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From the Kingsdown Blodspot.
The lifeboat gave Kingsdown it's greatest hero, Jarvist
Arnold, who was skipper until 1889.
In December 1872, he and his crew
(average age 55) put to sea in a south-easterly storm towards a sinking
ship, the Sorrento, and saved the lives of the 31 crew and of 14 life-boatmen from Walmer who had become stranded on the ship.
With
remarkable bravery and seamanship he manoeuvred the Kingsdown lifeboat,
the Sabrina, alongside the Sorrento and gradually took every man off,
and then passed some from his fearfully overloaded boat onto the Walmer
lifeboat.
Having achieved this feat, he then had to navigate along the coast in the
storm to Broadstairs, because the south-easterly prevented landing on
the beach at Kingsdown.
Jarvist Arnold is commemorated by this lovely
smiling portrait in the village hall, and by having a road named after
him. It does us good to remember the harsh realities of life, not so
long ago.
From an excerpt taken from the Kent Archaeology web site.
Referenced to the Times 19-29 October 1866.
The most notorious incident of this type was that of the North,
wrecked on the Goodwin Sands in August 1866. The North was abandoned by
her crew, and as she lay on the Sands she was visited over the next few
days by boats from Deal, Walmer, Kingsdown and Broadstairs. The boatmen
stripped the North of everything that could be carried away, leaving,
according to two Broadstairs boatmen, 'not enough rope to make a mop
with,' or enough canvas 'to tie round your finger if it had been cut.'
Some property was surrendered to the Receiver of Wreck, but ship’s
stores and crewmen’s property worth about £400 were not recovered.
'About two tons of canvas and three quarters of a ton of rope... have
to be accounted for, and the deficiency in running rigging and hawsers
is about four tons. None of the ship’s instruments ever came
into the possession of the Receiver... the carpenter’s tools... have
never been recovered.... The vessel had at least 12,000 pounds weight of
copper on her [hull].... She was stripped on both sides for seven or
eight feet down.... The metal thus stripped would weigh about 35 cwt,
and only 10 cwt has been returned to the Receiver.'
Some rope from the North was traced to a paper mill near Dover, and a
marine store dealer named Foster was charged with handling stolen goods.
He was acquitted, but The Times the next day reported that 'The whole of
the evidence was of the most extraordinary character and proved
conclusively that "wrecking" is the profession of a large number of the
Deal boatmen.'
The newspaper referred to 'the robbery of the North [which]
represented nothing, it was said, but common practice.'
Of Foster’s trial it said 'the evidence for the prosecution was given
very unwillingly.... Does all this point to a local impression that
taking property from a wreck is not stealing? Is there any general
impression at Deal that the relics of a castaway are common property?...
If taking these stores from the North was theft, and the Deal boatmen
were seen to take them, was there no authority competent to stop the
thieving? Would it be very surprising if men should really imagine they
had some right to do what they were at any rate allowed to do... without
any action on the part of the law?'
What The Times seemed unable to appreciate was that the removal of
property from a wreck was not in itself illegal - quite the reverse. A
ship on the Goodwin could be swallowed completely in two tides, and if
no attempt was made to remove her possibly valuable cargo, bring ashore
any salvageable rope or sails, rescue the crew’s property and strip the
copper sheathing from the hull, a major loss would result for the ship’s
owners or insurers. This was a normal and potentially profitable part of
the boatmen’s work. As long as they were occupied in removing the
property from a wreck and stowing it in their own boats, they were
acting entirely properly.
Where they often transgressed was when they returned to shore. The
correct procedure was that on landing, boats were searched or 'rummaged'
by the Coastguard on duty on the beach, any salvaged goods being
declared and not concealed in any way. The Receiver of Wreck kept
account of what was recovered and reported to the owners or insurers. In
due course the boatmen were paid in proportion to the value of the goods
salvaged. Sometimes, however, the boatmen disposed of wrecked goods to
ships in the Downs, or attempted to land them without the Coastguards'
knowledge and sell
them themselves, as had allegedly occurred in the case of the North.
The Times report of Foster’s trial initiated a protracted
correspondence.
Opinions in support of the boatmen and against them were expressed
strongly. One correspondent, signing as 'Veritas', alleged that 'The
[Deal] men actually plundered the chests of the whole of the
crew...appropriated the contents, and then, as if to add insult to
injury, had the audacity to deliver... the empty chests to the Receiver
of Wreck.'
The Rector of Deal wrote to refute this allegation against 'certain
individuals who... are sufficiently designated by the fact of their
having handed over the only seamen’s chests which were brought ashore...
to be readily identified by all persons living in this place.'
The Rector enclosed an affidavit by the two men in question, Jarvist
Arnold and Thomas Edward Bingham, that the chests had all been empty
when they found them and 'the accusation in The Times that we plundered
the chests is false and untrue.'
Another correspondent was the Secretary of the Salvage Association at
Lloyd’s, who wrote that he had been ordered by his committee to carry
out an investigation into 'this great robbery.' He had been ordered to
do this with strict impartiality, and it was his duty to obey this
instruction. Despite this assertion, his report was far from being a
reasoned assessment of the evidence, and in places verges on libellous.
Of the Rector’s letter and the affidavits of Arnold and Bingham, the
report says:-
'There is no doubt that the chests of the crew were delivered up to
the Receiver of Deal empty. Who emptied those chests? Did the sea
do it? Will the rector suggest that the sea broke open the locks,
cleared out the contents and deposited the chests... on the ship’s deck
- or that the cockroaches did it?... There is an old saying - "A man
does not pick up a squeezed orange." These boxes not worth a shilling
appear to have been carefully salved and delivered to the Receiver, by
men who did not steal their contents.... It was a very wise thing for
[Arnold and Bingham] to make that affidavit, because the persons handing
over the boxes ran a great risk of being supposed to know something
about their contents.'
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