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Chapter 5 - This Voyage
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From There Go the Ships by George Shirley
Page 80
numerous the causes-awful collisions at night, when
ships at anchor have been cut down, and hundreds gone to the bottom
in their beds. The cutting down of the Princess Alice on the Thames.
Collisions in the day, striking on the rocks and holes made in the
bottom, the water rushing in, the frantic screams of frightened
men and women, the rush to boats, the swamping and drowning of the
whole.
Then running in a gale on the Goodwin Sands; the firing of the gun,
showing the blue light, firing a rocket, the sea breaking right
over her, the crew and passengers getting
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into the rigging, the approach of
the lifeboat. Some quit their hold, and are drowned before the
lifeboat nears the wreck. How many heart-rending scenes we are
continually reading of, but worse is the " Shipwreck of Faith."
All lost! No hope; gone for ever! May God ever keep you; if in
danger, get into the lifeboat. And if you lose everything you
have you are safe.
There was a picture exhibited in the Royal Academy a few years
since, "The White Cliffs of Old England." It represented
a porthole in the side of a ship, and a group of sailors, with
smiling faces, looking through and seeing the white cliffs of
the southern coast, engaged in deep and earnest conversation.
One of the older ones was doubtless talking about his wife, wondering
how he should find her, and how his girls and boys had grown,
- should he know them? - and what a glad welcome he should receive.
Others of the younger ones were wondering how the "old folks
" looked, and their brothers and sisters were. Others were
thinking of their
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© Peter Smith 2009
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