The Loss of a Lifeboat.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 124, 29 May 1886, Page 5

The Loss of a Lifeboat.

ALMOSTastbispaTagrapbiß written comesthe nows that a company of gallant fellows— who have faced the heaviest gale on the Norfolk coast in their lifeboats, the Birmingham, Covent" Garden, and God send, and iStttfed some six or seven hundred lives (the highest ieeofd of any crew round the coast) a id never ldst a. man— had gone out in their light yawl Zephyr1 to' £be relief of a schooner Which had gone to the' Barber Sand, and on a fine night in eight of shore (only about a mile) had lost eight men but of a crew of fifteen, leaving six widows and twenty-nine flhildren. The schooner was observed by the watch, '• Philip Qeorge and James flaylett, jun , coming" down outside the Barber Sand, wind S.S.E., and a fins, moonlight night, rather hazy, when' she was suddenly observed to s wiijg round with her head to the north-east. Philip George at once concluded she had hun# an the oufer edge of the Barber, and after watching a few minutes and seeing that she remained, J. Haylett rang the bell and called the crew together, and the night ■ being so fine, they launched tbe yawl and ran off. * . On tbe Barber1 is the mast of a vessel which1 sank some eight years ago, and the crew of which these very Caiator men ■ had rescued. They knew it well, and the ■ writsr even knew it as well as his own front door, and had walked round it when the Barber wa« dry it low tide. Yet as James Hayletf, the coxswain thac night, said to the writer in describing the affair, "I bad just said. 'Now, Dear Boys, keep a look out for that old Btutnp,1 when, before the words were out, she caught on the stump attd ripped along to amidships, and immediately began to fill." The crew began to throw out the bags of ballast, and Haylett and another out wfth their knives i'and cut away all the gear from tho masts and threw them overboard. Two or three quietly sat on the gunwale; and stripped to their shirt and drawers, when down went the yawl from under them. Haylett, the coxswain, its fa© came up, got hold of two oars and supported himself {for a time, when, finding the oars cobbling about uncomfortably, he searched with one hand (when fee had one free) in his pockets for a piece of strings but found none; on* this he managed to un«e a scarf from his neck, and with this lashed tho two oars together. Sbon after he found hiffieslf by the foremast, and he and his son Aaron, and : Joseph Haylett andKnowles, got hold of it, and getting soflie astride" and others hanging on by their feands, kept themselves afloat for a time, bu£ four tinlai the mast rolled over and threw tnenV off, and each ' time there was' one less for tho mast to support. Aaron got hold of the two oars that ; his father had lashed together, and on that himself. Joe Haylett and Knowles ; were drowned/ John George steadied himself on the bdatl before she went down, and •stripped, ard then swam* away, calling out, Pare Ye Well, JBfoysV "I am off to the shore." He came across Plummer, who had the foregrating, and George put a hand on it. Plummer sang ont he should be drowned, as it would not bear two, and George swain away again for : shore. After swimming some distance he i came across a shrimper, The Brothers, of ' Yarmouth, and hailed them; they misßed him at ffrslj, thfeti came about and picked him up. He said,- "There ate fifteen of us in the water about feere." Theyim- ' mediately bore away under George's direci tions, and first piftked up Fitlmmer on the I grafting qnite insensible r then one after 1 the other, picked Aaron Haylett on two oars, Isaiah rfaylett two oarjj and some bottom boards out of a boat, G. Haylett two oars, Russel on tbe mizenmjJst, and last old James Haylett on the foremast astride, with an oar under one arm and a sett under the , other. As they picked him up the light gig came off from Caistor and took the ■ roscued men ashore, and old Haylett (over 60), aiter being two hours in the water, pulled an oar all the way ashore and then walked up home. Plummer told the writer that as the boat went down.he caught hold of an oar, and found thatsomeonehad hold diPthe other end, and as he could swim, and thought the unknown might not be able to, he let him have it, and just then the foregrating floated .up edge-ways ; he caught ifc, and it no doubt Saved His life. Jack Burton was a good swimmer, but an old man, and seems to have been one of the first to go down ; yet, strange to say, his body was found floating off Yarmouth Monument in company with some of the floating wreckage, a distance of four miles away, some three or four hours afterwards— the only one found at the time, though three others were recovered some weak or so after.

The fatality is all the more extraordinary when it ie known that, as usual, the watch up at the shed kept the glass on the yawl until he saw her lower her sail, when he turned to Philip George and said, " It is all right, Philip, she has got the job " - that is, to get the schooner off—it being an agreed signal with them to lower the eail. As a matter of fact, looking from the shed, the stump on the Barber on which, the yawl was wrecked, the schooner on the Band, and the Cockle lightship were all in one line, so that when she reached the mast, only three hundred yards from the schooner, she appeared from the lookout to be alongside her, and the lowering of the sail was really the sinking of the yawl.—" English Illnstrated Magazine."