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But there were men of the sort that the grandest lifeboat crews are made of, and six Porthoustock fishermen, taking the best boat they could find, went out from their cove across the wind-torn sea towards the rocks barely discernible in the early morning light.
Those in the boats took the tidings to Coverack, but in the meantime a wind had sprung up; a message was sent across and Porthoustock men set out to the rescue. There were many children on board; the crew, unlike true Britons, thought only of their own safety; the ship was settling fast, leaving only the rigging for such survivors as could cling to it.
In 1895 the Andola was broken here, its crew saved by the lifeboat from Porthoustock. More recent, and the best remembered of all, is the wreck of the Mohegan, in 1898. She was a boat of 7,000 tonnage, leaving Gravesend with about 150 persons on board. She struck one of the Manacles, and within twenty minutes was submerged with the exception of masts and funnel.
The largest loss was the Bay of Panama, a Liverpool boat of 2,282 tons, making for Dundee with jute from Calcutta. Eighteen of her crew were lost, some being frozen to death. On this occasion a most wonderful feat of courage and endurance was accomplished by a man of Porthoustock, that village of brave men.
Rescue proved very difficult, but the lifeboat saved forty-four; all the remainder were lost. One of the Porthoustock lifeboat crew that did the rescuing had been also active in taking succour to the John, forty-three years earlier. It needs these records of heroism to relieve the sadness of such a chronicle. St.
He began his journey by pony, but soon had to leave the animal behind. Once he was near succumbing, but a rest in a wayside cottage restored him; the last two and a half miles he covered by crawling on his hands and knees, being too exhausted to walk. Falmouth was reached at last, and the messages from Porthoustock, St. Keverne, and Helston were delivered. But the tale of wrecks is not finished.
The noble heroism of the Porthoustock men came to the ears of Government, and ten guineas were sent to each man. More than a hundred of the drowned were buried in St. Keverne graveyard, an Act having just been passed that allowed bodies cast up by the sea to be admitted to consecrated ground. Another notable wreck was that of the emigrant ship John, in 1855.
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