t
fearful crash, and fell alongside the vessel, James Grant was, I
believe, killed on the spot, betwixt the ship and the boat; Edmund
Robson and James Blackburn were thrown out, Joseph Bell jumped as the
boat fell. My own impression is that the men all jumped from the boat
on to the vessel. We saw them no more. There were four men standing in
a group before the mainmast of the schooner. We implored them to come
into the boat, but no one answered."

Little wonder at that, James Gilbert! The massive wreck must have
seemed--at least to men who did not know the qualities of a lifeboat--a
surer foothold than the tossed cockleshell with "only two oars and a
rudder," out of which four of her own gallant crew had just been lost.
Even landsmen can perceive that it must have required much faith to
trust a lifeboat in the circumstances.

"The next sea that struck the lifeboat," continues the coxswain, "landed
her within six feet of the foundation-stone of Tynemouth Dock, with a
quickness seldom witnessed. The crew plied the remaining two oars to
leeward against the rudder and boathook. We never saw anything till
coming near the three Shields lifeboats. We asked them for oars to
proceed back to the Friendship, but they had none to spare."

Thus the brave Constance was baffled, and had to retire, severely
wounded, from the fight. She drove, in her disabled and unmanageable
condition, into the harbour. Of the four men thrown out of her, Grant
and Robson, who had found temporary refuge in the wrecked schooner,
perished. The other two, Bell and Blackburn, were buoyed up by their
cork lifebelts, washed ashore, and saved. The schooner itself was
afterwards destroyed, and her crew of four men and a boy were lost.

Meanwhile the screams of those on board of her and the Stanley were
borne on the gale to the vast crowds who, despite darkness and tempest,
lined the neighbouring cliffs, and the Shields lifeboats just referred
to made gallant attempts to approach the wrecks, but failed. Indeed, it
seemed to have been a rash attempt on the part of the noble fellows of
the Constance to have made the venture at all.

The second cabin of the Stanley was on deck, and formed the bridge, or
outlook. On this a number of the passengers and crew had taken refuge,
but a tremendous sea carried it, and all its occupants, bodily away.
After this the fury of the sea increased, and about an hour before
midnight the steamer, with a hideous cr