A YOUNG- NAUTICAL HERO.

Evening Star, Issue 3149, 24 March 1873, Page 2

A YOUNG- NAUTICAL HERO.

One Friday morning, in November last, a boy, fourteen years old, was in his father’s dingy, at Exmoutb, doing such odd jobs as a fisher lad might be sent upon—getting in lines, catching on preparing bait, &c. At the mouth of the Exe it was blowing “great guns” from the north-east; and the tide was running out, with a gale from over Littleham cliffs to drive it. The boy had miscalculated the strength of his fourteen years: and when he headed for home, could not make headway against either wind or tide. He had “ lost his lie,” and rapidly drifted into the water, carried further and further into a wild sea, with a boat only meant for harbor work. A ship caught there would be in a sorry plight ; but here was a boy going, apparently, to certain death, in a tiny bit of a boat, which, in any timid or ignorant hands, would be as good as lost the moment it was driven beyond the protection of Exmouth spit. Try and realise the position,—home and safety going hopelessly astern, fading behind in the cold spray; a boiling sea around ; far ahead the naked rocks of Stoke; on the port hand, the raging, tempestuous Channel, on the starboard side, the Hawlish shore, if only be could reach it; but a white, mad, deadly, hungry line of breakers, thundering along every inch of that shore, aud yet no safety, or chance of safety, except on the other side of the dreadful, unbroken line. This fisher boy (Fred Perriam was his name) was sailor enough to understand his peril, and he did just what an Admiral of the Blue would have counselled: he managed to get up his little mast, aud his sail hoisted, and so he let the dingy run before the wind, avoiding the big waves that followed, and edging carefully away to the Hawlish side. Getting near to the shore, the next thing was to look keenly for the slightest appearance of a break in the line of surf. If he could have found ever so little a bit of shelter, opening into smooth water, there was a hope for life ; but if, while looking for it, he came a single fathom too near the white rollers, his fate was sealed. Keeping far enough to windward, to escape the broken belt, he coasted its deadly, dreadful fringe. All the way there was not a break ! not a chance ! a line of bayonets could not present a grimmer certainty of death ; while, if he were carried on a mile past Hawlish, the tide and wind would have their will of him, and hurl him upon the awful edge of Teignmouth bar What followed is told by the Telegraph in most spirited language:—“ Our small hero acted like a captain of the fleet. Heeply dropping his sail, and unshipping the mast, he threw out his anchor, and let the little cockle-shell come head to wind and sea, just outside the fierce white breakers. Admiral Craigie—the same gallant officer who sailed in the saucy Aretliaaa, ill 1811, and. afterwards set free over 2,003 slaves on the coast of Africa—w r as there, and caught sight of the lad. The good old mariner at once realised the danger, and called attention to it; but, indeed, the coastguards did not need his warning, for their gaze was already on the fisher-boy aud his boat. Yet so terrible was that thundering space of whitewater between the dingy aud the shore, that the boldest hand did not dare push out from the beach. The chief officer at the coastguard station would not risk his men ; the men themselves shook their heads at the raging breakers with a groan of sorrow for the boy ; the best they could do was to telegraph to Teignmouth for the lifeboat, and to hope and pray that the anchor might hold, and the cockle-shell keep afloat, until the life-boat were brought, or the tide turned. When the flood made, the sea, they knew, would go down, and the shore become bare, and if the little lad was not by that time “flotsam and jetsam,” or the lifeboat had not arrived, he might thus be saved. Meantime, Frederick Perriam, riding in tys

dingy, on the brink of death, quite under* stood the position. He was, however, the best judge of all about the point of waiting for the flood tide, for he could see that the dingy would fill and sink before that time ; and, failing instant help, there was but one more chance. This was, to “up anchor, hoist canvas upon her again, and steer for the shore, through the best of that surf which was all too bad for the stoutest hand upon Dawlish Beach. The water-baby, nevertheless, made his miud up, and “piped all hands ” to face the immense risk. Ladies and landsmen should try to comprehend the conditions of beaching a little boat in a heavy surf. With plenty of oarsmen to pull at the right time ; with good care taken to approach the terrible, tumbling chaos of savage sea, stern on, so that the roller foaming after, may lift the bow, and not break over, and swamp the craft; with a steersman as cool as frozen steel, with the right moment, a straight course, and no end of good luck, clever rowers may take the shore prosperously, in a heavy surf, once out of seven times. Here an Kxmouth boy had to manage it with a dingy under sail, stem first, nobody to trim the boat, and the wind upon his quarter. However, by this time, it had become one of two things for him—ho must either sink at anchor, or else run the gauntlet of those mighty billows, which will surely smash his frail craft, and roll him dead and battered among the wet stones, if he makes the slightest mistake, or loses a single point of the game. There is a moment’s lull; he gets the mast stepped, bales hard again, and waits for the next pause in the wind, which seems to be howling to the breakers not to let him escape. Then comes another lull, and he gets his lug hoisted, outs the anchor adrift with his ready knife, and lays the dingy’s head away from the gale. Gunneldown in the hissing water flies the frightened cock-boat, skimming for a moment parallel to the line of surf, as when a horse, desperately ridden, vainly tries to shirk the fence ; and then, with a silence which is more than any cry, the little lad jams the helm down, bears up eud-on for the neck of the great combing wave, and takes it on * the hang’ with his sail well full. All right so far; the huge billow heaves him !—hurls him ! lowers him! launches him safe and straight into the seething hell of green and grey and white between two hills of water; and then, while the under-tow draws at his keel, and stops his way, the next billow, foaming in, shuts the wind from him, becalming his canvas. If he falls off a point, or catches the stoke of that sea before he gets another puff from the tempest, he is a drowned boy ; but there he calmly sits, tiller in one little hand, and sheet in the other, holding his boat as level as an arrow. Now, then, for one moment, let the tempest howl its worst; let it blow “ten thousand topsail sheet blocks,” so that it will flatten down the crest of the coming death, and send a helpful blast over it into the peak of the sail! It does that; the wind cheats the sea of his life ; for at the supreme moment it freshened, it caught the sail, gave the cock-boat new impetus, lifted her forward, just in time to take the roller handsomely—and the lad drives in swift as a sea gull on the crest of this second breaker, which drove him safe and sound within the reach of a dozen strong arras, so that, with a smack of spray in the face, which might be Amphitrite’s parting kiss to her water-baby, the flshcr-lad is trundled up to land. Those old salts who saw the boy perform this wonderful feat of seamanship, say, that a finer spectacle of courage and self-reliance could not have been witnessed. Only fourteen years old, and small for his age, is Frederick Perriam, of Clarence road, Exmouth ; but he is a true bred sea-boy, of that coast which produced Drake and Raleigh, and we would rather hear that there are twenty of this sort between Start Point and the Hill of Portland, than have the Czar make us a new year’s gift of his famous iron clad, Peter the Great.