NAUTICAL HEROISM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1568, 28 February 1873, Page 3

NAUTICAL HEROISM.

, (Daily Telegraph, Nov. 20.) [ If Mr Goschen will only build us the righ . sort of ships, we will make bold to promisi him that a breed of first-rate British sailor; will never be wanting to man them. Th< school were saltwater learning is taught stand i i open night and daj all round our coasts. N< board, except starboard and larboard, ■ has much to do with it ; the seas and the winds are the gratuitous instructors ; the tides anc eddies, the rocks and shoals of our shores, are stern examiners ; our fisher lads " learn theii letters " in the puddles of the beach, get the grammar of seamanship with "Daddy " in his fishing boat, and train themselves as no other race of sailors can for the joys and dangers of a seaman's life. A story comes from the Devonshire coast which really ought to be as good as a bran new ironclad to all those who have been uneasy about the naval supremacy of Britannia. We recommend it to nervous people, official and unofficial, who think that steam and iron are going to supplant manhood, skill, and naval knowledge ; 01 that the glory of Albion is gone if any power launches an extra inch of armor beyond the thickness of our last leviathan. The hero of our tale is a little fellow, and the narrative itself is brief ; but if the First Lord can only keep the patent of such boys as Frederick Perriam, in the possession of England we shall still behold the old flag safe enough — whether it be carried by timber or metal keels — and no "Peter the Great" will make any great difference on us. The boy we mention was out on Friday morning" last in his father's dingy at Exmouth, doing, such odd jobs as a fisher-lad might be Bent upon — getting in lines, or dropping them ; catching or preparing bait, setting crab-pots, or perhaps night hooks for conger. Londoners and landsmen may well recollect that the morning was wet and windy. At the mouth of the Exe it was blowing " great guns" from the north-east ; and the tide was running out, as it does sometimes run, with a gale from over Littleham' cliffs, to drive it. Our small hero — a water- baby from the birth — had miscalculated the strength of his fourteen years ; he got his crab-TJOta ' or conger-lines properly settled, but when he headed for home his boyish muscles could not possibly make way against wind and tide. Ho had "lost his lee," arid was very rapidly drifting out into the water, carried further and further into a wild sea, with a boat only meant for harbour work. From Exmouth a north-easterly gale howls straight down along the face of the Devonshire coast, piling the breakers on sand and cliff -foot all the way past Teignmouth and the red rocks off St. Mary's Church. A large ship caught in that bad bight, with Teignmouth bar half a-wash, and the wind ever so little too easterly, would be in a most sorry plight. But here was one poor little fisherboy, going apparently to certain death, in a tiny bit of a boat which, in any timid or ignorant hands, was a3 good as lost the moment it drove beyond the protection of Exmouth Spit. Let landsmen and ladies try to realise the position. .Home and safety going hopelessly astern, fading behind in the cold spray ; a boiling sea around ; ; far ahead the naked rocks of Stoke ; oh tlieport hand the raging tempestuous Channel, on the starboard side the Dawlish shore, if only he could reach it ; but a whitej mad, deadly hungry line of breakers thundering along ; every inch of that shore, and yet no safetyj or chance of safety, except on the other side of the dreadful, unbroken line. Anybody but a water-baby was indeed lost indeed in such a strait. Little Fred. Perrim was quite sailor enough, however, to understand his tremendous peril ; and, being seaborn and sea-bred, he did the right thing as cleverly as any admiral Of the Blue could have counselled him. He managed to step his little mast aud get the sail . hoisted, and so he let the dingy run before the wind, avoiding the big waves that followed, and edging carefully away to the Dawlish side. Getting near to the shore, the next thing was to look keenly for the slightest appearance of a break in the line of surf. If he could have found ever so little a bit of shelter, opening into smooth water, there was a hope for life ; but if, while looking for it, he jcame a single fathom too near the white rollers, his fate was sealed. Keeping far enough to windward to escape the broken belt, he coasted its deadly, dreadful fringe. All the way there was not a break! not, a chance! — a line of bayonets could not present a grimmer certainty of death ; while if he were carried on a mile past Dawlish, the tide and wind would have their will' of him, and hurl him upon the awful edge of Teignmouth bar. Again our small hero acted like a captain of the fleet. Deeply dropping his sail and unshipping the mast, he threw out his anchor, and let the little cockleshell come head to wind and sea just outside the fierce whit^e breakers. If Dawliflh folks could help a poor sailor-boy he knew they .would ; and sure enough they ; soon spied his plight. Admiral Craigie— the same gallant officer, we think, who sailed in the saucy Arethusa in 1811, and afterwards sot free over 2000 slaves on the coast of Africa — was there and caught sight of the lad. The good old mariner at once realised the danger, and called attention to it ; but, indeed, the coastguards did not need his warning, for their gaze was already on the fisher-boy and his boat. Yet so terrible was that thundering | space of white water between the dingy and the shore, that the boldest hand did not dare push out from the beach. The chief officer at the coastguard station would not risk his men; the men themselves shook their heads at the raging breakers, with a groan of sorrow for the boy ; the best they could do was to telegraph to Teignmouth for the lifeboat, and to hope and pray that the anchor might hold and the cockle-shell keep afloat until the life-boat were brought, or tho tide turned. When the flood made, the sea they knew would go down, and the shore become bare, and if the little lad was not by that time " flotsam and jetsam," or the lifeboat had not arrived, he might thu9 be saved. Mean-

time Frederick Perriam. Tiding in his dirigj on the brink of death, quite Understood th< position. "Water-babies learn the sea lan \ gnage early ; he took the same circumstance* s all in, and comprehended that nobody dared i come out to him in such a sea. He was, how i ever; the best judge of all about the point oi i waiting for the flood tide, for he could sec > that the dingy would fill and sink before that time ; and, failing instant help, there was but one more chanoe. This was to "up ■anchor," . hoist canvas upon her again, and steer for the i shore, through the best of that surf which was all too bad for the stoutest hand upon Dawlish Beach. The water-baby, nevertheless, made his mind up, and "piped all hands" to face the immense risk. Ladies and landsmen should try to comprehend the conditions of beaching a little boat in a heavy surf. . "With plenty.of oarsmen to pull at the right time ; with good care taken to approach the terrible tumbling chaos of savage sea stern on, so that the roller foaming after may lift the bow and not break over and swamp the craft ; with a steersman as cool as frozen steel, with the right moment, a straight course, and no end of good luck, clever rowers may take the shore prosperously in a heavy surf once out of seven times. Here ah Exmouth boy had to manage it with a dingy under sail, stem first, nobody to trim the boat, and the wind upon his quarter. Howover, by this time it had become one of two things for him — he must either sink at anchor, or else run the gauntlet of those mighty billows, which will surely smash his frail craft, and roll him dead and battered among the wet stones if he makes the slightest mistake, or losob one single point of the game. There is a moment's lull ; he gets the mast stepped, bales hard again, and waits for the next pause in the wind, which seems to be howling to the breakers not to let him escape. Then comes another lull, and he gets his lug hoisted, cuts the anchor adrift with his ready knife, and lays the dingy's head away from the gale. Gunnel-down in the hissing water flies the frightened cock-boat, skimming for a moment parallel to the line of surf, as when a horse, desperately ridden, vainly tries to shirk the fence ; and then, with a silence which is more than any cry, the little lad jams the helm down, bears up end-on for the neck of the great combing wave, and takes it on " the hang " with his sail well full. All right, so far; the huge billow heaves him!— -hurls him ! lowers him ! — launches him safe and straight into the seething hell of green and grey and white between two hills of water ; and then, while the under-tow draws at his keel and stops his way, the next billow, foaming in, shuts the wind from him, becalming his canvas. If he falls off a point, or catches the stroke of that sea before he gets another puff from the tempest, he is a drowned boy; but there he calmly sits, tiller in one little hand, and sheet in the other, holding his boat as level as an arrow. Now, then, for one moment let the tempest howl its worst ; let it blow " ten thousand topsail sheet blocks," so that it will flatten down the crest of the coming death, and send a helpful blast, over it into the peak of the sail ! It does that • the wind cheats the sea of his life ;, for, at the. supreme moment it freshened, it caught the' sail, gave the cock boat new impetus, lifted." her forward just in time to take the roller handsomely-^ and the lad drives in swift as a sea-gull on the crest of this second breaker, which drove him safe and sound within the reach of a dozen strong arms, so that, with a smack of spray in the face which might be Amphitrite's parting kiss to her water-baby, the fisher-lad is trundled up to land. Those old salts who saw the boy perform this wonderful feat of seamanship say that a finer spectacle of courage and self-reliance could not have been witnessed. Only fourteen years old, and small for his age, is Prederiok Perriam, of Clarence road, Exmouth ; but he is a true bred sea-boy of that coast which produced. Drake and Kaleigh, and we would rather hoar that thero are twenty of this sort between Start Point and the Hill of Portland, than have the Czar make us a new year's gift of his famous iron-clad, Peter the Great.