeboat! Sadly they turned away and continued to search for some time in the faint hope that some of her crew might be floating about, buoyed up by their lifebelts, but none were found, and at last they reluctantly made for the harbour.
Bows crumpled up; bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas. Thrown back on her haunches, the "Starlight" gasped and shivered and began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle. "All on deck with lifebelts!"
The other two, Bell and Blackburn, were buoyed up by their cork lifebelts, washed ashore, and saved. The schooner itself was afterwards destroyed, and her crew of four men and a boy were lost.
High on her carriage, in the centre of the town, the new lifeboat stood gay and brilliant in her blue and white paint, the crew with their cork lifebelts on, and a brass band in front, ready to herald her progress to the shore. The mayor of the town, with all the principal men, headed the procession, and a vast concourse of people followed.
Maddened men and women running to and fro, their eyes starting from their heads, clasping children, fastening lifebelts over their costly gowns, or appearing from their cabins, their hands filled with jewels that they sought to save. Orders cried from high places by stern-faced officers doing their duty to the last.
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