THE SMALL OPEN BOAT
It was low water and impossible to launch a large fishing lugger that would have been capable of riding the mountainous sea. Immediate help could only be given in an open boat. The best on the beach was the ferry boat, belonging to Sydney Beck, an innkeeper, capable of carrying 20 to 30 men in very heavy seas. She was called The Britannia but nicknamed Lady Lump because of some peculiar characteristic in its construction.
The fishing community had turned out in force, and there was no shortage of help in dragging the boat, named the Britannia, across the sand to the gale-whipped waves breaking on the beach.
The 11 courageous crew pulling double banked oars three on either side with one man to each succeeded in putting off shortly after 8:00am. After they had got through the crashing breakers they hoisted the foresail from the main mast, a mizzen sail astern and a topsail from the topmast, and set sail on course towards the stricken barque.
The 350-ton barque Lalla Rookh was built in Jersey by Edward Allen in 1839, constructed on the beach at Havre des Pas, just east of the town of St Helier.