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He strained his eyes, watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts and sails, when she should come about. For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance of attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine, to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past the lightship, the wind off her port bows.
It was when I was arranging what I should do in the later hours of that day, when we were at Billingsgate, that the skipper, staring round the North Channel, said to me: "It looks as though London had been wiped out since we left it. Where's the ships?" The Maplin watched us pass with its red eye. We raised all the lights true and clear.
Warnings must by this time have been flying in all directions. But we had no reason to be dissatisfied with our first day. Between the Maplin Sands and the Nore we had sunk five ships of a total tonnage of about fifty thousand tons. Already the London markets would begin to feel the pinch. And Lloyd's poor old Lloyd's what a demented state it would be in!
It was my task now to prove to them that they were right. It was May 2nd when I found myself back at the Maplin Sands to the north of the estuary of the Thames. The Beta was sent on to the Solent to block it and take the place of the lamented Kappa.
The Bessy for so Ben Tripper had named his bawley, after his favourite sister was lying on the mud just above Leigh. A fishy smell pervaded the air, for close by were the boiling-sheds, with their vast heaps of white cockle-shells. These were dug by the cocklers either from the sand at the end of the Canvey Island or on the Maplin Sands somewhere off Shoebury.
This beacon was completed in September 1821. Floating Lights Objections to Mitchell’s Screw-moorings Experiments on the Maplin Sand Foundation Erection of Screw-pile Lighthouse Details of the Wyre Lighthouse Proposed Lighthouse on the Goodwin Sands Metallic Lighthouses Advantages of Metal over Stone Details of Cast-iron Lighthouse at Morant Point, Jamaica.
We were now within a few hours of our cruising ground, so I determined to snatch a rest, leaving Vornal in charge. When he woke me at ten o'clock we were running on the surface, and had reached the Essex coast off the Maplin Sands.
We made a course east by north to where the red glints of the Maplin and Gunfleet lights winked in their iron gibbets. Above the shallows of the Burrows Shoal the masts projected awry of the wreck of a three-masted schooner, and they could have been the fingers of the drowned making a last clutch at nothing.
The spot selected for the purpose was on the verge of the Maplin Sand lying at the mouth of the Thames, about twenty miles below the Nore, forming the north side of the Swin or King’s Channel, which, on account of its depth, is much frequented by large ships, as also by colliers and other vessels from the north sea.
"Well, you see, mister, the way of it is just this," explained old Maskell, who considered the question as addressed more especially to him: "Bob was took off a wrack on the Maplin when he was a mere babby, the only one saved; found him wrapped up warm and snug in one of the bunks on the weather side of the cabin with the water surging up to within three inches of him; so ever since he's been old enough to understand he've always insisted as it was his duty, by way of returning thanks, like, to take the look-out when a wrack may be expected.
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