WORTH--UPPER DEAL--DEAL--THE GOODWIN SANDS
The old road from Sandwich to Deal ran across the sandy wastes through
which the railway goes, but the sand-dunes that line the shore all
the way between the towns, and stretch far inland, form a profound
discouragement to those who would seek to trace the seashore. Maps
rightly mark this space of coast “Blown Sand.” Blown it is, into
hollows and heights, sometimes overgrown with a scanty herbage and thus
anchored securely against being moved on again by the winds; but often
mere loose sand-heaps that will be changed radically in shape by the
next furious gale. It is distressing walking, and plaguy ill-favoured
to boot; and where the sand at last dies away inland and gets mixed up
with marshes, is about as easy and as awkward a place to get lost in as
may well be imagined. The railway between Sandwich and Deal cuts midway
through this swampy desolation.
[Illustration: UPPER DEAL.]
The modern road to Deal lies open and unfenced for the most part,
first across samples of these marshes, and then across chalk downs.
It is a pleasant highway, where you get just as much of the dykes
and waterlogged scenery as you want, without a depressing surfeit of
it. By the time the turning for Worth is reached the shore is nearly
three miles distant. Here a signpost directs on the left “To Word,” a
spelling which reproduces the olden Saxon pronunciation of “Worth,”
still current here; all one with the singular inability of the Kentish
folk to enunciate “th”--a strange and widespread trick of the tongue
which makes the rustics talk of “de wedder,” instead of the weather.
The effect upon strangers is almost that of talking to foreigners.
The word “shibboleth” itself would certainly bewray them; they would
inevitably make it “shibboled.”
“Worth” is pure Anglo-Saxon: deriving from “Weorthig,” meaning an
enclosure. The site of it was evidently a very early attempt at
cultivation in these marshes.
We will not penetrate beyond Worth to the shore, the sands, and
marshes, to the site of the old road, but will proceed along the
present highway to Deal, through Shoulden.
The town of Deal is entered through what might at first be considered
the inland modern suburb of Upper Deal, where the very striking
red-brick seventeenth-century tower of St. Lawrence’s church confronts
the wayfarer. But what is now “Upper” Deal is in fact the original
place: the “Addelam” of Domesday, the “Dole” of earlier records. The
place-name, which signifies a “dale,” is singularly appropriate for the
spot where the rolling chalk hills descend to a long level, stretching
to the sea. Before there was any town at all where Deal now faces the
Channel, almost awash with the tides, “Upper” Deal was simply “Deal,”
and what we now know as Deal was the upstart settlement called “Lower”
Deal. Thus oddly is the situation reversed.
A curious piece of evidence as to the comparatively recent origin of
the town is found in a Chancery case argued in 1663, when a witness
seventy-two years of age declared that “he well knew the valley where
Lower Deal is situated, and that he knew it before any house had been
built there.”
The church of St. Lawrence is a singular mixture within, and has a
singing gallery, quaintly painted with an East Indiaman in full sail,
and bearing the date 1705; together with little pictures of pilots
and terrestrial globes, and the inscription: “This Gallery was built
by ye Pilots of Deal.” It will be noted that, in the construction of
this road into Deal, the old Dutch-like houses here have suffered some
mutilation.
It is a mile-long affair of incredibly mean streets from Upper
Deal to the seashore. When the town arose from these levels in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it came into existence as a
place of ship-chandlers and purveyors, and grubbed along in a kind of
squalid, casual prosperity which apparently no one expected to last.
Hence the little grey-brick houses, that seem to have been built with
small confidence in the future. Here and there, however, you find some
charmingly designed old shop-fronts and fanlights, in the nicest taste,
unobtrusive but in just proportion.
The church of Deal, dedicated to St. George the Martyr, and dating
only from the time of Queen Anne, is just the type of building one
would expect from that date: red brick, with factory-like windows and
a cupola-crowned clock turret. But it is a good and well-proportioned
specimen of its class. Something of the fine old salty flavour of the
tarry-breeched sailors of Nelson’s day belongs to the two epitaphs that
may be found against the walls. The first is to--
“John Ross and James Draper, Seamen, who were killed on board
H.M.S. _Naiad_ in defeating the French Flotilla off Boulogne in the
presence of Buonaparte, 21st September 1811. Their Shipmates caused
this Monument to be erected to the memory of these truly good Men,
who so nobly fell in the just cause of their Country.”
The other reads:
“Sacred to the Memory of David Browne, late a Seaman on board his
Majesty’s Ship _Immortalité_, who died of wounds received in action
with the Division of the French Flotilla off Cape Blanc Nez, 23rd
of October 1804. Likewise of James Wilson, William Terrent, John
Dewall, and George Bacher, Seamen, who lost their lives on the
same occasion. Of William Panrucker, Seaman, killed 6th Sept.
1804, John Egerton, Marine, killed 17th February 1804, and of James
Redout, Seaman, killed 5th Nov. 1803. This is erected by their
Shipmates. They were brave good Men and fell at that Post their
Country had assigned Them.”
Deal, in the opinion of Cobbett, was “a most villainous place. It is
full of filthy-looking people. Great desolation of abomination has
been going on here; tremendous barracks, partly pulled down and partly
tumbling down, and partly occupied by soldiers. Everything seems upon
the perish. I was glad to hurry along through it, and to leave its
inns and public-houses to be occupied by the tarred and trowsered, and
blue-and-buff crew whose vicinage I always detest.” The “tarred and
trowsered crew” in his time were very largely smugglers of the most
ingenious type. They smuggled in the most incredible places, and it is
even recorded that the Deal boatmen wore bustles, in which they packed
vast quantities of tea and tobacco. The visitor of to-day, noting that
the Deal boatmen are already provided by nature with a very extensive
area in the region on which bustles are worn, will smile at the
quaint picture that must have been presented by these bold dealers in
contraband.
Julius Cæsar landed at Deal, in his invasion of Britain, B.C. 55, and
again in the following year; and Perkin Warbeck chose the same spot in
1495. The low, shingly beach afforded an easy landing-place; and hence,
when invasion was expected in the reign of Henry the Eighth, Deal was
one of the earliest places to be fortified.
[Illustration: THE QUAINT FORESHORE OF DEAL.]
History speaks with many voices on the subject of Henry the Eighth.
That is partly because history is the sport of partisans, and partly
because the character of that King is so complex. The view that he was
all bloodthirsty tyrant and sensualist is easily taken. His amazing
marriages, and still more amazing dissolutions of marriage, contribute
largely to that estimate of him. But there were several Henrys in that
one portly body. There was the avaricious, greedy Henry, own son of the
mean Henry the Seventh; the vain and luxurious and spendthrift Henry;
the proud and cruel Henry, a true Welsh Tudor; and the statesman and
patriot, whose existence few acknowledge. Whatever were his faults and
errors, Englishmen to this day owe more to Henry the Eighth than to
many a later monarch. He it was who established the Royal Navy, who
had the courage to break with Rome and to free England from the deadly
embrace of that Church; and he spared no effort to arm his country
against the political alliances the Pope sought to direct against it.
Says Hall, the Chronicler:
“The King’s Highness, which never ceased to study and take pains both
for the advancement of the commonwealth of this his realm of England,
of the which he was the only supreme governor, and also for the defence
of all the same, was lately informed by his trusty and faithful
friends that the cankered and cruel serpent, the Bishop of Rome, by
that arch-traitor Reignold Poole, enemy to God’s word and his natural
country, had moved and stirred divers great princes and potentates of
Christendom to invade the realm of England, and utterly to destroy the
whole nation of the same. Wherefore His Majesty, in his own person,
without any delay, took very laborious and painful journeys towards the
sea-coasts.”
The results of these journeys was the building in 1539 of what Lambarde
describes as “castles, platfourmes, and blockhouses in all needfulle
places of the Realme.” Some of these we may still see, here and at
Walmer, Sandgate, Camber, and along the south coast, far away into
Cornwall. These “bulwarks,” as they are styled in the records of the
time, were designed by Van Hassenperg, a German military architect, and
all bore outwardly much the same appearance, consisting of portly, but
low, masonry towers clustered at intervals round a stout curtain-wall
and pierced with lunettes for guns. Islanded within the centre of this
enclosure was a keep and gun-platform, rising to a somewhat greater
height than the outer works. Although of one general appearance, there
were minor differences in the outer aspect of these coast defences,
and the ground-plan of each was markedly individual. Deal Castle, long
since become a private residence, still stands to the west of the
town. It wears much the same exterior appearance, although its moat is
planted with shrubs.
The narrow alleys that lead on to the beach at Deal, and the ramshackly
old houses and hovels from whose windows one might almost indulge in
sea-fishing, seem almost like provocative impertinences to the waves,
which appear always to be threatening them. But there they remain, the
most whimsical of dwellings, with the spars and bowsprits of vessels
almost poking in at the windows, greatly to the amusement of summer
visitors.
The visitor to Deal who does not partake of at least one Deal “hoffkin”
is not considered to have done his duty by the place. There is,
however, nothing especially delightful in one of these strangely
named articles. A “hoffkin” may be purchased at any baker’s shop, at
the price of one penny, and is nothing more than ordinary breadstuff
(except that it appears to be a good deal harder, and not so palatable)
baked in the shape of a teacake. It is about the size of a saucer, and
has a hole in the middle. And why any baker makes such a thing, and how
it came by its name, is an unrevealed mystery.
Half a mile north of Deal once stood the castle of Sandown, one of
Henry the Eighth’s many shoreward castles. They had no opportunity of
fighting the foe, and their history has thus been meagre; but to this
fortress of Sandown belonged one grim incident. It was selected as
the prison of that convinced regicide, Colonel Hutchinson, sometime
member of Parliament for Nottingham, who was at first pardoned on
the Restoration, and then, in 1663, arrested and sent to the Tower of
London. Removed to a solitary imprisonment here in May 1664, his wife
and daughter were only permitted to visit him from Deal. According
to the “Memoirs” written by his wife, Sandown Castle was even then a
“lamentable old ruined place, not weatherproof, unwholesome and damp,”
and he died in four months, September 11th, aged forty-nine, from a
fever with which it had infected him.
Sandown Castle is a thing of the past. Only the black memory of it
remains. It was gradually undermined by the sea, and fell in massive
ruinous blocks of masonry, unsung, unwept, with no story save that of a
sordid and cruel and useless revenge.
[Illustration: THE KENTISH COAST: _Deal to Brookland_]
The explorer who pushes manfully into these sandy wastes will scarce
find that they repay him for his trouble and fatigue. A squalor
pervades them, in addition to their essential melancholy; and when
a kind of golf club-house has been passed and you come upon a small
stone with a barely decipherable inscription, set upon a bank that
marks where the sands and the marshes begin, and are told that it
marks the site of a murder done there, long ago, you feel it to be a
fitting place for such a deed. Here a young woman named Mary Bax was
murdered in 1784 by a sailor tramping this way, along the old road to
Sandwich. A boy roaming in the marshes saw the crime committed, and
hid trembling in the rushes of a dyke, for fear that if he were seen
he would be served the same. When the man had gone he raised an alarm,
and the countryside was roused. The sailor was tracked to Folkestone
and captured in the churchyard of St. Eanswythe. The following account
of the affair, and of the conviction and execution of the murderer,
appeared in the _Annual Register_ for 1784:
“Martin Laas, a sailor, was in April convicted of murdering a young
woman at Worde, near Sandwich. Throughout the whole of his trial he
treated the witnesses very insultingly, and gave three loud cheers
before he was removed from the dock. Upon this, the Judge gave strict
orders for him to be chained to the floor of his dungeon, where he
afterwards confessed the crime. He said that on August 25th, as he was
sitting on a roadside bank near the halfway house, between Deal and
Sandwich, Mary Bax passed by, upon which he followed her, and in half
a mile stopped her and inquired the way to Sheerness. She told him he
was a great way from that place; whereupon he said he had no money,
and must have some. She had none, she said, for him. He then pushed
her into a ditch, and jumped after her, into the mud and water, which
reached to the middle of him. Taking the bundle she was carrying, and
removing the shoes from her feet, he made off across the marshes,
towards Dover. The shoes he immediately threw away, and hid the bundle
near where he was taken.
“The prisoner, giving this account, did not seem to feel the least
concern for the crime, or its consequences, but appeared, on the
contrary, very cheerful, saying he had been fated to commit it, and to
suffer for it, as he had been told, years before, by an old Spaniard.
“He was a native of Bergen, in Norway, twenty-seven years of age, and
had served under Lord Rodney, in H.M.S. _Fame_, for upwards of two
years. He was, however, extremely penitent when brought to the place
of execution, acknowleged the justice of his sentence, and prayed with
great fervency.”
Deal is all very well in summer, but it is in winter and in spring a
desperately cold place. It is as though winter, departing reluctantly
with the coming of the vernal equinox, lingered fondly here, loth to
go. Thanet is open to the east winds, and every gust that blows out of
the North Sea is felt acutely at Westgate and Margate, turning noses
and hands red or blue, as the case may be; but at Deal your very vitals
seem to be frozen stiff and stark with the natural acerbity of the air
and with the cutthroat blasts that come murderously out of the many
alleys of this strange old seafaring town.
At Deal one talks most naturally of the Goodwin Sands. Stretching in a
line about eleven miles long, from Broadstairs to Deal, parallel with
the coast-line, and roughly from four to five miles from the shore,
these dreaded shoals extend at their greatest breadth some four miles.
The dangers they offer to the crowded shipping of the Channel lie
chiefly in their being covered at high water.
The Goodwin Sands are the most famous feature of the Kentish coast,
though not the most spectacular. If they were, indeed, visible in
proportion to their fame or notoriety, they would be as little
dangerous as Shakespeare’s Cliff itself, which is a landmark for
mariners, rather than a peril to them. The Goodwins, more dreaded by
seafaring men than rocks, find impressive mention in Shakespeare. In
_The Merchant of Venice_ they are referred to as “a very dangerous flat
and fatal, where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried.”
The origin of the Goodwin Sands has been from the earliest time
a matter of dispute, nor can the question even yet be considered
settled. This lack of any definite conclusion is by no means due to
want of trying, and the question appears early to have been confused
by the inclusion in the inquiry of that very different matter, the
accumulation of sand that in the sixteenth century destroyed the haven
of Sandwich.
A Royal Commission appears to have been appointed in the reign of Henry
the Eighth for the purpose of ascertaining the cause of the Goodwin
Sands and the sands that were silting up Sandwich haven, and of finding
a method of dealing with them. Bishop Latimer narrated in one of his
sermons, as an example of unverified gossip, how Sir Thomas More,
taking evidence, was met with some curious ideas:
“Maister More was once sent in commission into Kent; to help to trie
out (if it might be) what was the cause of Goodwin Sandes, and the
shelfs that stopped up Sandwich Haven. Thether commeth Maister More,
and calleth the countrye afore him, such as were thought to be men of
experience, and men that could of likelihode best certify him of that
matter, concerning the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among others came in
before him an olde man with a white beard, and one that was thought to
be a little lesse than a hundereth yeares olde. When Maister More saw
this aged man, he thought it expedient to heare him say his minde in
this matter, for, being so olde a man, it was likely that he knew most
of any man in that presence and company. So Maister More called this
olde aged man unto him, and sayed: ‘Father,’ sayd he, ‘tell me, if ye
can, what is the cause of this great arising of the sande and shelves
here about this haven, and which stop it up that no shippes can arrive
here? Ye are the oldest man that I can espie in all this companye, so
that, if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihode can say
most in it, or at leastwise more than any other man here assembled.’
“‘Yea, forsooth, good maister,’ quod this olde man, ‘for I am well nigh
an hundreth yeares old, and no man here in this company anything neare
unto mine age.’
“‘Well, then,’ quod Maister More, ‘how say you in this matter? What
thinke ye to be the cause of these shelves and flattes that stoppe up
Sandwiche haven?’
“‘Forsooth, syr,’ quoth he, ‘I am an olde man: I thinke that Tenterton
steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sandes. For I am an olde man, syr,’
quod he, ‘and I may remember the building of Tenterton steeple, and I
may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that
Tenterton steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking
of any flats or sands that stopped the haven; and therefore I thinke
that Tenterton steeple is the cause of the destroying and decaying of
Sandwich haven.’”
The ancient man whose evidence seemed to Bishop Latimer so absurd a
_non sequitur_ was not such a fool as he seemed to be, and did but echo
the olden widespread belief in Kent that “the building of Tenterden
steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands.” That belief, when explained,
is not so ridiculous as at first sight it appears, even though it be
founded upon a legend that has no basis whatever. This legend declares
that the Abbot of St. Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury, to build the
steeple of Tenterden church, employed a quantity of stone that had been
set aside for repairing the sea-walls defending the Goodwins, then
a portion of the mainland; and that the next storm, in consequence,
drowned thousands of acres.
Quite apart from the want of any foundation for this legend, the
question was further confused by the old man of Latimer’s story
associating the existing fine and stately Perpendicular tower of
Tenterden church with the disaster. The old belief obviously went back
to a remote period and referred to some ancient steeple at Tenterden
that he never knew.
This folk-tale does not by any means agree with the ancient and
widespread legend that the Goodwins form the site of an island called
Lomea, said to have been overwhelmed in the great storm of 1099,
mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle. John Twyne, or Twine, who in 1590
published a work he called _De Rebus Albionicis_, appears to give the
earliest mention of “Lomea.” He says it was “a low fertile island,”
but it is not known whence came his authority for the existence of the
isle, or the description of it.
Lomea is said to have been given by Edward the Confessor to Earl
Godwin, father of King Harold; but Godwin (from whose name the Goodwin
Sands are said to take their title) died in 1053, and no mention is
found of Lomea or any such place in charters of that time; nor does it
appear in Domesday Book. But it is quite obvious that an island must
at some time have existed where the fatal sands now stretch, for most
legends contain some nucleus of fact; and it is to be noted that, to
the eastward of the North Goodwin, the water is shoaled by a chalk
ridge, often said to be the site of that vanished isle.
The marvel-mongering monks of ancient times had their own version of
the destruction of Earl Godwin’s island. According to them “it sonke
sodainly into the sea,” as the punishment ordained by Heaven for his
sins. Another absurd story, accounting in a quite different way for the
existence of the Sands, declared that they first appeared above water
after Holland had been overflowed by the sea; the greater distribution
of water reducing the sea-level.
There is indeed a very wide choice of tradition and legend from which
to select the most likely story, and in addition to those already
cited there is a tale of how Earl Godwin, in one of his predatory
expeditions, penetrating into the weald of Kent and finding himself
in a desperately dangerous situation, vowed, if he were permitted
to return in safety, that he would build a steeple at Tenterden.
Neglecting to fulfil his vow, his island was destroyed by a justly
offended Providence. A variant of this declares that, anxious to fulfil
his pledge, in doing so he neglected the dams and seawalls of his
domain, which was accordingly overwhelmed in the next great storm.
The Goodwin Sands are of irregular shape, constantly changing in
detail, but in general are considered to resemble the form of a
lobster, and thus the North and South Callipers stand for the claws.
So long ago as 1845 an official report stated that the Brake Sand had
moved bodily inwards towards the shore, 700 yards within fifty years.
By 1885 the Bunthead Shoal had disappeared and the South Calliper
had moved one mile to the north-east; and in 1896 it was discovered
that the Goodwins had continued a general movement, already noticed,
towards the coast, and that the area of drying sand at low tide had
largely increased.
For the Goodwin Sands have this peculiarity, among others, that they
show above water at the ebb. The North Goodwin indeed is not covered
by more than eight or ten feet at high water; but the South Goodwin
is submerged some twenty-four feet. It is no uncommon adventure,
although apt to be a risky one, to land upon the sands at low tide;
and cricket-matches have on several occasions been played upon them,
although, being more or less yielding, and intersected by pools and
runnels, they do not form an ideal site for the purpose. The first
match played here was in 1824, when all details of it were arranged
by Captain Kennet Martin, who, as harbour-master at Ramsgate, was
thoroughly acquainted with the Sands, and was able to bring the
occasion to a successful issue. Another match, played in 1839 by a
party from Deal, had not concluded when the wind freshened and they
found it an ill thing to be on the Goodwins with only a small boat
that, useful enough on a calm sea, was of no use at all in half a gale.
No oarsmen are strong enough to pull away from the Sands under those
circumstances; and there those adventurous cricketers had to remain,
facing death, or the alternative of their danger being recognised
by their friends ashore. Fortunately for them, one of the hovelling
luggers of Deal was despatched in time.
Two other matches have been played on the Goodwins, one in 1844, and
another in 1855; and on August 31st, 1887, a one-mile cycle race was
run by three foolhardy cyclists from London. The time taken by the
speediest of the three was three minutes, thirty seconds.
Boethius, an old-time writer, described the Goodwin Sands as “a most
dreadful gulph and shippe-swallower,” and he was well within the mark
in doing so, for the dreaded Sands do, in fact, not in any metaphorical
sense, often swallow ships up whole. The number of wrecks, too, in
spite of the three lightships that mark the Sands, is still very great;
according to the Board of Trade Wreck Abstracts from 1859 they average
twelve a year, British shipping, exclusive of foreign vessels. The four
lifeboats that divide the sands between them--those of Ramsgate, Deal,
Walmer, and Kingsdown--have saved upwards of 2,000 lives in peril here.
The greatest disaster that ever happened here was during the terrible
fourteen days’ storm of November 1703. On November 26th no fewer than
thirteen men-o’-war were cast away, and Admiral Beaumont and twelve
hundred officers and men were drowned. The story of the wrecks since
then would take long in the telling; let us therefore choose only a few
of the most outstanding. There was the transport _Aurora_, which sailed
straight on to the Goodwins in a fog, and was wrecked with a loss of
over three hundred. The wreck of the _British Queen_ in 1814 was due
to a like cause. The sole fragment ever found was a portion of the
stern, with the ship’s name: the hungry sands had swallowed all else,
ship and crew!
The mail-packet _Violet_, from Ostend, was lost at two o’clock in
the morning of January 5th, 1857. She had started the night before,
at eleven. An hour after she had struck upon the Sands there was no
one left aboard to answer the signals of the steamer and the lifeboat
that set out to the rescue; at seven there was nothing to be seen of
the _Violet_, crew, or passengers but a portion of one mast and the
lifebuoy picked up with the lifeboat, in which lay three dead men.
In recent years these insatiable sands have claimed more ships.
There was the steamship _Dolphin_ in 1885. After being thrown out of
her course in a collision with the _Brenda_, she drifted here and
became a total loss. Seventeen men were drowned on that occasion, and
thirty-three were rescued. On April 20th, 1886, the Norwegian brig
_Auguste Hermann Franche_, with a cargo of ice, went ashore on the
Goodwins in a fog. Of the crew of seven, only one was saved. On the
night of May 14th, 1887, the large schooner _Golden Island_ was lost,
but all hands were rescued. On April 8th, 1909, the four-masted iron
passenger steamer _Mahratta_ struck upon the Fawk Spit, and although
a number of powerful tugs tried to drag her off, all efforts were
useless. The passengers were safely landed, and work was proceeding to
jettison some of the cargo, with the object of lightening the vessel,
when she broke in half, with a noise like thunder, and it was not long
before the sands swallowed her.
The appearance of the Goodwins when exposed at low water is thoroughly
in keeping with the melancholy story of the Sands. The stranger does
not find a broad or long uninterrupted stretch of firm sand, but great
dismal wastes with here and there a navigable channel between, called
by local seafaring men “swatches,” or “swatchways”; and in every
direction, except after unusually calm weather, the sand is ribbed and
hollowed into irregular furrows, water and sand alternating. To remain
standing in one place for a short time is to find one’s self sinking
gradually, and sometimes even suddenly, for these are in many places
quicksands; and innocent-looking pools, apparently quite shallow, give
the incautious a bad shock by often proving to be perhaps anything from
six to sixteen feet deep. They are locally known as “fox-falls,” and
form but one of the many unpleasant surprises the Goodwins are capable
of giving. Another strange thing is the extraordinary steepness of the
Sands on the north side of the North Goodwin. The popular idea of a
sandbank is of a gradual shoaling of the water, but at this point it
falls almost sheer away into deep sea, about ninety feet.
[Illustration: THE GOODWIN SANDS: “A DANGEROUS FLAT AND FATAL.”]
The Sands, even on the brightest day, are the abomination of desolation
to the last detail. They are, it is true, “ship-swallowers,” but are
sometimes nice in their appetite, or over-gorged, and cannot fully
dispose of every wreck; and so the clinching evidence of disaster is
rarely lacking, in the protruding timbers of a lost ship, or the fluke
of an almost entirely buried anchor; although it becomes the duty of
the Trinity House to remove--generally by blowing up with dynamite--
any wreckage here that is considered to be dangerous to navigation.
To stand contemplative upon the Goodwins is a strange and deeply
impressive experience. The expanse of doleful grey sand, almost
mud-coloured, fully bears out the Shakespearean description of this
“dangerous flat and fatal.” It is so nearly awash and so mixed up with
watery gullies that the waves that come curling and snarling upon the
edge appear about to overwhelm you. Except for the sound of them,
an uncanny stillness prevails, and the great expanse of the sky and
the distant white cliffs from near Deal on to Ramsgate intensify the
loneliness. A horror of the solitude seizes you, not lessened by the
strange tameness of the gulls that numerously patter about and seem to
welcome your company.
Attempts have from time to time been made to provide some warning
beacon to mark the Goodwins, but it is now recognised that lightships
form the only practical solution of the difficulty. It was at about the
close of the seventeenth century that the first effort to establish a
beacon was made; but the borings failed to reach any firm basis, and
the Sands were declared to be of unfathomable depth. Even in modern
times they have been held by marine surveyors to be of the great depth
of some eighty or ninety feet. Sir Charles Lyell, on the other hand,
stated them to be only fifteen feet deep, resting on a base of blue
clay. The opinion of the seafaring men of the Kentish coast, who are
not geologists, or by way of being scientific men, but who have at any
rate a practical acquaintance with the Goodwins in all weathers, is
that the depth is indeed very great.
[Illustration: THE EAST GOODWIN LIGHTSHIP]
The first lightship to mark the Goodwins was that on the North Sand
Head, established in 1795. The Trinity House placed a beacon on them a
few years later. It was a primitive affair: merely an old hulk filled
with stones, and was perhaps more dangerous than useful to shipping.
Several others were erected, from time to time, all short-lived and
ineffectual. The last was the “refuge beacon,” erected in 1840. This
was the invention of the then Captain (afterwards Admiral) Bullock, and
consisted of a tall mast strengthened by stays and provided with a kind
of “crow’s nest” into which wrecked mariners were supposed to climb. In
this refuge were stored supplies of food and restoratives. There do not
appear to exist any records of this beacon proving its usefulness in
any way; and in 1844 it was destroyed by a vessel running into it. The
growing traffic in the Channel has gradually led to the provision of
other lightships; the Gull in 1809, the South Sand Head 1832, and the
East Goodwin 1874.