THE DEADLY GOODWINS

Evening Star, Issue 20060, 28 December 1928, Page 5

THE DEADLY GOODWINS

LIGHTSHIP ADRIFT BUFFETED BY A GALE Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, December 20. How tho East Goodwin lightship, which is one of tho most important in the world and "is familiar to all overseas passengers arriving in London, spent Christmas night adrift, buffeted by a raging south-westerly gale and narrowly escaping disaster in a death trap of which it warned others, was related in the ‘ Daily News.’ Throughout Christmas Day terrific seas swept the lightship, and an anxious vigil came to a climax at midnight, when, with a final plunge, she broke her moorings and drifted a helpless prey to the fury of the wind and tide, leaving the busiest and the most dangerous. spot on the British coast and perhaps in the world unguarded, being herself a danger to the crowded shipping in the neighbourhood of this ocean graveyard. The flagship carried a master, and six men. Some of tho men,

in the teeth of the gale, climbed the mast and extinguished the lantern, otherwise it would have misled shipping. Others fired warning flares, warning vessels to keep clear, while red lamps were hoisted to indicate that the vessel was out of control. The lightship also wirelessed her plight to headquarters, enabling tho Admiralty radio to warn traffic that the lightship was out of control. Meanwhile the galo carried tho lightship along within a mile of the boiling waste of breakers which mark the sinister Goodwin Sands. Eventually, when the crow had discharged their responsibility to shipping, they had an opportunity to think of their own lives, and found an anchorage with a spare anchor after having drifted three miles. A lifeboat put out from Ramsgate, and reached the lightship after a two hours’ search . United Service.