The Ship Swallower
- fiona flint
- Jan 27
- 3 min read
The Goodwin Sands were notorious for treacherous tides and quicksands which caused frequent wrecks and prompted heroic rescues by local lifeboat from Ramsgate. The great sandbank rose out of deep water used as anchorage for shipping, known as the Downs.
Dickens’ study at Fort House in Broadstairs looked directly over the sea. He describes the Goodwin Sands as follows ...
‘floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on intrigues with the servants' (1843)
In the year 1870, when Wilkie Collins stayed in Ramsgate, an American ship carrying tobacco was wrecked and a ship called the 'Germania' sailing for Hamburg, laden with mahogany.
The Gull lightship was moored off the Goodwin Sands. A writer who happened to be on board the night the Germania sank provided an eye witness account to local newspaper The East Kent Times and Mail. A gale was blowing and it was bitterly cold. Ice had formed and 'the wind appeared to be composed of penknives and needles'. A flash was seen from another lightship, six miles away. This meant that a ship had got onto the 'fatal Goodwins'. The Gull lightship answered with a flash of its own. It wasn't seen by the lookout on the pier at Ramsgate Harbour, four and a half miles away. The Gull tried a different gun, a weather gun. This was successful. The answering signal came. When the Ramsgate lifeboat 'Bradford' appeared, towed by a tug, every man except for the coxswain 'appeared to lie flat on the thwarts', keeping out of the gale and the drenching sea.
The following day the tender which called at the lightships took the writer to see the wreck of the Germania...
'luggers were swarming round her like flies - the crews stripping her bottom of copper and saving her stores'.
One of these luggers, a Ramsgate pleasure yacht, the Alexandria, was itself lost while endeavouring to save the Germania's cargo.
Some ships did manage to escape 'The Shippe Swallower', as the Goodwin Sands were known. The previous year, when a Colchester smack got stuck there 'and was for some hours at risk of going to pieces', the Ramsgate lifeboat remained nearby until she was out of danger. A gift and a letter to the crew were later recieved from Brightlingsea, thanking them for their assistance.
Ramsgate's tugs were a regular feature in the harbour. They could haul ships out into open waters against an unfavourable wind or in dead calm conditions and were kept with "crew on board and steam up, ready to put to sea at a moment's notice". The steam-tugs mentioned in newspaper reports from 1870, the Vulcan and the Aide, were built at Blackwall.
A Broadstairs boatman in Wilkie Collins's novel 'The Fallen Leaves' complains that the Ramsgate tug has destroyed the rich pickings to be made by salvaging cargo from wrecks on the Goodwin Sands.
Image from "True tales of travel and adventure, valour and virtue" by James Macaulay (1884)
The Bradford was an RNLI lifeboat stationed at Ramsgate from 1866, so-called because the City of Bradford had donated funds for new lifeboats after Ramsgate crews performed heroic rescues. It was of the "Pulling & Sailing" (P&S) type, with oars and sails.
Read more about the Goodwin Sands...
And the Ramsgate Lifeboat and Steamtugs...
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