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HEROES OF THE GOODWIN SANDS
by
THE REV. THOMAS STANLEY TREANOR, M.A.
Chaplain, Missions to Seamen, Deal and the Downs
Author of "The Log of a Sky Pilot," "The Cry from the Sea and the
Answer from the Shore."
With Coloured and Other Illustrations
[Frontispiece: A Perilous Escape]
[Illustration: Title page]
London
The Religious Tract Society
4 Bouverie Street & 65 St. Paul's Churchyard
1904
PREFACE
For twenty-six years, as Missions to Seamen Chaplain for the Downs, the
writer of the following chapters has seen much of the Deal boatmen,
both ashore and in their daily perilous life afloat. For twenty-three
years he has also been the Honorary Secretary of the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution for the Goodwin Sands and Downs Branch; he has
sometimes been afloat in the lifeboats at night and in storm, and he
has come into official contact with the boatmen in their lifeboat work,
in the three lifeboats stationed right opposite the Goodwin Sands, at
Deal, Walmer, and Kingsdown. With these opportunities of observation,
he has written accurate accounts of a few of the splendid rescues
effected on those out-lying and dangerous sands by the boatmen he knows
so well.
Each case is authenticated by names and dates; the position of the
wrecked vessel is given with exactness, and the handling and
manoeuvring of the lifeboat described, from a sailor's point of view,
with accuracy, even in details.
The descriptions of the sea--of Nature in some of her most tremendous
aspects, of the breakers on the Goodwins--and of the stubborn courage
of the men who man our lifeboats are far below the reality. Each
incident occurred as it is related, and is absolutely true.
The Deal boatmen are almost as mute as the fishes of the sea respecting
their own deeds of daring and of mercy on the Goodwin Sands. It is but
justice to those humble heroes of the Kentish coast that an attempt
should be made to tell some parts of their wondrous story.
T. S. T.
DEAL, 1904.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE GOODWIN SANDS
II. THE DEAL BOATMEN
III. THE AUGUSTE HERMANN FRANCKE
IV. THE GANGES
V. THE EDINA
VI. THE FREDRIK CARL
VII. THE GOLDEN ISLAND
VIII. THE SORRENTO, S.S.
IX. THE ROYAL ARCH
X. THE MANDALAY
XI. THE LEDA
XII. THE D'ARTAGNAN AND THE HEDVIG SOPHIA
XIII. THE RAMSGATE LIFEBOAT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A PERILOUS RESCUE . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
THE LAUNCH OF THE LIFEBOAT
THE GOODWIN SANDS
A WRECK ON THE GOODWINS
THE BOOM OF A DISTANT GUN
SHOWING A FLARE
HOOKING THE STEAMER
A FORLORN HOPE
POSITION OF THE GANGES ON THE SANDS
DANGEROUS WORK
THE ANCHOR OF DEATH (_from a photograph_)
DEAL BOATMEN ON THE LOOK OUT FOR A HOTEL
THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN ISLAND
CLOVE-HITCH KNOTS
JARVIST ARNOLD
THE KINGSDOWN LIFEBOAT
SCENE ON DEAL BEACH, FEBRUARY 13, 1870
POSITION OF THE SORRENTO
THE SORRENTO ON THE GOODWIN SANDS
ALL HANDS IN THE LIFEBOAT
THE LIFEBOAT BRADFORD AT THE WRECK OF THE INDIAN CHIEF
LEAVING RAMSGATE HARBOUR IN TOW
[Illustration: The Launch of the Lifeboat. From a photograph by W. H.
Franklin.]
CHAPTER I
THE GOODWIN SANDS
'Would'st thou,' so the helmsman answered,
'Learn the secrets of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.'
The Goodwin Sands are a great sandbank, eight miles long and about four
miles wide, rising out of deep water four miles off Deal at their
nearest point to the mainland. They run lengthwise from north to
south, and their breadth is measured from east to west. Counting from
the farthest points of shallow water around the Goodwins, their
dimensions might be reckoned a little more, but the above is
sufficiently accurate.
Between them and Deal lies thus a stretch of four miles of deep water,
in which there is a great anchorage for shipping. This anchorage, of
historic interest, is called the Downs--possibly from the French _les
Dunes_, or 'the Sands,' a derivation which, so far as I know, was first
suggested by myself--and is sheltered from the easterly gales to some
extent by the Goodwins.
The Downs are open to the north and south, and through this anchorage
of the Downs runs the outward and homeward bound stream of shipping of
all nations, to and from London and the northern ports of England,
Holland, Germany, and the Baltic.
A very large proportion of the stream of shipping bound to London
passes inside the Goodwins or through the Downs, especially when the
wind is south-west, inasmuch as if they went in west winds outside the
Goodwins, they would find themselves a long way to leeward of the Gull
buoy.
The passage here, between the Gull buoy and the Goodwin Sands, is not
more than two miles wide; and again I venture to suggest that the Gull
stream is derived from the French _la Gueule_.
Though there are four miles of deep water between the Goodwin Sands and
the mainland, this deep water has rocky shallows and dangerous patches
in it, but I shall not attempt to describe them, merely endeavouring to
concentrate the reader's attention on the Goodwin Sands. Inside the
Goodwins and in this comparatively sheltered anchorage of deep water,
the outward bound shipping bring up, waiting sometimes for weeks for
fair wind; hence Gay's lines are strictly accurate,
All in the Downs the fleet was moored.
The anchorage of the Downs is sheltered from west winds by the mainland
and from east winds by the dreaded Goodwins. They thus form a natural
and useful breakwater towards the east, creating the anchorage of the
Downs.
In an easterly gale, notwithstanding the protection of the Goodwins,
there is a very heavy and even tremendous sea in the Downs, for the
Goodwin Sands lie low in the water, and when they are covered by the
tide--as they always are at high water--the protection they afford is
much diminished.
The 'sheltered' anchorage of the Downs is thus a relative term. Even
in this shelter vessels are sometimes blown away from their anchors
both by easterly and westerly winds.
In 1703 thirteen men-of-war were lost in the Downs in the same gale in
which Winstanley perished in the Eddystone Lighthouse of his own
construction, and I have seen vessels in winds both from east and west
driven to destruction from the Downs. Even of late years I have seen
450 vessels at anchor in the Downs, reaching away to the north and
south for nearly eight miles.
Their appearance is most imposing, as may be judged from the engraving
on page 95, in which, however, only twenty-five ships are visible in
the moonlight. Almost all the ships in the engraving are outward
bound, and some, it may be, are on their last voyage.
Outside, and to the cast of this great fleet of vessels, lies the great
'shippe-swallower,' the Goodwin Sands. The sands are very irregular in
shape, and are not unlike a great lobster, with his back to the cast,
and with his claws, legs, and feelers extended westwards towards Deal
and the shipping in the Downs. Far from the main body of the sands run
all manner of spits and promontories and jaws of sand, and through and
across the Goodwins in several directions are numbers of 'swatches,' or
passages of water varying in depth from feet to fathoms.
No one knows, or can know, all the swatches, which vary very much month
by month according to the prevalence of gales or fair weather. I shall
never forget the sensation of striking bottom in one of those swatches
where I expected to find, and had found recently before in the same
state of the tide, a depth of six feet. The noise of broken water on
each side of us, and the ominous grating thump of our boat's keel
against the Goodwins, while the stumps of lost vessels grinned close
by, gave us a keen sense of the nearness of real peril. We were bound
to the East Goodwin lightship, and in the path of duty, but we were
glad to feel the roll of deep water under our boat's keel outside the
Goodwins.
No one therefore knows, or can know, by reason of the perpetual
shifting of the sands, all the passages or swatches, either as to
direction or depth, of the Goodwins; but two or three main swatches are
tolerably well known to the Deal and Ramsgate lifeboatmen.
There is a broad bay called Trinity Bay in the heart of the Goodwins,
out of which leads due north-east the chief swatch or passage through
the Sands. It is four or five fathoms deep at low water, and from
about three-quarters to a quarter of a mile wide, and it is called the
Ramsgate Man's Bight. Close to the outer entrance of this great
passage rides, about twelve feet out of water, the huge north-east
Whistle buoy of the Goodwins, which ever moans forth in calmest weather
its most mournful note.
Sometimes when outside the Goodwins on my way from the North Goodwin to
the East Goodwin lightship, we have passed so close to this great buoy
that we could touch it with a boat-hook, and have heard its giant
breathing like that of some leviathan asleep on the surface of the sea,
which was dead calm at the time. I have also heard its boom at a
distance of eight miles.
I have said this great swatch leads north-east through the
Goodwins--but north-east from what, and how is the point of departure
to be found on a dark night? If you ask the coxswain of the Deal
lifeboat, who probably knows more, or at least as much about the Sands
and their secrets as any other living man, he will tell you to 'stand
on till you bring such a lightship to bear so and so, and then run due
north-east; only look out for the breakers on either side of you.' It
is one thing to go through this swatch in fair weather and broad
daylight, and another thing in the dark or even by moonlight, 'the sea
and waves roaring' their mighty accompaniment to the storm.
There are other swatches, one more to the southward than the preceding,
and also running north-east, through which the Deal men once brought a
ship named the Mandalay into safety after protracted efforts.
Another swatch too exists, opposite the East Goodwin buoy, being that
in which we struck the dangerous bottom. And yet another, just north
of the south-east buoy, leads right across the tail of the monster, and
so into the deep water of the Downs.
Looking at a chart or reading of these passages, they seem easy enough,
but to find and get through them safely when you are as low down as you
are in a boat, near the sea level, is very difficult, and as exciting
as the escape of the entangled victims from the labyrinths of
old--unmistakable danger being all around you, and impressed on both
eyes and ears.
The whole of the Goodwin Sands are covered by the sea at high water;
even the highest or north part of the Sands is then eight or ten feet
under water. At low water this north part of the Goodwins is six feet
at least above the sea level, and you can walk for miles on a rippled
surface cut into curious gulleys, the miniatures of the larger
swatches. Wild and lonely beyond words is the scene. The sands are
hard when dry--in some places as hard as the hardest beach of sand that
can be named. Near the Fork Spit the sand is marvellously hard. On
the north-west part of the Goodwins, which is that given in the
engraving, it is hard, but not so hard as elsewhere. In all cases it
is soft and pliable under water, and sometimes in wading you sink with
alarming rapidity.
Recently attempting in company with a friend to wade a very
peculiar-looking but shallow swatch--to right and left of us being blue
swirls of deeper water, the 'fox-falls' on a smaller scale of another
part of the Sands, and exceedingly beautiful--I suddenly sank pretty
deep, and struggled back with all my energies into firmer footing from
the Goodwins' cold and tenacious embrace.
The Sands reach round you for miles, and the greater swatches cut you
off from still more distant and still more extensive reaches of sand.
In such solitudes, and with such vastness around you, of which the
great lonely level stretch makes you conscious as nothing ashore can
do, you realise what an atom you are in creation.
[Illustration: The Goodwin Sands.]
Here you see a ship's ribs. This was the schooner laden with
pipe-clay, out of which in a dangerous sea the captain and crew escaped
in their own boat, as the lifeboat advanced to save them. Far away on
the Sands you see the fluke of a ship's anchor, which from the shape
when close to it we recognise to be a French pattern.
With me stood the coxswain of the celebrated Deal lifeboat, Richard
Roberts. Intently he gazed at the projecting anchor fluke--shaft and
chain had long been sucked down into the Goodwins--and then, after a
good long look all round, taking the bearings of the deadly thing, at
last he said, 'What a dangerous thing on a dark night for the lifeboat!'
Just think, good reader! The lifeboat, close reefed, flies to the
rescue on the wings of the storm into the furious seas which revel and
rage on the Goodwins. Her fifteen men dauntlessly face the wild
smother. She sinks ponderously in the trough of a great roller, and
the anchor fluke is driven right through her bottom and holds her to
the place--for hold her it would, long enough to let the breakers tear
every living soul out of her!
Under our feet and deep in the sand lie vessels one over another, and
in them all that vessels carry. Countless treasures must be buried
there--the treasures of centuries. Witness the Osta Junis, a Dutch
East Indiaman, which, treasure-laden with money and other valuables to
a great amount, ran on the Goodwin Sands, July 12, 1783. The Deal
boatmen were quickly on board, and brought the treasures ashore, which,
as it was war time, were prize to the Crown, and were conveyed to the
Bank of England[1]. That merchandise, curiosities, and treasures lie
engulfed in the capacious maw of the Goodwin Sands is very probable,
although we may not quite endorse Mr. Pritchard's statement that 'if
the multitude of vessels lost there during the past centuries could be
recovered, they would go a good way towards liquidating the National
Debt.'
From its mystery and 'shippe-swallowing' propensities, the word
'monster' is peculiarly appropriate to this great quicksand, which
still craves more victims, and still with claws and feelers
outstretched--Scylla and Charybdis combining their terrors in the
Goodwins--lies in ambush for the goodly ships that so bravely wing
their flight to and fro beyond its reach. But it is only in the storm
blast and the midnight that its most dreadful features are unveiled,
and even then the lifeboatmen face its perils and conquer them.
Independently of the breakers and cross-seas of stormy weather, the
dangers of the Goodwin Sands arise from the facts that they lie right
in the highway of shipping, that at high water they are concealed from
view, being then covered by the sea to the depth of from ten to
twenty-five feet, varying in different places, and that furious
currents run over and around them.
Add to this that they are very lonely and distant from the mainland,
and, being surrounded by deep water, are far from help; whilst, as an
additional and terrible danger, here and there on the sands, wrecks,
anchors, stumps, and notably the great sternpost of the Terpsichore,
from which a few months ago Roberts and the Deal lifeboatmen had
rescued all the crew, stick up over the surface. And woe be to the
boat or vessel which strikes on these!
On September 12, 1891, on my way to the North Sandhead lightship,
which, however, we failed to reach by reason of the strong ebb tide
against us and the wind dropping to a calm, we revisited this sternpost
of the Terpsichore. We got down mast and sails and took to our oars.
The light air from the north-east blew golden feathery cloud-films
across the great blue arch above our heads, and for once in the arctic
summer of 1891 the air was warm and balmy. Starting from the
North-west Goodwin buoy, we soon rowed into shallow water, crossing a
long spit of sand on which, not far from us, a feathery breaker raced.
Again we get into deep water, having just hit the passage into an
amphitheatre in the Goodwins of deep water bordered by a circle or
ridge of sand about three feet under water, over which the in-tide was
fiercely running and rippling, and upon which here and there a breaker
raised its warning crest.
We reached the great sternpost of the lost Terpsichore at 9.22 a.m.,
just two hours before low water at the neap tides, and found it
projected five feet nine inches above the water, which was ten feet six
inches deep in the swilly close to it, but nowhere shallower than eight
feet within a distance of fifty yards from the stump. Underneath in
the green sea-water there lay quite visible the keel and framework of
the vessel; and again I heard the story from Roberts, the coxswain of
the Deal lifeboat, who was with me, of the rescue of the crew of this
very vessel at 2.15 a.m. on the stormy night of the preceding November
14.
As we held by the green sea-washed stump, it was hard to realise the
sublime story of that awful night: the mighty sea warring with the
furious wind, and the dismantled, beaten ship--masts gone overboard and
tossing in mad confusion of spars and cordage along her side--into
which most black and furious hell the lifeboatmen dared to venture the
Deal lifeboat, and out of which she and her gallant crew came, by God's
mercy, triumphant and unscathed, having saved every soul on board, and
also, with a fine touch of humanity often to be found in a brave
sailor's heart, the 'harmless, necessary cat' belonging to the vessel.
I can assure my readers that poor pussy's head and green eyes peering
out of the arms of one of the storm-battered sailors as they struggled
up Deal beach was a beautiful and most touching sight.
Having lingered and examined this wreck as long as we dared, we now
tried to get out of the great circle in which we were enclosed. With
one man in the bows and another steering, we tried to cross the
submerged ridge of sand which encircled us and over which the tide
raced; but we struck the sand, and then were turned broadside on by the
furious current and swept back into the circle. Cautiously we rowed
along, when, not twenty yards off, I saw an object triangular and not
unlike a shark's fin just above the water. 'Hard-a-starboard!' at the
same moment cried the man in the bows, and then in the same breath,
'Port, sir, quick! Hard-a-port!' For to right of us stuck up out of
eight feet of water, beautifully clear and green, the iron pump-work of
a submerged wreck, the iron projection being not more than six inches
out of water; and then, a few yards further on to the left of the boat,
out of deep water, a rib, it may be, of the same forgotten and it may
be long-buried vessel.
Had not the water been calm and clear, the place would have been a
regular death-trap. With increased caution we felt our way all round
the great circle into which we had entered. South of us rose a smooth
yellow-brown bank of sand, and upon this sunny shore tripped hundreds
of great white seagulls. So warm, so silent, so lonely was the place
that it might have been an island in the Pacific; and upon the same
yellow sandbank there basked, quite within view, a great, large-eyed
seal.
At last we found our way out of the heart of the Goodwins, and got into
the deep, wide swatchway called the Ramsgate Man's Bight. Away to the
north-east we saw the Whistle buoy, and toward the east the East buoy,
both of which mark the outer edge of the Goodwins.
In the deep centre of this swatch rolled the mast of another wreck,
somehow fast to the bottom, and having gazed at this weird sight, we
landed, amidst the wild screams of protesting sea-birds, and explored
all round for a mile the edges of this sandbank, which was of singular
firmness and yellowness, and upon which, in rhythmic cadence, plashed a
most pellucid sea.
With change of tide and rising water we got up sail and at last reached
the Gull lightship, on whose deck we met old friends, and where we had
Divine Service as the evening fell in. Need it be said that that which
we had just seen on the Goodwins, the memories of the lost ships, and
of the gallant seamen who lie buried there, served to point a moral and
to raise all our hearts to that good land where 'there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more
pain, for the former things are passed away.' One of the hymns in that
service was suggested by the scene we had left, and began thus,
Jesus! Saviour! Pilot me.
But not every boat that visits the mysterious quicksand escapes as
readily. Skilled and hardy boatmen are sometimes lost even in fine
weather.
About twenty years ago a Deal galley punt, and four men, Bowbyas,
Buttress, Erridge, and Obree, skilled Deal boatmen, landed on the
Goodwins to get some coal from a wrecked collier. All that is
certainly known is that they never returned, and that they had been
noticed by a passing barge running to and fro and waving, which the
bargemen thought, alas! was only the play of some holiday-keepers on an
excursion to the Goodwins. They went to the Goodwins in a light
south-west breeze and smooth sea. While there the wind shifted to
north-east and a tumble of a sea got up, and it is supposed that it
then beat into and filled their laden boat, despite the efforts which
they are believed to have made to float her or get her ride to her
anchor and come head to wind. If this be so, how long and desperate
must their struggle have been to save their boat from wreckage, and to
pump out the water and heave out the coal. Their anchor and cable,
found on the sands and let go to full scope, favours this idea.
On the other hand, the fact that they were seen wildly running to and
fro looks as if some sudden catastrophe had occurred, as if they had
struck on some stump in the water close to the very edge of the
Goodwins.
The very day on which the photographs were taken which have been used
to illustrate this chapter, we were shoving off the steep northern face
of the Goodwin Sands, when we saw, not ten yards from the precipitous
edge of the dull red sands, in about twenty-five feet of water, and
just awash or level with the surface, the bristling spars and masts of
a three-masted schooner, the Crocodile, which had been lost there
January 6, 1891, in a fearful snowstorm, from the north-east, of that
long winter. Had we even touched those deadly points, we too should
have probably lost our boat and been entrapped on the Goodwin Sands.
The coxswain of the Deal lifeboat was with us, and told how that at
three o'clock on that terrible January morning, or rather night,
wearied with previous efforts, he had launched the lifeboat and beat in
the face of the storm and intense cold ten miles to windward, toward
the burning flares which told of a vessel on the Sands.
Just when within reach of the vessel, this very wreck, they saw the
Ramsgate tug and lifeboat were just before them, and taking the crew
out of the rigging of the wreck. In sight of the whole company, for
their lanterns and lights were burning, the poor exhausted captain of
the schooner, in trying to get down from the rigging, in which he was
almost frozen to death, fell into the stormy sea and was lost in the
darkness, while the remainder were gallantly rescued by the Ramsgate
lifeboat.
[Illustration: A wreck on the Goodwins.]
It was on the dangerous stumps and masts of this vessel, to save the
crew of which the Deal and Ramsgate men made such a splendid effort,
that we so nearly ran; and an accident of this kind perhaps sealed the
fate of the four boatmen above mentioned.
On this north-west part of the Goodwins, on which hours of the deepest
interest could be spent, you can walk a distance of at least two miles,
but you are separated by the great north-east swatch of deep water from
getting to the extensive north-east jaw on the other side of the
swatch, which is also full of wrecks, and round and along the edges of
which, on the calmest day, somehow the surf and breakers for ever roar.
The southern part of the Goodwins is also full of memories, and of
countless wrecks. The ribs of the Ganges, the Leda, the Paul Boyton,
the Sorrento, all lie there deep down beneath the Sands, excepting when
some mighty storm shifts the sand and reveals their skeletons. Deep,
too, in the bosom of the Goodwins, masts alone projecting, is settling
down the Hazelbank, wrecked there in October, 1890; but this southern
part at lowest tide is barely uncovered by the sea, and only just awash.
At high water the depth is about three fathoms, varying of course in
patches, over this southern part or tail of the sea-monster. It is
clear that, being thus, even at low tide, nearly always covered with
water, and as the sand when thus covered is much more 'quick' and
movable, the southern part of the Goodwins is an exceedingly awkward
place to explore. If you made a stumble, as the sands slide under your
feet, it might, shall I say, land you into a pit or 'fox-fall,'
circular in shape, and very deep. The stumps of forgotten wrecks are
also a real danger to the boat which accompanies the investigator.
As to the depth of the great sandbank, borings have been made down to
the chalk to a depth of seventy-eight feet--a fact which might have
been fairly conjectured from the depth of water inside the Goodwins,
down to the chalky bottom being nine or ten fathoms, while the depth
close outside the Goodwins, where the outer edge of the sands is sheer
and steep, is fifteen fathoms, deepening a mile and a half further off
the Goodwins to twenty-eight fathoms.
The ships wrecked on the Goodwins go down into it very slowly, but they
sometimes literally fall off the steep outer edge into the deep water
above described.
One still bright autumn morning I witnessed a tragedy of that
description. On the forenoon of November 30, 1888, I was on the deck
of a barque, the Maritzburg, bound to Port Natal. I had visited the
men in the forecastle, and indeed all hands fore and aft, as Missions
to Seamen chaplain; and to them all I spoke, and was, in fact, speaking
of that only 'Name under heaven whereby we must be saved,' when my eyes
were riveted, as I gazed right under the sun, by the drama being
enacted away to the southward.
There I saw, three miles off, our two lifeboats of Kingsdown and
Walmer, each in tow of a steamer which came to their aid, making for
the Goodwins, and on the outer edge of the Goodwins I beheld a hapless
brig, with sails set, aground. I saw her at that distance lifted by
the heavy sea, and at that distance I saw the great tumble of the
billows. That she had heavily struck the bottom I also saw, for
crash!--and even at that distance I verily seemed to hear the
crash--away went her mainmast over her side, and the next instant she
was gone, and had absolutely and entirely disappeared. I could not
believe my eyes, and rubbed them and gazed again and yet again.
She had perished with all hands. The lifeboats, fast as they went,
were just too late, and found nothing but a nameless boat, bottom
upwards, and a lifebelt, and no one ever knew her nationality or name.
She had struck the Goodwins, and had been probably burst open by the
shock, and then, dragged by the great offtide to the east, had rolled
into the deep water outside the Goodwins and close to its dreadful edge.
What a sermon! What a summons! There they lie till the sea give up
its dead, and we all 'appear before the judgment seat of Christ.'
The origin of the Goodwin Sands is a very interesting question, and is
discussed at length in Mr. Gattie's attractive _Memorials of the
Goodwin Sands_. There is the romantic tradition that they once, as the
'fertile island of Lomea,' formed part of the estates of the great Earl
Godwin, and that as a punishment for his crimes they 'sonke sodainly
into the sea.' Another tradition, given by W. Lambard, tells us that
in the end of the reign of William Rufus, 1099 A.D., there was 'a
sodaine and mighty inundation of the sea, by the which a great part of
Flaunders and of the lowe countries thereabouts was drenched and lost;'
and Lambard goes on to quote Hector Boethius to the effect that 'this
place, being sometyme in the possession of the Earl Godwin, was then
first violently overwhelmed with a light sande, wherewith it not only
remayneth covered ever since, but is become withal (_Navium gurges et
vorago_) a most dreadful gulfe and shippe-swallower.'
The latter phrase of 'shippe-swallower' being only too true, has stuck,
and there does seem historic ground to warrant us in believing that in
the year named there was a great storm and incursion of the sea; but
whether the Goodwin Sands were ever the fertile island of Lomea and the
estate of the great earl seems to be more than uncertain.
But there is no doubt whatever that the theory that the inundation of
the sea in A.D. 1099, which 'drenched' the Low Countries, withdrew the
sea from the Goodwins and left it bare at low water, while before this
inundation it had been more deeply covered by the ocean, is quite
untenable, for the sea never permanently shifts, but always returns to
its original level. When we speak of the sea 'gaining' or 'losing,'
what is really meant is that the land gains or loses, and therefore the
idea of the Goodwins being laid bare and uncovered by the sea water
running away from it and over to Flanders is absurd.
In all probability the origin of the Goodwin Sands is not to be
ascribed to their once having been a fertile island, or to their having
been uncovered by the sea falling away from them, but to their having
been actually formed by the action of the sea itself, ever since the
incursion of the sea up the Channel and from the north made England an
island.
There are great natural causes in operation which account for the
formation of the mighty sandbank by gradual accumulation, without
having recourse to the hypothesis that it is the ruined remains of the
fabulous island of Lomea, fascinating as the idea is that it was once
Earl Godwin's island home.
The two great tidal waves of different speed which sweep round the
north of England and up the English Channel, meet twice every day a
little to the north of the North Foreland, where the writer has often
waited anxiously to catch the ebb going south.
Eddies and currents of all kinds hang on the skirts of this great
'meeting of the waters,' and hence in the narrows of the Channel, where
the Goodwins lie, the tide runs every day twice from all points of the
compass, and there is literally every day in the year a great whirlpool
all round and over the Goodwin Sands, deflected slightly perhaps, but
not caused by those sands, but by the meeting of the two tidal waves
twice every twenty-four hours.
This daily Maelstrom is sufficient to account for the formation of the
mighty sandbank, for the water is laden with the detritus of cliff and
beach which it has taken up in its course round England, and, just as
if you give a circular motion to a basin of muddy water, you will soon
find the earthy deposit centralised at the bottom of the basin, so the
great Goodwins are the result of the daily deposit of revolving tides.
That the tides literally 'revolve' round the Goodwins is well known to
the Deal men and to sailors in general, and this revolution is
described in most of the tide tables and nautical almanacks used by
mariners, _e.g._ 'The Gull Stream about one hour and ten minutes before
high water runs N.E. 3/4 N., but the last hour changes to E.N.E. and
even to E.S.E., and the last hour of the southern stream changes from
S.W. 1/2 S. to W.S.W. and even to W.N.W[2].' Here the reader will
distinctly see recorded the great causes in operation which are
sufficient in the lapse of centuries to produce and maintain the
Goodwin Sands. But how they came to be called the Goodwin Sands we
know not, and can only conjecture. Those were the days of Siward and
Duncan and Macbeth, and, like them, the imposing form of the great Earl
of Kent is shrouded in the mists and the myths of eight centuries.
He was evidently placed, in the first instance by royal authority or
that of the Saxon Witan, in some such position as Captain of the Naval
forces of all Southern England, and it is certain that he gathered
round himself the affections of the sailors of Sandwich, Hythe, Romney,
Hastings, and Dover.
When he sailed from Bruges against Edward, 'the fort of Hastings opened
to his coming with a shout from its armed men. All the boatmen, all
the mariners far and near, thronged to him, with sail and shield, with
sword and with oar.' And on his way to Pevensey and Hastings from
Flanders he would seem to have run outside, and at the back of the
Goodwins, while the admirals of Edward the Confessor, Rodolph and Odda,
lay fast in the Downs.
He appears, by virtue of his semi-regal position--for Kent with Wessex
and Sussex were under his government--to have been the Commander of a
Naval agglomeration of those southern ports which was the germ, very
probably, of the subsequent 'Cinque Ports' confederation, with their
'Warden' at their head; but at any rate he swept with him in this
expedition against Edward all the 'Buscarles' (boat-carles or seamen)
of those southern ports, Hythe, Hastings, Dover, and Sandwich. His
progress towards London was a triumphant one with his sons. 'All
Kent--the foster-mother of the Saxons,' we are told, on this occasion
'sent forth the cry, "Life or death with Earl Godwin!"'
Crimes may rest on the name of Earl Godwin, despite his oath to the
contrary and his formal acquittal by the Witan-gemot, and dark deeds
are still affixed to his memory, but 'there was an instinctive and
prophetic feeling throughout the English nation that with the house of
Godwin was identified the cause of the English people.' With all his
faults he was a great Englishman, and was the popular embodiment of
English or Saxon feeling against the Normanising sympathies of Edward.
In legend the Godwin family, even in death, seem to have been connected
with the sea. There is the legend of Godwin's destruction with his
fleet in the Goodwin Sands, and there is the much better authenticated
legend of Harold's burial in the sea-sand at Hastings. The Norman
William's chaplain records that the Conqueror said, 'Let his corpse
guard the coasts which his life madly defended.'
Wrap them together[3] in a purple cloak,
And lay them both upon the waste sea-shore
At Hastings, there to guard the land for which
He did forswear himself.
Tenterden Steeple is certainly not the cause of the Goodwin Sands, and
the connection supposed to exist between them seems to have first
occurred to some 'aged peasant' of Kent examined before Sir Thomas More
as to the origin of the Goodwin Sands. But, as Captain Montagu
Burrows, R.N., mentions in his most interesting book on the Cinque
Ports, Tenterden Steeple was not built till 1462, and 'was not in the
popular adage connected with the Goodwin Sands, but with Sandwich
Haven. It ran thus--
Of many people it hath been sayed
That Tenterden steeple Sandwich haven hath decayed.'
Godwin's connection with Tenterden Steeple seems, therefore, to be as
mythical as his destruction in the Goodwin Sands with his whole fleet,
and we are driven to suppose that the connection of his family name
with the Goodwin Sands arose either from Norman and monkish detestation
of Harold and Godwin's race, and the desire to associate his name as
infamous with those terrible quicksands; or that these Sands had some
connection with the great earl and his family which we know not of,
whether as having been, according to doubtful legend, his estate, or
because he must often have victoriously sailed round them, and hard by
them often hoisted his rallying flag; or that these outlying, but
guarding Sands received from the patriotic affection of the valiant
Kentish men the title of 'the Goodwin Sands' in memory of the great
Earl Godwin and of Godwin's race[4].
[1] See Pritchard's interesting _History of Deal_, p. 196.
[2] Jefferson's _Almanack_, 1892.
[3] Edith and Harold.
[4] I am reminded by the Rev. C. A. Molony that Goodnestone next
Wingham or Godwynstone, and Godwynstone next Faversham, both referred
to in _Archaeologia Cantiana_, are localities which probably
commemorate the name of the great Earl of Kent. Hasted mentions that
the two villages were part of Earl Godwin's estates, and on his death
passed to his son Harold, and that when Harold was slain they were
seized by William and given to some of his adherents. Mr. Molony
mentions a tradition at Goodnestone near Wingham, that both that
village and Godwynstone near Faversham were the lands given by the
crown to Earl Godwin to enable him to keep in repair Godwin's Tower and
other fortifications at Dover Castle.