Friend To All Nations - Loss

Loss

On the fateful morning of 2 December 1897 the distress flares and rockets of ‘The Persian Empire’ were seen off Margate, and thirteen boatmen on the ‘Friend’ launched into the surf at 5:20am, a full ten minutes ahead of the larger Margate R.N.L.I. Lifeboat ‘Quiver’.

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 its 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.

Putting aside his task the unnamed lamplighter rushed down to the shore too the assistance of two men he then noticed, who were crawling exhausted to safety. He guided them to a wall near the Royal Sea bathing Infirmary and soon with help from people out of nearby houses a third man was saved, with the fourth having disappeared out of sight. The locally respected medic Charles Troughton had attempted the swim to shore but was overcome by shock and exhaustion he made the short distance as an able swimmer and was initially spotted by the lamplighter but then collapsed, to be found having died upon reaching land.

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.

Recovered in this way were:
William Cook, (Coxswain), William Cook junior, Robert Cook, Edward Crunden, William Gill, John Dyke, George Ladd, Henry Richard Brockman, 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 its carriage and placed on the promenade where many people gathered in the bitter cold to see the Surfboat and its badly broken mast.