LIGHTSHIP ADRIFT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 80, 28 December 1928, Page 9

LIGHTSHIP ADRIFT

BREAKS FROM MOORINGS AT GOODWIN SANDS DRIVEN BEFORE GALE NARROW ESCAPE FROM DISASTER (Unlied Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (United Service.) (Rec. December 27, 11.55 p.m.) London, December 26.

How the East Goodwin lightship, one of the most important in the world, familiar to all overseas passengers arriving in London, spent Christmas night adrift, buffeted by a raging south-westerly gale, and narrowly escaping disaster In the death-trap of which it warned others, is related in the "Daily News.” Throughout Christmas Day terrific seas swept the lightship. An anxious vigil came to a climax at midnight, when with a final plunge the vessel broke her moorings and drifted, a helpless prey to the fury of the wind and the tide, leaving the busiest and most dangerous spot on the British coast, perhaps in the world, unguarded, and being herself a danger to the crowded shipping in the neighbourhood of this ocean graveyard. The lightship carried a master and six men. Some members of the crew in the teeth of the gale climbed the mast and extinguished the lantern, otherwise it would have misled shipping. Others fired warning flares, warning vessels to keep clear, while red lamps were hoisted to indicate that the vessel was out of control. The lightship also wirelessed her plight to headquarters, enabling the Admiralty radio to warn traffic that the lightship was out of control, and adding another peril to navigation in a most difficult area. Meanwhile the gale carried the lightship along within a mile of the boiling waste of breakers marking the sinister Goodwin Sands. Eventually when the crew, having discharged their responsibility to shipping, had an opportunity to think of their own lives, they found an anchorage with a spare anchor, after drifting three miles. They notified their distress and position to Ramsgate, from where a lifeboat put out and reached the lightship after two hours’ search.

A tender has towed the drifting lightship to Margate Roads, where she will be re-equipped before restoration to her moorings. ,