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I finally reached a state of mind that filled me with disgust, and I took an afternoon stroll down the road to Walmer Castle; and just opposite the window of the room in which the Duke of Wellington died on the sands of Deal beach I knelt on my knees and promised God that I "wudn't put th' dhirty gloves on again," and I kept the promise while in the training depot.
J. Mackins, the coxswain of the Walmer lifeboat, was also seized by pneumonia after a splendid service across the Goodwins, when his lifeboat was buried thirty times in raging seas; S. Pearson, once coxswain of the Walmer lifeboat, died of Bright's disease, the result of exposure; and on the occasion of the rescue of the Ganges, one of the crew, R. Betts, had his little finger torn off.
Swift on the shore, a hardy few The Lifeboat man, with a gallant, gallant crew. Some years ago I remember reading a tale, the hero of which was a youth of nineteen. The scene was laid around the lifeboat of either Deal or Walmer. There was supposed to be a ship in distress on the Goodwins, and the night was dark and stormy.
He possessed in an eminent degree two of the great requisites of effective oratory, a magnificent voice and a command of pure idiomatic Saxon English. His sermons, composed and pub. weekly, had an enormous circulation, and were regularly translated into several languages. Historian, was b. at Walmer, and ed. at Oxf.
He gives the account of it, thirty years after Nelson's death, to John Wilson Croker at Walmer, and here is what he says of Collingwood's great comrade: WALMER, 1st October, 1834.
The Walmer lifeboat sailed at the vessel and tried to luff up to her, hauling down her foresail, but the lifeboat had not 'way' enough, and missed the vessel altogether, being driven helplessly to leeward, whence it was impossible to return.
The Queen naturally felt the pain of these calumnies more deeply than did the prince himself, but on the anniversary of her wedding day she could write: 'Trials we must have; but what are they if we are together? In 1852 the great Duke of Wellington died, full of years and honours. He passed quietly away in his sleep, in his simple camp-bed in the castle of Walmer.
Then he brought it back to Walmer and let it go and saw it fly off into the trees, but when he got home mother scolded him for having let it go when its parents were not about; she said it would die of starvation, and was going on at him when in flew the jackdaw and came flop on her shoulder!
Little was done with the torpedo in England, except to blow up a vessel off Walmer as a proof of what it could do. It is curious also that when Bell offered his paddle-boat to the Admiralty it was refused, though Nelson is said to have spoken in its favour.
"You know as well as I do that I'm not likely to find a boat on the shore till I get pretty near Walmer Castle, and long before we could get back it would be settled here. No, no, old fellow, we will see the matter out together. Jackson and Goodall can swim round if they like." These lads, however, would not venture to take the risk alone, but said they would go if Frank would go with them.
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