The Shipping Forecast

Tyne - Part 5

Eight men on oar, ready, aye, ready, to test their nerve and steel, the boatmen's backs to the rage and wind, signal a-try. Callow the 'prentice helps her on the way, pushing waist deep the carriage, feeling the tilt and lift as she rises on the surf, dunked head to foot and frozen anew.

The boat away! Watch as she struggles through the walling surf. She strikes! Turned sideways, wave rolls; broken oars and splintered wood, men senseless and pulled shoreward by eager hands.

"More men, more oars!" Freeman's valiant roar; volunteers come forth, brave they prepare to try anew. Callow from the shore looks Freeman in the eye, hand raised and keen to prove. "Have you wife or child, or sweetheart to grieve were you not to return?" The question stabs hard, peril apparent - danger real.

"Not I," replies the 'prentice keen, not seeing the face white as snow on the maiden fair as he swings gangly o'er gunwale. He joins his brothers, eighteen at the sweeps, double banked to tame the wicked sea. Robert Whitworth turned out again and pushed anew into the maelstrom, bucking and bouncing hard through tumbling green, seaweed stench and brine in eyes and mouth.

"Stretch out, now, stretch out!" yells fish, urging them on, daring wrath of nature severe; looks fate in the eye and sneers back. Men pull and roar, hiding fear under sou'wester and oilskin, shouting defiance and be-damned to the sea: "Your capricious whim not besting me!"

Robert Whitworth takes all in stride, being put to purpose and mute in duty, appears to those who hope almost lost; shines brightly on the faces of wrecked and wretched sailors.

Here boys! Here! Oh Lord, my prayers heard and deliverance comes forth! A lifetime it seems, a lifetime of waiting for succour, here at last!

My boys, we'em saved!