had to be taken away in carts. The sluice at Bopeep was also overrun, the embankment leading to 39 Tower broken down, and communication cut off. Also at Bopeep, the family living in a little cottage on the land side of the haven had to be taken off by means of a boat, and a loss sustained by the drowning of their pigs. Two vessels were wrecked eastward of Rye, and somewhere near Pevensey, the sea flooded the sluice stream in such a manner as to break down about 300 yards of the South-coast railway. But the greatest calamity of that memorable gale was the wreck of the Royal Charter at Bangor and the loss of more than 400 persons.
A severe Gale and High-tide also visited Hastings and St. Leonards on the 23rd of January of the same year. It occurred, as many others have done on a Sunday. Many persons were blown down at St. Leonards, whilst at Hastings, the streets in the vicinity of East parade and the Fishmarket were impassable. Fishing-boats and ferry-boats were drawn up into the pathways and inlets, and the Jane, a dandy-rigged vessel, belonging to the Messrs. Kent of Hastings, was driven ashore at Romney.
Other Maritime Casualties. Another of the Messrs. Kent’s vessels – a collier, named the “William”, having been detained several days by adverse winds, collided, on the 4th of February with the “Rock Scorpion” off St. Leonards, breaking her jibboom and tearing her mainsail.
The Peseverence, also a collier, while getting off at St. Leonards, after discharging her cargo, broke her hawser, and was driven broadside onto the beach, but sustained comparatively slight damage. This was on the 30th of January, just a week after the severe gale.
Four Men Drowned. On the 17th of January, five men having been sent off from the coastguard station at Pevensey with condemned stores to the tender Active, returned for the shore in broken water, and were drowned through the capsizing of the boat, all except one, who was heroically saved with great difficulty by Lieut. Mansel, who stripped and waded a quarter of a mile in the surf. The bodies of three of the men were afterwards recovered, and were interred in the churchyard at Little Common. The remains of the fourth man, some weeks later, were found by a shrimper at Hastings. The name of the unfortunate man was William Brickell and, curious to say he was born at the Hastings Coastguard station opposite to where the body was found, his father at the time of the accident being chief-boatman at the Bridport station in Dorsetshire.
The Perseverence was another vessel which got stranded in St. Leonards in the same manner as the one above. This was a vessel belonging to the Messrs. Hoad, of Rye, and on the 26th -
