remains are a shattered barque, her masts still standing, two brigs, and a schooner, all inextricably mingled together. Twelve trawlers have been sunk and destroyed. Out of the sixty ships at anchor on Wednesday night there were not more than ten left on Thursday afternoon. Many of these are disabled, some dismasted. A fishing-boat belonging to Brixham was upset in the outer harbour about eight o’clock, and two married fishermen of the town and a boy were drowned. At Elbury a new brig, the Zouave, of Plymouth, has gone to pieces, and six out of her crew of ten are drowned. Eleven other vessels are on shore at Elbury, many of the men belonging to which cannot be accounted for. One noble woman, named Wheaton, wife of a master mariner, saved two lives by throwing a rope from the window of her house, which is built on the rocks overhanging the bay at Furzeham Hill. Scores of poor shipwrecked men are wandering distractedly about Brixham and Churston, the greater part of them having lost all they possessed. The total loss of life arising from these disasters is variously estimated at from seventy to a hundred.

Is not this a tremendous account of the doings of one gale? And let it be observed that we have lifted only one corner of the curtain and revealed the battlefield of only one small portion of our far-reaching coasts. What is to be said of the other parts of our shores during that same wild storm? It would take volumes instead of chapters to give the thrilling incidents of disaster and heroism in full detail. To convey the truth in all its force is impossible, but a glimmering of it may be obtained by a glance at the Wreck Chart which is published by the Board of Trade every year.

Every black spot on that chart represents a wreck more or less disastrous, which occurred in the twelve months. It is an appalling fact that about two thousand ships, upwards of seven hundred lives, and nearly two millions sterling, are lost every year on the shores of the United Kingdom. Some years the loss is heavier, sometimes lighter, but in round numbers this is our annual loss in the great war. That it would be far greater if we had no lifeboats and no life-saving rockets it will be our duty by-and-by to show.

The black spots on the Wreck Chart to which we have referred show at a single glance that the distribution of wrecks is very unequal—naturally so. Near the great seaports we find them thickly strewn; at other places, where vessels pass in great numbers on their way to these ports, the spots are also very numerous, while on unfrequented parts they are found only here and there in little groups of two, three, or four. Away on the nor’-west shores of Scotland, for instance, where the seal and the sea-mew have the ocean and rugged cliffs pretty much to themselves, the plague-spots are few and far between; but on the east coast we find a fair sprinkling of them, especially in the mouths of the Forth and Tay, whither a goodly portion of the world’s shipping crowds, and to which the hardy Norseman now sends many a load of timber—both log and batten—instead of coming, as he did of old, to batten on the land. It is much the same with Ireland, its more important seaports being on the east.

But there is a great and sudden increase of the spots when we come to England. They commence at the border, on the west, where vessels from and to the busy Clyde enter or quit the Irish Sea. Darkening the fringes of the land on both sides, and clustering round the Isle of Man, they multiply until the ports have no room to hold them, and, as at Liverpool, they are crowded out into the sea. From the deadly shores of Anglesea, where the Royal Charter went down in the great and memorable storm of November, 1859, the signs of wreck and disaster thicken as we go south until we reach the Bristol Channel, which appears to be choked with them, and the dangerous cliffs of Cornwall, which receive the ill-fated vessels of the fleets that are perpetually leaving or entering the two great channels. But it is on the east coast of England that the greatest damage is done. From Berwick to the Thames the black spots cluster like bees. On the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, off Great Yarmouth, where lie the dangerous Haisborough Sands, the spots are no longer in scattered groups, but range themselves in dense battalions; and further south, off the coast of Kent, round which the world’s commerce flows unceasingly into the giant metropolis, where the famous Goodwin Sands play their deadly part in the great war, the dismal spots are seen to cluster densely, like gnats in a summer sky.

Now, just where the black spots are thickest on this wreck chart, lifeboats and rocket apparatus have been stationed in greatest numbers. As in ordinary warfare, so in battles with the sea, our “Storm Warriors” (See an admirable book, with this title, written by the Reverend John Gilmore, of Ramsgate. (Macmillan and Company)) are thrown forward in force where the enemy’s assaults are most frequent and dangerous. Hence we find the eastern shores of England crowded at every point with life-saving apparatus, while most of the other dangerous parts of the coast are pretty well guarded.

Where and how do our coast heroes fight? I answer—sometimes on the cliffs, sometimes on the sands, sometimes on the sea, and sometimes even on the pierheads. Their operations are varied by circumstances. Let us draw nearer and look at them while in action, and observe how the enemy assails them. I shall confine myself at present to a skirmish.

When the storm-fiend is abroad; when dark clouds lower; when blinding rain or sleet drives before the angry gale, and muttering thunder comes rolling over the sea, men with hard hands and weather-beaten faces, clad in oilskin coats and sou’-westers, saunter down to our quays and headlands all round the kingdom. These are the lifeboat crews and rocket brigades. They are on the lookout. The enemy is moving, and the sentinels are being posted for the night—or rather, they are posting themselves, for nearly all the fighting men in this war are volunteers!

They require no drilling to prepare them for the field; no bugle or drum to sound the charge. Their drum is the rattling thunder; their trumpet the roaring storm. They began to train for this warfare when they were not so tall as their fathers’ boots, and there are no awkward squads among them now. Their organisation is rough-and-ready, like themselves, and simple too. The heavens call them to action; the coxswain grasps the helm, the oars are manned, the word is given, and the rest is straightforward fighting—over everything, through everything, in the teeth of everything, until the victory is gained, and rescued men, women, and children are landed in safety on the shore.

Of course they do not always succeed, but they seldom or never fail to do the very uttermost that it is in the power of strong and daring men to accomplish. Frequently they can tell of defeat and victory on the same battlefield.

So it was on one fearful winter night at the mouth of the Tyne in the year 1867. The gale that night was furious. It suddenly chopped round to the South South East, and, as if the change had recruited its energies, it blew a perfect hurricane between midnight and two in the morning, accompanied by blinding showers of sleet and hail, which seemed to cut like a knife. The sea was rising mountains high.

About midnight, when the storm was gathering force and the sentinels were scarcely able to keep a lookout, a preventive officer saw a vessel driving ashore to the south of the South Pier. Instantly he burnt a blue light, at which signal three guns were fired from the Spanish Battery to call out the Life Brigade. The men were on the alert. About twenty members of the brigade assembled almost immediately on the pier, where they found that the preventive officer and pier-policeman had already got out the life-saving apparatus; but the gale was so fierce that they had been forced to crawl on their hands and knees to do so. A few minutes more and the