‘Get up, get up; for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air;
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree.’
The coming of warm weather and long days proved to us that public
interest in our floating home had not dwindled. We were a good deal
disturbed by parties rowing round us the whole time we were afloat;
and even when the tide had left us, sightseers in pathetically
unsuitable boots would walk across the film of slime from the shore to
look at us. In Newcliff we had evidently become a legend. Boatmen in
charge of pleasure-boats would generally head for us; and as we sat on
deck we often formed part of the audience as the boatmen delivered
their peculiar versions of the details of our lives. But night would
come and sweep away every annoyance; then boats were in the occupation
only of professionals and yachtsmen, who would glide past us without
stopping; landward noises were hushed, and the land itself was seen
but dimly against the faint northern light thrown up from the hidden
midsummer sun.
Sometimes we came on deck to see the dawn; then we always felt ashamed
that we had not more often watched that pageant. Men, indeed, know
little of the dawn; there must be many persons of eighty who have not
looked upon it more than a dozen times. And dawn at the mouth of a
great river, or, indeed, anywhere on salt water, differs from dawn on
the land, for the sailor, having to work the tides, will be off with
the first streak of light, if the tide serves then.
One morning one of our anchors had to be shifted at daylight lest the
ship should sit on it, and the Mate and I were present at the birth of
a wonderful day. There was silence, save for the slight crepitation of
the water being drawn between the leeboards and the hull of the _Ark
Royal_. The east was the grey of doves; the land was sunk in mist;
then the mist began sliding away, and hills and houses grew by an
imperceptible process out of the opaqueness like a photograph
developing on a film. Seawards, the ruby lantern on the pierhead and
the flaring Nore paled, pink wisps of cloud flooded across the sky,
and the riding lights and buoy lights shrank to pin-points.
The Nore ceased to revolve, the shore lights guttered out, and
indubitable daylight--how it had come one even then did not
understand--fell upon a fleet of long-gaffed bawleys mustering in the
Ray, and on a string of barges from the Medway, spreading like a skein
of geese along the Blyth sand. Half-way between the retreating mists
of the two shores there lay a long black plume of smoke from a
steamer, and the drumming of her propeller seemed to rise out of the
water at our feet.
The day that followed was worthy of that dawn. The sky was without a
cloud, and the mirage shivered on the water from shore to shore. Faint
breezes off the land yielded before noon to a clock calm; then flaws
of air from the eastward smeared the glassy surface; the cat’s-paws
became dimples, and the dimples tiny waves, and at last the crests of
the waves began to break prettily and playfully without malice. This
sea breeze blew true and warm all the afternoon, and when it met the
ebb the tideway was all sparkling till the evening. Later the land
breeze came again, and blew fainter and fainter until it ceased, and
‘The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.’
A particular pleasure of ours was to see the fishermen return. First
the fleet of bawleys would anchor in the Ray a mile away, and as soon
as the sails were stowed the men would put their catch in the boats
to sail home to the creek. Two or three boats, perhaps, would detach
themselves before the others like early ice-floes breaking away from
the pack. Then groups would shove away from the fleet and tail out
into a long procession as they raced for home. In the distance one
could see the tide creeping over the flats, but long before it reached
us there was water in the creek, so that only the sails of the boats
showed moving between the banks of sand. The next fleet to look out
for after the bawleys was the fleet of cockle-boats, and they would
work the creek or come over the flats according to the tide. Lastly,
close on high water, came the loaded barges.
From the time the young flood came up the creek to the time the tide
ebbed off the flats there was always something happening. One never
woke at night and peered out but one saw the unceasing life of the
sea, from the mustering of the humble bawleys in the dark to go
shrimping to the passing of the liner, shining from stem to stern,
perhaps carrying a Viceroy to the East. Often I said to myself: ‘Here
I am on deck in the night, and I ought to be asleep. But it is worth
it. Just think; I might be sleepless in a house in a town, and have to
look out upon a gas-lamp in a street.’
And then the entrancing variations of the tides! What is the secret of
this curiosity that compels me to come frequently on deck even in the
night to see whether the tide is higher or lower than it ought to be?
It is the uncertainty of what will happen, and one’s partial ignorance
of the causes of whatever does happen. Nautical almanacs give you
their explanations of abnormalities, but they add instances of
peculiar tides which are in contradiction of all their explanations.
Any encyclopædia tells you that the sun and moon govern the tides;
that the moon’s influence is two and a quarter times that of the sun;
that spring tides occur just after full moon and the change of the
moon, and rise higher and fall lower than neap tides, which occur at
the moon’s quarters. But when you know that, how little you know! The
very next step takes you into one of the least accurate of sciences.
In his famous ‘Wrinkle’ Captain Lecky says that we must wait for a
genius to elucidate some of the mysteries. In the accounts of tides
and tidal streams in nautical almanacs or the Admiralty Tide Tables
one comes across phenomena about which the best authorities can say
only: ‘These peculiarities are probably due to....’ Of the double low
water at Weymouth Captain Lecky writes that it is not to be explained,
but adds characteristically that someone has ‘had a shot at it’ in the
Admiralty Tide Tables. The double high water at Southampton, the
twelve-foot rise to the westward of the Bristol Channel, which
increases to twenty-seven feet at Lundy Island and forty feet at
Bristol, and the Severn bore, are easy to understand from the shape
of the land. But that there should be only a six to seven foot rise on
the English coast by the Isle of Wight, while there is a sixteen to
seventeen foot rise on the French coast opposite, is not so simple.
Apart from peculiarities of their own in normal weather, tides are
affected by strong winds and a low barometer, and then the tide
tables, with their rise and fall to an inch and their time of high
water to a minute, become hopelessly inaccurate. A strong
north-north-west gale in the North Sea will raise the surface two or
three feet and make the tides run longer on the flood; a strong
south-east or south-west wind has the opposite effect. A low glass and
a strong south-west wind will make big tides at the entrance of the
Channel by Plymouth. On October 14, 1881, a large mail-steamer was
unable to dock at the East India Docks, London, because a severe
westerly gale had kept the tide back, so that at high water it was
five or six feet below its proper level, and the next flood came up
three hours before its time. In January of the same year a tide was
registered at London four feet ten inches above high-water mark. At
Liverpool there is a record of a tide six feet above ‘H.W.O.S.,’ which
is the abbreviation for ‘high water ordinary springs.’ At Milford
Haven in January, 1884, during a heavy westerly gale, the tide stopped
falling two hours before the proper time for low water, and at
low-water time had risen fifteen feet. So great is the contrariness of
the tides that even strong winds cannot be relied upon for their
effects.
For those whose reclaimed marshes lie behind low sea-walls in Essex
the irregularities of the tides are too exciting at times. After the
fierce gale in November, 1897, had veered from south-west to
north-west, innumerable breaches were made in the sea-walls of the
East Coast estuaries and many marshes ‘went to sea.’ Watchers on
Latchingdon Hill, which overlooks the archipelago between the Crouch
and the Thames, saw a memorable sight that day. With the shift of wind
the atmosphere had cleared, and the shores of Kent were visible. At
the time of high water there was a big tide, and the flood was still
running strong, and continued for nearly two hours beyond its proper
time. Suddenly great streaks of white appeared along the east side of
Foulness Island. It was the tide pouring over the sea-walls. Havengore
Island, New England Island, Rushley, and Potton Islands disappeared
save for the solitary farmhouses standing in the water, and an
occasional knoll crowded with frightened beasts. Then the tide flowed
over the sea-walls of the Roach River and across Wallasea Island to
the River Crouch. Finally, little Bridgemarsh Island and the North
Fambridge marshes for two miles to the west of it disappeared, the
tide rolled up to the edge of the high ground, and the sea seemed to
stretch from Kent to the foot of Latchingdon Hill.
With all practical observers the turn of the tide is the critical and
significant moment; it is then that the auspices are good or bad.
Smacksmen tell you that if it begins to rain at high water it will
continue for the whole of the ebb. They will say to one another, ‘I
doubt that’ll rain the ebb daown,’ or ‘We’re a goin’ to have an ebb’s
rain.’ If it begins to rain at low water they say that they will have
a ‘coarse flood.’ Again, on a calm summer morning, if it is high water
at seven or eight, and the wind then springs up easterly, there will
be an easterly wind all day. But if the tide is a midday one there
will be no wind till high water. Sometimes it will blow freshly at
high water when there has been no wind before, and though there may be
none afterwards.
Fishermen who have got ashore on a sandbank in a bit of a sea declare
that they can tell at once whether the tide is ebbing or flowing by
the way the vessel bumps. On the flood-tide the sand is alive, but on
the ebb it is dead and as hard as flint. Ask them for an explanation,
and they will retort with further facts, such as that in a calm on the
flood-tide the sand can be seen boiling up in the water, but never on
the ebb. Again, they believe that frost checks the tides. They say it
‘nips’ them--a play upon the word ‘neap,’ which they use as a verb,
and pronounce ‘nip.’ Dredgermen on the River Crouch will tell you
that in winter, after a flood-tide with the wind easterly, the bottom
of the river is ‘shet daown hard as a road,’ and the dredges slide
over the bottom and will not lift the oysters. They cannot explain it.
Undoubtedly an onshore wind and a flood-tide bring sand into the lower
reaches, for the men find it in the dredges. On the other hand, some
declare that the bed of the river is often hardened, where no sand is,
as much as twelve miles from the sea.
No wonder that the tides are for the fishermen the standard of
reference in all their conversation. They will say that such-and-such
a thing happened about an hour before high water, or that the skipper
of the _Ladybird_ went ashore just as the vessels were swinging to the
flood. If a skipper is asked when he is going to get under way, he
will say, ’As soon as the tide serves’; or if asked why he did not
arrive before, he will answer, ‘I could not save my tide.’