United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The lifeboat had been launched at six p.m. on the 22nd, and did not return to the shore till forty minutes past two a.m. on the 23rd. Their labours in the cause of humanity were, however, not over for that day. Soon after daylight broke, it was reported to Captain Wasey that another vessel had apparently sunk on the shoals which surround and extend to a long distance from the port of Fleetwood.
She was but small, pulling only six oars, and scarcely fitted for the arduous work in which she was engaged. Captain Wasey now anchored, and attempted to veer her down to the wreck, but the strong tide running defeated his intention.
On the 19th of February, while it was blowing a heavy gale from the north-north-west, with squalls, the schooner Catherine, of Newry, went on shore, when again Captain Wasey went off in the lifeboat, and succeeded in saving all the crew.
The boats, under the command of Lieutenant Allen Gardner, were then sent to bring off the brig, but as they got up to her a gun opened fire on them, and the pirates returning commenced blazing away from behind the rocks at them and the ship, by which Lieutenant Wasey and seven men were wounded.
The lifeboat was once more afloat, and, towed for two hours against a strong tide and heavy sea by the steam-tug, she at length reached the wreck, which proved to be the schooner Jane Roper, of Ulverstone. Her crew, consisting of six men, were in the rigging, crying out for aid. Captain Wasey and his men happily succeeded in getting them all on board, and in landing them safely at Fleetwood.
The anchor being then weighed, another attempt was made to board the vessel to leeward; but a heavy sea striking her, she was thrown over altogether, her masts falling within a few feet of the lifeboat, whose brave crew thus narrowly escaped destruction. Again, therefore, Captain Wasey determined to anchor to windward, and once more to veer down.
Captain Wasey and his gallant followers having done all that men could do, had at length to return to the shore with one only out of the four people who had formed the crew of the Ann Mitchell. They had been thus occupied for nearly nine hours of a dark winter's night, with untiring exertion and exposure.
Captain Wasey learned from the man saved, that three persons remained; one the master had his back hurt, and another a boy his leg broken. While endeavouring to carry out their humane purpose, a heavy sea broke over both vessel and boat, carrying away the lines, and sweeping the boat some 300 yards to leeward.
The survivors found in the cave all recovered. On the 22nd of January 1860, the schooner Ann Mitchell went ashore near Fleetwood. A new lifeboat, not long before placed there by the National Lifeboat Institution, was immediately launched, when Captain Wasey, Inspecting Commander of the Coast Guard, to encourage the men, went off in her.
Word Of The Day