GALLANT OLD SALT

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7085, 6 December 1929, Page 9

GALLANT OLD SALT

Career of James Cable, i Noted Lifeboat Coxswain

Failing sight is affecting gallant James Gable, the famous lifeboat coxswain of Aldeburgh, who will be 78 next month. A splendid figure of man, his eyesight he said recently, is his only trouble. Those brave, keen blue eyes have done splendid for nearly half a century looking out from the shore over the stormy North Sea to help ships in distress.

Mr Cable, who retired in '1917, keeps no count of the ships or the lives he has saved. Testimonials from the Royal Humane Society line the walls of his little parlour, and its bronze medal is ono of his moat, treasured possessions. So also is a'fine silver cup, enamelled with the arms of Finland and engraved with an inscription from the Finnish Senate of prewar days, testifying to the coxswain’s valour in rescuing a ship from Helsingfors. How this gallant old sailor first went down to the sea which, while he himself was still a small child, claimed 4he lives of his father and grandfather, is told by himself: “When I was 13,” he said, “I went to work at the shipyard where they used to build fishing smacks. I had been there about three months when Pilot Henry Barley, master of a fishing smack, came into the yard and said he wanted a cabin-boy. This was at 10.30 a.m., and the vessel was to leave at one o ’clock. I ran home and found my mother had gone to a wedding. The chuTch was full and I could not get in, so it was 12 o’clock before I saw my mother come out. I told her I was going to sea, and that I had to be there by one o’clock. She cried and ‘took on,' and said I should not go. But an old lady with her said: ‘lf the boy wants to go to sea, let him go.’ . ' • , Half-a-crown a Week..

“So my mother bought me some warm clothes, and I was there at one o’clock. We started for the fishing grounds on the east coast of Scotland, and wont through the Pentland Firth and round the Orkneys.” James Cable’s first wage was a half-a-crown a week- But in a few months he was mafic cook at four shillings a week. At sixteen he was earning ten shillings a week. Four years later he made his first long voyage, to Penang and the Indies, in a tiny barque of 300 tons, the Eleanor, which sailed 47,000 mile 3 in 14 months.

Many strango adventures followed until James Cable found a berth in a handsome liner bound for Australia whore later on he settled donw to sheepfarming with an uncle. He was there for threo years, but at 24 he was' home again in Aldeburgh; and there it was that he began his remarkable career with the gallant lifeboats of that fine old town, earning his living as a fisherman meanwhile. .Mr Cable’s first adventures were with the George Houndsfield, of which he: Was coxswain. On January 18, 1881, only a few months after joining tho crew, hq took part in the rescue of four separate ships’ crews in one of the worst winter days ever known on the coast.

Many a gallant adventure followed in the succeeding ten - years during which the George Houndsfield did duty. She ended her ’career on November 1, 1890, and is still to be seem on the Koach at Aldeburgh. Mr Cable uses her to store his nets in. Service in Wartime. A new boat, the Aldeburgh, was built at Yarmouth under the guidance of James Cable and Bis comrades. She was lost oh December 7, 1899, with six of her crew. The Mark Lane, the City of Winchester and the Edward G. Dresden carried on the fine work, and James Cable was foremost in it all. During the war he was called to the aid of many a mined and torpedoed vessel. But in 1917 he felt he. ought to retire in favour of a younger men. Now Mr Cable’s portrait hangs in the Town Hail, and the gallant old salt in his honoured retirement, is pointed out to visitors by his admiring townsmen as he walks by the shore and in the streets of their pretty little town.