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The Margate boatmen had White’s of Cowes, formally Culmer~White of Bradstowe construct a craft for use in Margate after the 1857 incident, it seems that generous public donations from the Isle of Wight contributed substantially toward the funding for this request. 

The new boat duly arrived at Margate on November the 8th 1857, in design it has been described as like a ‘whale boat’, constructed out of wood and 33 feet in length, its additional features being for extra buoyancy consisted of air cases provided bow and stern and cork ‘wales’ fitted around the outside. It was christened the ‘Friend of all Nations’ by the Margate boatmen and fitted out for readiness, on its carriage. ~ it’s principal advantage over the second Lifeboat to be offered to the boatmen later in the same year, which was generously donated by Angela Burdett~Court.

The Surfboat made by White’s was also that much lighter. With the additional burden of its size and without a carriage the ‘Angela and Hannah’ was much more difficult to launch and it was thought better to offer it to the Institution, that it might find sufficient funds for its employment. This generosity by the boatmen resulted in the R.N.L.I. establishing a station at Margate in 1860 with it’s own Lifeboat.

Within the first decade of its use however the White’s Surfboat was in trouble. On the morning of the 7th of January, 1866 the Schooner ‘Harriet’ was seen to be dismasted and riding off the rocks of Walpole Bay, the 12 man crew of the ‘Friend’ had probably launched at about 9.30, and were themselves swamped in the rough seas only to have capsized by 9.45. The boatmen’s unexpected predicament was seen from the shore and the tug ‘Endeavour’, whose skipper was getting up steam ready to assist in the salvage of the Schooner at once steamed out to the Surfboat and was able to pick up the boatmen.

 

As the tug headed toward the Surfboat, the Institution Lifeboat with a crew of 11 men, an unusually low turnout with no other volunteers present, proceeded to the Schooner and found the crew ‘rescued by a boat launched under her lee from the shore’. The ‘Harriet’ was to be towed into Ramsgate Harbour by a another tug, the name of which does not appear to have been recorded. The fact that another Schooner was also in distress as a consequence of the heavy seas at the same time the R.N.L.I crew of the ‘Angela and Hannah’ decided to beat windward hoping to render assistance to the other boat which turned out to be the ‘Onward’ of Goole.

About five years later in February of 1871 another Schooner, this time curiously named the ‘Harriet’ of Goole was spotted from the Watch Tower, having become caught out in a seaborn gale of hurricane proportions. Amidst a blizzard of sleet and ice, and at about ten in the evening the boatmen launched the ‘Friend of all Nations’ into the surf and the bitter cold wind setting out to the vessel understood to be ashore on the Nayland Rock. The sea beyond the harbour was described as fearful and it was with much difficulty that the crew of nine reached the Schooner and succeeded in getting off the crew of three, the Captain and his wife, the latter having been lashed in the fore~top for nearly three hours. The Schooner was later brought into the Harbour, where she discharged her large cargo of China clay bound for Rotterdam. The crew who manned the ‘Friend of all Nations’ on this occasion were :~

John Davies (Coxswain), William Brockman, Henry Brockman, William Cook, Stephen Ladd, Robert Campany, George Sandwell, Robert Jones and G. Robins.

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~ THE LOSS OF THE FRIEND OF ALL NATIONS.

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By 1887 the ‘Friend of all Nations’ was owned by about 50 boatmen, but due to its heroic use survived its last service to become beached in a condemned state, unfit for any further service.

The problem of finding a replacement to the Surfboat now confronted the independently minded boatmen at Margate. Its arrival in Margate on July the 6th 1878 was attended with the traditional procession, and at her naming ceremonial she was christened with the slightly altered name the ‘Friend to all Nations’.

‘Friend to all Nations’

High on the list of the recorded disasters at sea in these Islands history must surely be that occasion, on the 4th of December 1849, during which the South Shields Lifeboat, after reaching a wreck capsized with the loss of 20 out of her compliment of twenty four crewmen. The evidence is clear and stark that around our coastline, over the long years of gradual development of ever safer means of procuring a successful service, too many boatmen have given of their lives in this manner. The worst such occurrence for the people of Kent and Thanet in particular was no less harrowing for the relatives of those boatmen but also in its retelling reveals something sinister and disturbing in the manner by which that local authority was to deal with the event.

The great storm of Margate in 1897 could not be matched to any other natural disaster in local history from living memory, a cyclone had just about destroyed the town, its harbour, sea front and main roads, yet still at daybreak the men of the ‘Friend to all Nations’ undaunted by these events perhaps tantamount to an act of God, responded to a distress flag put out by the crew of a barge, the ‘William and Elizabeth Little’. It did prove impossible however, as was the custom, to launch from Margate and so the boat was removed by road to nearby Birchington from where it was launched at 7.30 A.M. Against a N’N’Westerly gale, the Surfboat was manoeuvred with the boatmen’s usual dexterity nearer the barge.

Upon inspection it was found that a crew of three were in the water filled cabin and had been at the pumps all night. The rescued crew were taken to the Arcadian Hotel and placed into the care of Mr. and Mrs. Lilley who for many years had acted on behalf of the ‘Shipwrecked Mariners Society’.

Four further barges were in need of assistance and were duly attended that same night, all were successfully salvaged and although a brief let up from the gale followed it was indeed to be the ‘calm before the storm’ for, as it is so well put by Julie Deller ‘In the early hours of that day their occurred the disaster greater than any known before, making an unforgettable impression on all who knew and feared the mastery of the sea, claiming the lives of nine men, three of whom came from one family, and leaving six widows for whom every Christmas to come would serve as a reminder of that dark dawn.’

Fact, it is said is often stranger than fiction, and fact it is that the prayers of old mother Hubbard were answered on the fateful morning of December the 2nd 1897 when her son, a Margate boatman attended a call to the distress flares and rockets of ‘The Persian Empire’, only to be turned away, his things having been pitched out of the boat. What may seem like unkindness on behalf of his mates was simply a combination of the commonly accepted procedure of ‘first come, first away’, under the Coxswain’s judgment and the urgency prevalent upon that occasion, for which Hubbard was later to be thankful.

 

Prayers their were in plenty following the tragic events that were soon to unfold. Hubbard, no doubt was not the only man left standing on the beach that morning as the Thirteen boatmen that did find a place on the ‘Friend’ launched into the surf at 5.20, a full ten minutes ahead of the larger Margate R.N.L.I. Lifeboat ‘Quiver’, after it had cleared the trailer of the surfboat, which had been left where it is said would best slow the launch of the ‘Quiver’ and give the boatmen an advantage. This is a most unkind accusation and although a rivalry that matched the courage of the boatmen did exist in such matters, such was their reported hurry in getting afloat I cannot accept it as an wholly deliberate obstruction.

The weather having been described as dark and dirty with sudden and severe squalls of rain and hail was nothing exceptional for these men to have to endure, between them having made hundreds of perilous excursions against the angry seas. It was however under these conditions, just as they had come by the Nayland Rock, an inshore low water obstruction, that a decision was taken to lower the sail. It was during this fateful action that the boatmen were caught in one of those sudden squalls and which ‘struck them all of a heap’, seawater quickly filling the boat and it’s bulging sailcloth, causing serious listing under the captured weight and momentum of the water. The boat, not having time to right itself was then hit by a further wave causing the ‘Friend’ to turn over onto it’s keel, trapping one man, Joe Epps inside and throwing those that had not jumped with all their strength, including men that had been knocked unconscious in the boat, into the freezing water, beneath which hid many jagged and seaweed covered rocks. The capsized Surfboat was later to drift ashore and beached on the tide, it came to rest beneath the Nayland Rock.

First on the scene was the lamplighter, who had been going about his dawn duty of extinguishing the night lamps along the Promenade when he heard distressed voices calling out from the direction of the Nayland Rock, where in the dim morning light he was able to make out four men clinging to an upturned boat. He was no doubt unaware that another man was still trapped inside and underneath who until, at some length and later, was freed, having been trapped, and pinned down by the thwarts.

 

 Of these intrepid adventurers, the remaining nine men were not found in the search that followed, although aided by daylight the efforts of some 20 men were required to turn over the Surfboat and only then found a man they thought must be dead, but Joseph Epps from Paradise Street was just barely alive and was a survivor. The sea gradually released the missing boatmen from its grip over the course of the following days, as the bodies, many of which had become virtually unrecognisable on account of impacts made against the men’s heads and faces from repeated contact with the sharp rocks, were washed ashore. To be recovered in this frightful way then, were :~

William Cook, (Coxswain) William Cook junior, Robert Cook, Edward Crunden, William Gill, John Dyke, George Ladd, Henry Richard Brockman 38 and the boatman’s medical aid, and superintendent of the Margate Ambulance Corps Charles Troughton.

The four men who survived the disaster were : John Gilbert, Robert Ladd, Henry John Brockman and Joe Epps, the veteran who had also survived the occasion of the 1866 capsize of the previous Margate Surfboat, and who lived on to the age of 93.

 

The Surfboat itself, having been well built emerged relatively unscathed from the ordeal of that winters morning, damage being chiefly limited to the masts and rigging. During that day the boat was shipped onto it’s carriage and placed on the promenade where many people gathered in the bitter cold to see the Surfboat and its badly broken mast. It is a tribute in itself to the remaining boatmen that their team spirit was not destroyed, in that the wreck was soon repaired and made ready for use again, nevertheless, quite understandably, the remaining boatmen left it some time before the activities of salvage and rescue were once again resumed.

A Board of Trade Enquiry that followed at Margate on the 22~3rd of December reported, in the closing pages of the Principal Officers statement that, ‘Their can be little doubt that the Margate boatmen are a bold and adventurous race, who think little of the dangers of the sea when afloat’ but in the same breath underestimated and insulted their zeal and ability with ‘ . .but I fear that so long as they use a boat such as the ‘Friend to all Nations’ it will be hopeless to expect them to wear lifebelts, however much it is desired’. 

Presumptions aside, the boatmen not knowing stupidity from courage made several improvements to the Surfboat, recommended by the board.

It is indeed unlikely that anyone alive today directly recalls the havoc unleashed by that December storm off Margate in 1897. The boatmen’s misfortune outlined above was however one of the memories passed down in my own family folk law from Frederick George whose uncle Solomon, (the Broadstairs Harbour Master), and parents, William and Mary Anne (ne Emptage) seem to have attended the great funeral that followed the capsize of the Surfboat. It has been in search of the facts of this history that has led me to reaffirm those half remembered stories, which included references to a number of important tributes to the Thanet boatmen and the perils that they cheerfully faced at sea.

 

Such was the suddenness and ferocity of that storm that not only did it wreck the Surfboat, it also caused considerable damage to the little town of Margate nestled beside the sea, and stands as an exceptional occasion, with the sea breaching the town causing considerable flooding of shops and homes, it had been described as the worst storm to be then recalled to living memory, a brief reflection of which attended the bitter morning of the centennial service held in remembrance of these events in 1997 when several hundred persons turned out against a very nasty wind to warm their hearts to that far off day and the families that suffered as a consequence of their bold and fatal endeavour.

 

The boatmen’s lives were dependant all year round on a good knowledge of the sea and conditions prevalent in the weather and so, a report of cyclonic disturbances received at Margate warning of worsening conditions ahead, gave them some idea of what to expect. However their was no silver lining in the clouds over Thanet that weekend and the storm that raged throughout the night allowed so little of an ebb tide when it was due, that when the heavy seas came in again they flowed some eight feet above the normal sea level and thundering against the sea front shops, innes and houses reduced the substantial sea wall to a mass of tangled wreckage, broken timber and confused heaps of stone.‘

Huge slabs of masonry were hurled along the torn up surface of the promenade as waves cut six feet into the structure. Chaos reigned and ruin was rampant as coastal defenses, buildings and roadways were washed away. Dense volumes of seawater flooded the streets and locals rowed boats along King Street (behind the Harbour) under the spray from masses of water being thrown as high as the lighthouse. The decking of the jetty was torn away, it’s iron piles dislodged and thrown, as if by giants hands, on to the shore.’

Droit House,39 the headquarters of the Pier and Harbour Company which was situated above a restaurant suffered considerable damage and the Switchback railway was completely destroyed. Work on the Lifeboat Station had previously been underway, with the intended construction of a much needed slipway incomplete, during the storm blocks weighing 10 tons were lifted out of their positions and ‘thrown about like pebbles’. The beach itself, renowned for it’s golden sands was a carpet of seaweed ripped up off the murky ocean bed and thrown upon the shore by the hundreds of tons.

At the time of the disaster a fund had been set up locally and sponsored nationally by ‘The Daily Telegraph’ for the widows and orphans of the lost Margate boatmen, and although most boatmen religiously belonged to the ‘Ancient Order of Oddfellows’, or one of the Friendly Societies for support in exceptional times, the wanton misappropriation of the sum in this fund has never been satisfactorily justified.

 

 

It is my conviction that it was the grief of those whom fate had dealt such a blow coupled with their staunch independence that denied them the representation that they should have had, that they then would not have had to injure the treatment that was meted out to them at the hands of those Magistrates and Councilors that took control of their fund. 

Of the several reports on the story of the loss of the ‘Friend’ all to date studiously overlook this sorry conclusion to the fate of the widows and orphans thus deserted.

 As news of the disaster of the wreck filtered through to the press, interest in the story drew National support and subsequent publicity at the plight of the Margate boatmen’s families and some Ten thousand pounds was raised in their name. Such an amount of money as this then represented, the boatmen’s families were denied direct access to the fund as the nation wept before the grandest of Thanet’s memorials, paid for from the trust fund.

On the day of the funeral all the shops were closed and black curtains hung in the windows, no one went to work, for the whole town, and much of East Kent was in mourning.  

At the Cortege over 33 groups assembled, amongst them mounted police and combined bands, with muffled drums led the Lifeboat trolley which bore the eight boatmen who were attended by the four survivors. The crew of the ‘Quiver’ and boatmen from the ancient town of Deal 40 and from Broadstairs and Ramsgate.

Also amongst this group were the firemen, and the rifle corps. Close in attendance with postmen, doctors and members of the clergy were a number of local dignitaries. The entire route was lined with crowds of grief stricken people and all Margate mourned their passing. The ambulance corps. marched close to the lone body of Charles Troughton, of whom it was said in his last desperate moments was not disfigured, and still carried the kindly expression so familiar to all those who knew him.

The funds that had been collected should have ensured that those dependant relatives of the deceased were suitably cared for, for the rest of their days, however the money was appropriated into the management of an Executive Committee of local Dignitaries and Councilors of the Margate Corporation and in this way the grief stricken boatmen’s wives, and their children were robbed a second time.

 

Bickering amongst the officials, who now had other peoples money to spend went on behind closed doors, a proposal for the construction of a row of Almshouses to be built, it was said, to accommodate the bereaved, but also to act as a monument to the disaster, was proposed. Even this meritorious idea was rejected along with any hope that the boatmen’s wives might be given each a percentage of the sum remaining after the funeral.

 

With the town in tatters the committee finally resolved to have erected a very large monument in the cemetery. This was carved from Italian marble, which in itself posed many problems in delivery and transport to its final resting place. Anthony Lane explains, in his article how roads had to be strengthened and a special carriage constructed for the undertaking, all no doubt to the general convenience of the decision makers, but of little immediate guarantee to the six widows and fourteen children left in want, and out of whose pity the cost of these extravagances was met. The cost of this grand proposal could not have been undertaken without the mercy payments and it is notable that many of the boatmen’s families were reported as saying that they had wished for something far less ornate.

No amount of praise to the sentiment of the committee can lessen the impact of these events on the local boatmen, and that it was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year, when pomp and ceremony might have been given free reign and thus to some degree explains the decision to erect such a worthy monument, and even given that the Queen herself had sent some thirty five pounds into the fund goes no way at all in justifying the rational in depriving the boatmen’s families of their wishes.

Given the costs of the road improvements, the monument itself besides the splendid funeral, and that the corporation it seems did not match a penny to these expenses having control of the Surfboat~men’s money, it is a lamentable indictment to Thanet’s officials that although their still should have been money enough left over, had it been wisely invested, as perhaps it might have been by Mr. Troughton, the deceased medic and banker to the boatmen, had he himself not perished with his friends, to have yielded an income for life to the widows and orphans, that in the end they personally received nothing out of the fund.

Some consolation to the survivors was forthcoming in the form of a booklet entitled ‘The loss of nine gallant lives’ and sold to raise a sum to reward the four survivors. 400 copies of which were sold on the day of the funeral. They also each received silver medals, and a marble clock was given to each by the mayor. The RNLI. also made a considerable independent donation to the general disaster fund.

Almost exactly a year was to pass during which time the irrepressible boatmen’s spirit had returned when the Surfboat was thrown upon troubled waters once again.

On this occasion, the night of the 30th of November 1898 a steamship was reported as being in difficulty on the Long Sand. The Surfboat managed to obtain a tow from a passing tug, the ‘Harold’, but near the Kentish knock the small boat became rapidly swamped to the extent that the men who were now wearing life jackets were fearful of being washed away, although the tugmen as soon as they realised what had happened brought the boatmen onto the tug and proceeded to calmer waters. Whilst proceeding inshore they were struck by a very large sea, after which they found only the bow post of the ‘Friend’ at the other end of the tow~rope. The damaged craft having broken away drifted right across the estuary as far as Great Yarmouth where it was recovered. Although she was repaired and returned to Margate her days as a surfboat were over and a new surfboat was constructed despite the many advances achieved by the RNLI, much reducing the real need for the boatmen to put themselves to such inordinate risks.

The loyalty to the old Culmer White’s enterprise remained and through generous patronage the Cowes firm delivered the new, improved and much larger boat, which required a crew of 15, in 1899 at a cost of eight hundred pounds. 

The boatmen’s activities still enjoyed a large popularity in the town and large crowds attended the naming ceremony but although it saw much active service was chiefly restricted by the better class of Lifeboat to local salvage work with the very occasional rescue. the Surfboat, it must be said in conclusion continued in her much reduced reserve capacity until the mid 1940’s, when she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and taken to Chatham to serve as a tender to vessels there moored and in 1949.

After having been moved to Falmouth she was described as ‘a battered and engineless old hulk which once took part in many dramatic sea rescues off Margate’ where she remained until 1957, when ex Luftwaffe war prisoner Willi Froelich with his family attempted to sail her to their home, to Germany. Froelich got into difficulty near Ostend where the end came for the little boat. 

Whilst under tow the hawser snapped and after some drifting about she broke her bow on the rough seas in mid channel and completely sank.