V.—MARGATE.

The Quiver, No. I.

This Life-boat is 34 feet long with 8 feet 3 inches beam, and pulls 10 oars.

A LIFE-BOAT Station was first formed at the town of Margate, under the direction of this Institution, in I860, in compliance with the wishes of the Town Council. Its first Life-boat had been pre- sented by Miss BURKETT COUTTS, and was built by Mr. TURNER, the then Master Shipwright of Wool- wich Dockyard; but this was prior to the time of the station being handed over to the Institution, and we possess no record of its services. In 1866 the Institution had placed there another and larger boat on its own model, which is still doing good service, and is named the Quiver, No, . There have been saved at this station 55 lives, which would in all human probability have perished without the aid of the Life-boats of the Life- boat Institution, besides which, many vessels have received by the same means aid which has enabled them to escape with ship, cargo, and crew entire.

Margate—" this ancient port on the north side of the Island of Thanet," as the last century's gazetteers, and the like books, call it—is made up of three old villages—that of St. John (the site of the present High Street), Lucas Dane, and Meregate. Whatever protection the old and natural port may have afforded the mariners of ancient times, the shallowing of the river gra- dually did away with its usefulness; and, in 1787, an Act of Parliament was passed for a grant of money to build a stone pier, and thus was formed the modern harbour. This pier, however, was partially destroyed, in 1808, by a great storm, and was rebuilt with the help of another parlia- mentary grant.

Outside of Margate Boads are the Margate Sands, to the north of them again are the Girdler and Long Sands, while away to the north-east, at the apex of a triangle, of which Harwich and Margate are the base, is the famous Kentish Knock—a sand which, from its position, so far from the mainland, and therefore from human aid, has ever proved peculiarly destructive to shipping. Among these and many other minor sands the Life-boat Quiver has to thread her way in dark winter nights, alike as at broad noonday, when the signal gun gives warning that storm and breaker are doing their worst upon some poor wreck.

The great difficulty of the Life-boat here is the rapid current of the Kiver Thames—with a flood tide the boat is liable to be swept up river, and with an ebb tide out to sea. Most of the work is done under canvas, for which the Quiver is well adapted; but with a flood tide it is all import- ant to carry the boat by land as far to windward as possible, and some of the cleverest and most successful launches have been accomplished by creeping along under the foot of the cliffs east of Margate, when the state of the tide made it just possible to accomplish the feat, but highly dan- gerous to all concerned. The horses used here are fortunately well trained to work in water, and have been known to press on with the great boat on her carriage at their heels after the riders have been fairly washed from their backs. The riders themselves have also on several occasions shown a devotion to the cause, and a hardihood which hag won them nearly as much applause and good-will from the people of Margate as has been accorded to the real heroes who go off in the Life- boat.

The flat sands of Margate, which at low water have to be traversed a considerable distance by the boat on her carriage before launching, make these good horses and brave riders an important consideration in favour of the Margate Life-boat.

On some other parts of the coast of a similar character we are not so well furnished in either respect.

The flourishing condition of this Branch is greatly due to the zealous care of E. Isaacson, Esq., foe twelve years the Honorary Secretary.

As for the crew of the Life-boat, it is sufficient to say that the crew of the Quiver is formed of some of the best of the Margate men, who, both in the Life-boat, and in their own small sailing craft, have done notable service to wrecks from time immemorial. The coxswain's name is WIL- j.iAM GRANT; and in February, 1871, he was granted the silver medal of the Institution for his services, on the 26th January, to the brig Sarah, as well as in recognition of much valuable previous service.

It may possibly prove of some interest to those men who, in the Quiver, and in the adjoining Life-boats on the Isle of Thanet, or in their own vessels, have from childhood been familiar with the appearance from seaward of that line of low white cliffs topped by swelling mounds, green hill or copse, while along their base, on broad sand or tiny bay, glisten in the sunlight the roofs and windows of spruce little watering-places or gentlemen's mansions —to hear something of the history of the isle some fourteen hundred years ago.

For this Isle of Thanet is the • spot where the ancestors of the great mass of the English people first made good; their landing, when they came pushing across the stormy German Ocean to oust from their lands the ancient inhabitants of Britain.

The people of Thanet and Kent generally show to this day, in the flaxen hair and fresh com- plexions so common among them, and which was the peculiar characteristic of the race of Anglo- Saxons, stronger marks of the stock from which they are sprung than the folk of any other part of England.

These fair-haired warriors were of the tribe of Jutes. There were three tribes famous in North Euro'pe about the time that the Roman soldiers abandoned Britain (A.D. 406-418); these were the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons. These three tribes appear to have been of one race, and came wandering across Europe, as was supposed ly the Roman writers of the time, from some region of Asia on the shores of the Caspian or the Black Sea. All that is known with certainty is that, though showing more or less of the marks of kin- ship with the great mass of the German or Teuton people, they were tolerably distinct from them.

The Jutes, as we have said, settled first in the Island of Thanet, round which they founi abund- ance of secure anchorage for their shallow ves- sels, and from whence they could, having command of the sea, draw fresh supplies of warriors from the mother country, and, from their safe position at the mouth of the great River Thames, carry the war at leisure into the heart of the country.

The island was to them also a natural fortifica- tion ; for the river, then a mile wide, which sepa- AUGUST 2, 1875.] THE LIFE-BOAT.

387 rated the Island of Thanet from the mainland could be covered at will by their small vessels of war. It is one of the great characteristics of this race that, from the earliest time of which we have notice of them, they showed a singular apti- tude for sea-fighting and maritime life; a pecu- liarity in striking contrast to that of the ancient Britons, and, indeed, of the Celtic people gene- rally, who, while they have ever been famous soldiers, have never shown any natural dispo- sition to contend with their enemies at sea.

These peculiarities of race continue, in a more or less modified form, to the present day, and are noticeable at every point of the history of the two great families, who in later times were to be fused j into one empire under the Sovereign of the ] « United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." I Hengist and Horsa were the leaders of the [ first band of Jutes who established themselves in the Isle of Thanet, about A.D. 446, at which time the ancient inhabitants of Britain, being unable to withstand their enemies, the Picts and Scots, who came down on the country from the north, invited them over as allies: from allies they became rivals; then enemies, and in the process of time, masters; their rapid success being mainly attri- j butable to their superior prowess on and having , command of the sea; for they were at first com- j paratively few in numbers, and the ancient Britons j had not only been conspicuous tor their courage, j but as warriors had been well taught by their late masters the Romans. The Jutes did not, of course, at once become the enemies of the ancient people of the land; and some writers state that Vortigern, the native British king of Kent, married Rowena, the daughter of the Jatish leader Hengist. Eric, I the grandson of Hengist, as is supposed, by this marriage, became in after times the first Jutieh king of Kent; and that line of kings became known as JEseingas, or sons of the ash-tree, from Eric's war-vessel having been named jlSsc, or Ash-tree.

Cantwarra Land, or Kent, became established as an independent Jutish kingdom about 482, by which time the ancient inhabitants had been ex- terminated or driven over the borders of the kingdom westward.

Soon after the Jutes had established themselves in Kent, away across the maze of shoals at the entrance of the Thames, where the descendants of these same Jutes, in Life-boat or hoy, have in these days done so much noble life-saving work, there commenced also a struggle between their kindred, the Saxons, who followed in their wake across the sea, and the ancient inhabitants of Essex. These Saxons, by a similar exterminating policy, settled themselves in Essex, or .East- Saxon Land; and thence pushing west, formed another kingdom of Middlesex, or Middle- Saxon Land ; while Ella, another Saxon leader, occupying Sussex, formed that into a kingdom of Sussex. This Ella became so great that he was eventually acknowledged as Bretwalda, or emperor of all the kings of Britain. Some time after the Jutes and Saxons had established themselves in the south of England, the third tribe mentioned, the Angles, came swarming over, after the ex- ample set them by their brethren, and took pos- session of a part of the east of England, which they called East Anglia, the main portion of which is now called Norfolk and Suffolk; this was about A,D. 597. These Angles came over in such num- bers, men, women, and children, that the move- ment assumed the character of the exodus of a whole people, and was thus unlike our modern emigration, in which the tide goes on so quietly, that new peoples are perpetually being formed westward of us, without any sensible diminution in the numbers left behind. These Angles gave the name to -England; and old England, the real old England, remained little better than an un- peopled waste for hundreds of years afterwards.

Those splendid boat's crews, who have been so long famous for their seamanship and courage, in pur- suance of their calling among the dangerous shoals and sand-banks of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, inherited from their forefathers, these Angles, their conspicuous aptitude for seafaring life.

In process of time, these Angles, uniting with their brethren the Jutes south of them, and their brethren the Saxons, still farther south, pressed the natives of the island northward and westward, till they were confined to the extremity of Corn- wall, from whence considerable numbers migrated to Brittany, in France, or to the mountains of Wales, where we see them to this day. The war was one of extermination, as was the custom of those days, and it was a very long time indeed before there was any intermarriage of the two races of Celt and Saxon, and the ancient Britons, even in their retreats, had to pay tribute to be allowed to rest in peace to the descendants of those few sea warriors who, as we have seen, began the new kingdom in the Island of Thanet.

In about 150 years the whole island of Britain, from the Firth of Forth southward, became sub- ject to the Anglo-Saxon Bretwalda.

In the Island of Thanet, about the year 598, also landed Augustine and forty other preachers, who were sent by the Pope, Gregory, on the missionary work of converting the English to Christianity.

The Anglo-Saxons, of course, were heathen ; but it so happened that the then king of Kent, Ethel- bert, who had been raised to the dignity of Bret- walda, or Emperor of Britain, had married Bertha, the sister of the king of Paris, who was a Chris- tian. An opening was thus afforded for the intro- duction of the mission, which, notwithstanding its members were at first regarded by king and people as magicians, was so rapidly successful that ten thousand of the men of Kent were baptized on one Christmas Day, and Gregory had soon to write to the Patriarch of Alexandria with an ac- count of these wonderful successes in what he termed " the most remote parts of the world." Previous to the arrival of Augustine, however, Queen Bertha had fitted up as a Christian place of worship for herself a deserted -Roman basilica.

Afterwards, King Ethelbert conferred on Angus- , tine his own palace as a place of residence for himself and companions: a church was soon built adjoining the palace, and is now known as the Cathedral of Canterbury, though nothing but the i site of the old building was continued in the new, built by Lefranc in the eleventh century.

The Danes made an attack on Thanet first in 858, and in 988 burnt the convent with all the nuns and priests, together with a large number of peasants who had taken refuge there.

An epoch connected with the history of Mar- gate brings us down much nearer to our own times. It is that of the dispersion of the Armada in 1588.

When Howard and Drake had seen the scattered remnants of the Spanish fleet fairly north of the Firth of Forth, driving before the south gale, they turned and beat back again against the storm, and in due time anchored off Margate. As they had been compelled to abandon the pursuit of the enemy from sheer famine and want of ammuni- tion, so now, when safe back at their anchors, and the fear of the foe had passed away, they were allowed to die of starvation by hundreds, and were brought on shore daily in boat-loads to die in the streets of the then small fishing village of Margate, of famine-bred disease, and of famine itself; and all the while the Government was 388 THE LIFE-BOAT.

[AUGUST 2,1875.

keeping back the over-due pay of the fleet. How- ard and Drake extended such help as tbeirprivate fortunes admitted; but, as a matter of fact, the deliverers of England and the champions of free Europe against Spanish tyranny perished of want within a few hours of London—perished gra- dually, week after week, till the question of the Queen and her councillors, as to how to dispose of so many sailors, was answered without farther trouble on their part.

The bulk of the English sailors were dead— dead for want of some portion of that " hire " •which veritably "had been kept back of fraud." In a short time there remained an insufficient number of sailors to -weigh the anchors, arid the war-worn, tempest-tossed barques lay rotting at their anchors almost alone. Well might the Admiral, Lord Howard, when writing to the Queen's minister, in one of his many efforts to procure either food or money, say, "It would grieve any man's heart to see men who have served so valiantly die so miserably." Until very recent times, indeed, neither English sovereigns nor English governments have been remarkable for their care of English sailors after the victory has beea won; but in all our history there is DO national disgrace of this nature which can compare with the infamy of (hat " doing to death " of the victors of the great Armada fight.

As one of the dependencies of a Cinque Port (Dover), Margate sent her quota of men and ships to Edward I.'s great battle and victory of Sluys ; and in the Dutch wars the Isle of Thanet seamen were in great request for the royal ships.

There are many antiquities of interest in the vicinity of Mai-gate; but, in a place so well known, these are matters in the domain of the ordinary Visitor's Guide-book.

VI—BERWICK-ON-TWEED.

Albert Victor, S3 feet long, 8 feet beam. Placed in 1864.

THE ancient city of Berwick ia situated near the month of the River Tweed, and ou its north side.

It still retains almost intact its ancient walls, both on the landward and river front; and to the eastward are ruins of outworks, which in their time must have been of considerable strength.

A notable feature in the landscape is a magnificent bridge over the Tweed, opened by Her Mejesty ia 1850, which is 2,000 feet long. The old bridge •was built in 1634.

As a commercial port, it has greatly declined in modern times, if we may take as a comparison the time of Alexander II., as in those days its ex- port duties were equal to one-feurth part of simi- lar revenue derived from all the seaport towns in England. The absence of manufactures has pre- vented its having an important trade of its own in modern times, and it has ceased to be the har- bour of export for the interior, since increased facilities for road carriage have enabled producers to send their goods by rail to more convenient harbours. Thus, even the coal taker* from the mines in the immediate neighbourhood is taken to the Tyne for shipment by rait instead of being embarked on the Tweed. The absence of a great maritime trade has prevented the expense being incurred of keeping clear or deepening the mouth of the river, which now has a bar on which there is very little water at low tide, and this, again, ope- rates to prevent its being used as a harbour of re- fuge, which,from its position midway between the important commercial towns on the Tyne and the Forth, it would speedily become were the river's mouth deepened so as to admit vesst Is at low water.

The exports are at present confined to fisb, wood, corn, and game, most of which goes to the London market. Its most important aspect is as a fishing station—the Tweed salmon bejag, of course, world-famous.

j The greater part of the present fortifications | were buiit in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and I in Berwick that sovereign concluded a treaty i with James VI. of " mutual defence and assistance ! against all Roman Catholic powers," a treaty I soon to become useless by the union of the two j kingdoms under one crown. With that union | the important position which Berwick had for I centuries held faded a v»y. Placed as the ancient j fortress was in a position to command the en- j trance of an important river and seaport, and in j the midst of that debatable land which marked the borders of the two kingdoms of England ai.d Scotland, it had for ages been » coveted prize to either nation, and had ever played a conspicuous part in the wars between those countries.

Once, however, its citadel must have been either of small resisting power, or been manned by a very sleepy garrison, for in the reign of Henry IV. it was surprised and captured by se wo Scottish warriors. They do not appear to have been well backed up, however, by their country- men, for it was soon after recaptured lor England by the Percys. Berwick, however, was a very important fortress long before that, and was much valued by the Dimes when they had pos- session of the county, and was strongly held by them as early as 870. Bicbard Creur-de-Lion, ia order to raise money for his crusade to the Holy Land, sold Berwick to the Scotch in 1189.

It was captured by Edward I. of England in 1296, one of the notable features of its siege on.

that occasion being the heroic defence of the Red Had by thirty Flemings, to whom it had been granted by Alexander III. for manufacturing pur- poses, on condition of its never being surrendered to the English. Baltiol did homage to Edward I.

for the kingdom of Scotland in this town.

When the Percys rebelled against Henry IV., that monarch's army besieged Berwick, which was garrisoned by the Percys ; »nd it was captured more speedily than had been anticipated, in con- sequence of the soldiers inside becoming fright- ened at the sound of cannon employed by the besiegers, and said to have been used for the first time in the British Islands an that occasion.

Many bloody struggles raged around the w«Hs of the old fortress, which from age to age w«e extended and strengthened, and it seems to have bad a stirring time of it down to 1556, when, as the only possible wey of giving it or the two peoples concerned in it peace, it was declared independent of either crown by the conspnt of both. It is still a county in itself, and so late as 1746, in the reign of George II., it was found ne- cessary to state in an Act of Parliament that in any future Act " the word England is to be held as including' Berwick-on-Tweed.'" The Berwick Life-boat, Albeit Victor, is placed on the south side of the river's entrance, just inside a narrow spit of send. The boat-house is built on a firm beach close to the water's side, and the gravelly nature of tlie soil enables the boat to be run down on its carriage, and launched with ease at any time of tide. It is then inside the moutti of the river, however, and with a strong flood tide its work of getting out to sea is most dif- ficult. It, therefore, someiimes happens, when the wreck is on the south side of the river's en- trance, that it is found quicker to convey the Life- boat on its carriage to the nearest point to the wreck before launching, which operation has then, to be eSected off the open beach, and in the face of the storm.

AUGUST 2, 1875.] THE LIFE-BOAT.

389 Wrecks occur either on the bar itself or on the south beach, in consequence of vessels, while waking the river, being set too far to the south when the gales are northerly.

The north side of the entrance of the Tweed is marked by a long stone pier, which runs out into the sea in an easterly direction from the mainland.

At the end of the pier are two fixed lights to mark the entrance fi-om the seaward. The bar spoken of runs from a point within, the lighthouses in a southerly direction across (he river's mouth.

Few sights are more magnificent than the sea breaking over the pier and lighthouses in a storm, while the sight of a vessel running into the river before the gale is one that attracts large numbers of the good people of Berwick, whatever the in- clemency of the weather may be.

This Station of the ROYAL NATIONAL LWE-BOAT INSTITUTION was formed in 1855, and since that period there have been saved by its Life-boat 74 lives. B. G. Sinclair, Esq., has ably fulfilled the duty of Honorary Secretary through the whole period. The Albert Victor was presented to the institution by its Manchester Branch in 1864, and since that time the experienced P. PATERSON, the coxswain, has allowed no opportunity to pass of proving to the utmost the powers of the boat. He has at command thepickofasplendidbody offisher- men,who, residing in cottages round the boat-house, are always at hand, and willing to da their utmost.

VII.—PEMBREY.

Stanton Meyrick of Pimlico, 10 oars, 32 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches beam.

THE Stunton Meyrick of Pimlico is stationed two miies from the little port and town of Perobrey, the boat-house being built among some sand-hill in a position about the most desolate and lonely that coul I well be conceived even for a Life-boat, although they are often to be found in the most out- of-the-way and apparently forsaken spots in these islands, some of the places most fatal to wrecks being very far removed from either town or fish- ing village.

The men who man the Pembrey Life-boat are partly Coastguard men, and partly fishermen ; and they have to trudge » considerable distance over the soft sand to the boat-house from their j various homes when the alarm signal tells them there is a ship in trouble. f The boat-house is built a quarter of a mile from I the water's edge, that being the nearest spot where a firm foundation could he secured, the whole country-side in its vicinity being a mere ' mass «f very fine loose white sand, which I changes the position of its hills and valleys with I every storm. Thus the horses and men alike have I a hard time of it to fight their way to the water | with the great Life-boat, and sometimes the men j have to go before with their shovels, and dig out • a track for the horses to go through. Once down | on the hard sands when the tide is out, the power- j ful horses, who are well trained to their work, j make up for lost time. 1 At low water, even in a gule, the boat is launched from its carriage in comparatively smooth water, extensive sands outside the channel being then ' ujjcovereJ; but when the tide is up, the war with wind and wave commences with the moment of ; launching ID either case the wreck that requires i' aid is pretty certain to be a long way off, sur- j rounded by breakers, and resting for a short time .

before her final disappearance in quick-sands, j The waves in this arm of the sea seldom roll with a regular motion, but are torn and distorted by shoal and deep current and counter-current into t e most intractable of broken seas. i I The area over which the Pembrey Life-boat's usefulness extends is included in that arm of the sea which runs in an east and west direction be- tween the peninsula of Gower and the coast of Carmarthen. On the Carmarthen coast is the town and port of Pembrey, and farther up the : Reach the much larger town of Llanelly, This stretch of water is known as the Bury River. It ; is in most parts a mere mass of shoals, banks, and • quick-sands; but there is a deep-water channel i through them all, and ships of considerable bur- then pass up and down the Bury to Llanelly. The principal dangers of the Bury are to be found 1 abreast of the Life-boat Station, and the LlaneUy I trading ships pass by it. Thus the Stanton Mey- r-ick is useful to the commerce both of Llanelly and Pembrey, both of which places contribute to the support of the Life-boat Station.

The zealous Honorary Secretary, C. N. Broom, Esq., resides at Llanelly, which place has in its immediate neighbourhood extensive coal mines, i and possesses large copper and iron works. It has a good harbour and docks, and a population of 17,000 persons. Pembrey has a small wet dock | scarcely equal to its requirements, in. which -vessels i of considerable size lay afloat; the dock gates i carrying 24 feet over the sills at ordinary spring I tides. There is also a small outer harbour nearly dry at low water. From Pembrey ia exported large quantities of coal to France. It receives from St. Malo Pit wood, and from the West of England and the Isle of Man lead ore. Around the docks are large smelting works, and consider- able quantities of silver for electro-plate are sent from them to Morecambe Bay.

The scenery around the Pembrey Life-boat house cannot be classed among the beautiful, but it is wild, weird, and very peculiar. Up the river we see factory chimneys and masts of ships rising here and there through haze and thick black fog of the smelting works, and down the river we have a choice of 20 miles of sand-hills, or the same extent of troubled waters. This, however, is when the day is fine. Standing in front of the Life-boat-house during a fresh south-west breeze, and the tide about half ebb, the eye encounters nothing but a driving wilderness of sand on one hand, and an apparently interminable waste of broken waves on the other. The sand being peculiarly fine, the wind lifts up great pillars of it in whirlwinds, and these, like the ghosts of giants, go careering over and among the hills in frantic chase of one an- other, while through all there is a steady mass of sand drift, which exhibits every object in a dim and foggy aspect •, and through the haze one sees to the southward other great giants, of water, charging at each other among the breakers, and perpetually dissolving and springing up again into green columns, with foam-crowned summits.

Away southward very dimly seen, and only at intervals, rises the high land of the Gower Penin- sula, terminating to the westward in the remark- able-looking Worm's Head; while to give a sig- ficant interest to the whole scene, we have, as prominent objects in the " middle distance," the black ribs of long-sunken wrecks peering above their graves.

JOHN HANCOCK, chief boatman in charge of the Coastguard service, is coxswain of the Pembrey Life-boat. He has, fortunately, a good crew at command, and powerful horses are lent by gentlemen in Pembrey. So that when occasion requires the Life-boar, despite the many obstacles she has to contend with, she is not long in getting fairly afloat. Once there, both coxswain, crew, and Doat have given repeated proofs that they know their work, and mean to do it..