Estuary of the Humber--Sunk Island--Land _versus_ Water--Dutch
Phenomena--Cleathorpes--Grimsby--Paul--River Freaks--Mud--
Stukeley and Drayton--Fluvial Parliament--Hull--The Thieves'
Litany--Docks and Drainage--More Dutch Phenomena--The High
Church--Thousands of Piles--The Citadel--The Cemetery--A
Countryman's Voyage to China--An Aid to Macadam.
As the _Vivid_ steamed past the Spurn lighthouse, I looked curiously at
the low sandy spit on which the tall red tower stands, scarcely as it
seems above the level of the water, thinking that my first walk would
perhaps lead thither. At sight of the Pharos, and of the broad estuary
alive with vessels standing in, the Yorkshiremen on board felt their
patriotism revive, and one might have fancied there was a richer twang
in their speech than had been perceptible in the latitude of London. A
few who rubbed their hands and tried to look hearty, vowed that their
future travels should not be on the sea. The _Vivid_ is not a very
sprightly boat, but enjoys or not, as the case may be, a reputation for
safety, and for sleeping-cabins narrower and more stifling than any I
ever crept into. But one must not expect too much when the charge for a
voyage of twenty-six hours is only six and sixpence in the chief cabin.
Not without reason does old Camden remark of the Humber, "it is a common
rendezvous for the greatest part of the rivers hereabouts," for it is a
noble estuary, notwithstanding that water and shore are alike muddy. It
is nearly forty miles long, with a width of more than two miles down to
about three leagues from the lighthouse, where it widens to six or seven
miles, offering a capacious entrance to the sea. The water has somewhat
of an unctuous appearance, as if overcharged with contributions of the
very fattest alluvium from all parts of Yorkshire. The results may be
seen on the right, as we ascend. There spreads the broad level of Sunk
Island, a noteworthy example of dry land produced by the co-operation of
natural causes and human industry. The date of its first appearance
above the water is not accurately known; but in the reign of Charles II.
it was described as three thousand five hundred acres of "drowned
ground," of which seven acres were enclosed by embankments; and was let
at five pounds a year. A hundred years later fifteen hundred acres were
under cultivation, producing a yearly rental of seven hundred pounds to
the lessee; but he, it is said, made but little profit, because of the
waste and loss occasioned by failure of the banks and irruptions of the
tides. In 1802 the island reverted to the Crown, and was re-let on
condition that all the salt marsh--nearly three thousand acres--which
was "ripe for embankment," should be taken in, and that a church and
proper houses should be built, to replace the little chapel and five
cottages which ministered as little to the edification as to the comfort
of the occupants. In 1833 the lease once more fell in, and the Woods and
Forests, wisely ignoring the middlemen, let the lands directly to the
'Sunk farmers,' as they are called in the neighbourhood, and took upon
themselves the construction and maintenance of the banks. A good road
was made, and bridges were built to connect the Island with the main,
and as the accumulations of alluvium still went on, another 'intake'
became possible in 1851, and now there are nearly 7000 acres, comprising
twenty-three farms, besides a few small holdings, worth more than
12,000_l._ of annual rent. It forms a parish of itself, and not a
neglected one; for moral reclamation is cared for as well as
territorial. The clergyman has a sufficient stipend; the parishioners
supplemented the grants made by Government and the Council of Education,
and have now a good schoolhouse and a competent schoolmaster.
The Island will continue to increase in extent and value as long as the
same causes continue to operate; and who shall set limits to them?
Already the area is greater than that described in the last report of
the Woods and Forests, which comprehends only the portion protected by
banks. The land when reclaimed is singularly fertile, and free from
stones, and proves its quality in the course of three or four years, by
producing spontaneously a rich crop of white clover. Another fact,
interesting to naturalists, was mentioned by Mr. Oldham in a report read
before the British Association, at their meeting in Hull. "When the
land, or rather mud-bank, has nearly reached the usual surface
elevation, the first vegetable life it exhibits is that of samphire,
then of a very thin wiry grass, and after this some other varieties of
marine grass; and when the surface is thus covered with vegetation, the
land may at once be embanked; but if it is enclosed from the tide before
it obtains a green carpet, it may be for twenty years of but little
value to agriculture, for scarcely anything will grow upon it."
This is not the only place on the eastern coast where we may see
artificial land, and banks, dikes, and other defences against the water
such as are commonly supposed to be peculiar to the Netherlands.
The windows of Cleathorpes twinkling afar in the morning sun, reveal the
situation of a watering-place on the opposite shore much frequented by
Lincolnshire folk. Beyond rises the tall and graceful tower of Grimsby
Docks, serving at once as signal tower and reservoir of the water-power
by which the cranes and other apparatus are worked, and ships laden and
unladen with marvellous celerity. These docks cover a hundred acres of
what a few years ago was a great mud-flat, and are a favourable specimen
of what can be accomplished by the overhasty enterprise of the present
day. Grimsby on her side of the river now rivals Hull on the other, with
the advantage of being nearer the sea, whereby some miles of navigation
are avoided.
Turning to the right again we pass Foul Holme Sand, a long narrow spit,
covered at half-tide, which some day may become reclaimable. A little
farther and there is the church of Paghill or Paul, standing on a low
hill so completely isolated from the broken village to which it belongs,
that the distich runs:
"High Paul, and Low Paul, Paul, and Paul Holme,
There was never a fair maid married in Paul town."
The vessel urges her way onwards across swirls and eddies innumerable
which betray the presence of shoals and the vigorous strife of opposing
currents. The spring tides rise twenty-two feet, and rush in with a
stream at five miles an hour, noisy and at times dangerous, churning the
mud and shifting it from one place to another, to the provocation of
pilots. It is mostly above Hull that the changes take place, and there
they are so sudden and rapid that a pilot may find the channel by which
he had descended shifted to another part of the river on his return a
few days afterwards. There also islands appear and disappear in a manner
truly surprising, and in the alternate loss or gain of the shores may be
witnessed the most capricious of phenomena. Let one example suffice: a
field of fourteen acres, above Ferriby, was reduced to less than four
acres in twenty years, although the farmer during that time had
constructed seven new banks for the defence of his land.
Some notion of the enormous quantity of mud which enters the great river
may be formed from the fact that fifty thousand tons of mud have been
dredged in one year from the docks and basins at Hull. The steam-dredge
employed in the work lifts fifty tons of mud in an hour, pours it into
lighters, which when laden drop down with the tide, and discharge their
slimy burden in certain parts of the stream, where, as is said, it
cannot accumulate.
Stukely, who crossed the estuary during one of his itineraries, remarks:
"Well may the Humber take its name from the noise it makes. My landlord,
who is a sailor, says in a high wind 'tis incredibly great and terrible,
like the crash and dashing together of ships." The learned antiquary
alludes probably to the bore, or ager as it is called, which rushes up
the stream with so loud a _hum_ that the popular mind seeks no other
derivation for Humber. Professor Phillips, in his admirable book on
Yorkshire, cites the Gaelic word _Comar_, a confluence of two or more
waters, as the origin; and Dr. Latham suggests that Humber may be the
modified form of Aber or Inver. Drayton, in _Polyolbion_, chants of a
tragical derivation; and as I take it for granted, amicable reader, that
you do not wish to travel in a hurry, we will pause for a few minutes to
listen to the debate of the rivers, wherein "thus mighty Humber speaks:"
"My brave West Riding brooks, your king you need not scorn,
Proud Naiades neither ye, North Riders that are born,
My yellow-sanded Your, and thou my sister Swale
That dancing come to Ouse, thro' many a dainty dale,
Do greatly me enrich, clear Derwent driving down
From Cleveland; and thou Hull, that highly dost renown,
Th' East Riding by thy rise, do homage to your king,
And let the sea-nymphs thus of mighty Humber sing;
That full an hundred floods my wat'ry court maintain
Which either of themselves, or in their greater's train
Their tribute pay to me; and for my princely name,
From Humber king of Hunns, as anciently it came,
So still I stick to him: for from that Eastern king
Once in me drown'd, as I my pedigree do bring:
So his great name receives no prejudice thereby;
For as he was a king, so know ye all that I
Am king of all the floods, that North of Trent do flow;
Then let the idle world no more such cost bestow,
Nor of the muddy Nile so great a wonder make,
Though with her bellowing fall, she violently take
The neighbouring people deaf; nor Ganges so much praise,
That where he narrowest is, eight miles in broadness lays
His bosom; nor so much hereafter shall be spoke
Of that (but lately found) Guianian Oronoque,
Whose cataract a noise so horrible doth keep
That it even Neptune frights: what flood comes to the deep,
Than Humber that is heard more horribly to roar?
For when my Higre comes, I make my either shore
Even tremble with the sound, that I afar do send."
The view of Hull seen from the water is much more smoky than
picturesque. Coming nearer we see the _Cornwallis_ anchored off the
citadel, looking as trim and earnest as one fancies an English
seventy-four ought to look, and quite in keeping with the embrasured
walls through which guns are peeping on shore. The quay and
landing-places exhibit multifarious signs of life, especially if your
arrival occur when the great railway steam-ferry-boat is about to start.
There is, however, something about Hull which inspires a feeling of
melancholy. This was my third visit, and still the first impression
prevailed. It may be the dead level, or the sleepy architecture, or the
sombre colour, or a combination of the three, that touches the dismal
key. "Memorable for mud and train oil" was what Etty always said of the
town in which he served an apprenticeship of seven weary years; yet in
his time there remained certain picturesque features which have since
disappeared with the large fleet of Greenland whale-ships whereof the
town was once so proud:--now migrated to Peterhead. However, we must not
forget that Hull is the third port in the kingdom; that nearly a hundred
steamers arrive and depart at regular intervals from over sea, or
coastwise, or from up the rivers; that of the 4000 tons of German yeast
now annually imported, worth nearly L200,000, it receives more than
two-thirds; that it was one of the first places to demonstrate the
propulsion of vessels by the power of steam. Nor will we forget that we
are in one of the towns formerly held in wholesome dread by evil-doers
when recommendation to mercy was seldom heard of, as is testified by the
thieves' litany of the olden time, thus irreverently phrased:
"From Hull, Hell, and Halifax,
Good Lord deliver us."
Halifax, however, stood pre-eminent for sharp practice; a thief in that
parish had no chance of stealing twice, for if he stole to the value of
thirteenpence halfpenny, he was forthwith beheaded.
Andrew Marvell need not have been so severe upon the Dutch, considering
how much there was in his native county similar in character and aspect
to that which he satirised. You soon discover that this character still
prevails. Is not the southern landing place of the steam-ferry named New
Holland? and here in Hull, whichever way you look, you see masts, and
are stopped by water or a bridge half open, or just going to open,
whichever way you walk. It is somewhat puzzling at first; but a few
minutes' survey from the top of the High Church affords an explanation.
Following the line once occupied by the old fortifications--the walls by
which Parliament baffled the king--the docks form a continuous
water-communication from the river Hull on one side to the Humber on the
other, so that a considerable portion of the town has become an island,
and the sight of masts and pennons in all directions, some slowly
moving, is accounted for. At the opening of the Junction Dock in 1829,
whereby the desired connection was established, the celebration included
circumnavigation of the insular portion by a gaily decorated steamer.
The amphibious Dutch-looking physiognomy thus produced is further
assisted by the presence of numerous windmills in the outskirts, and the
levelness of the surrounding country. A hundred years ago, and the view
across what is now cultivated fields would have comprehended as much
water as land, if not more. Should a certain popular authoress ever
publish her autobiography, she will, perhaps, tell us how Mr. Stickney,
her father, used when a boy to skate three or four miles to school over
unreclaimed flats within sight of this church tower of Hull, now rich
in grass and grain. Only by a system of drainage and embankment on a
great scale, and a careful maintenance, has the reclamation of this and
other parts of Holderness been accomplished. Taylor, the water-poet, who
was here in 1632, records,
"It yearly costs five hundred pounds besides
To fence the towne from Hull and Humber's tydes,
For stakes, for bavins, timber, stones, and piles,
All which are brought by water many miles;
For workmen's labour, and a world of things,
Which on the towne excessive charges brings."
British liberty owes something to this superabundance of water. Hull was
the first town in the kingdom to shut its gates against the king and
declare for the people, and was in consequence besieged by Charles. In
this strait, Sir John Hotham, the governor, caused the dikes to be cut
and sluices drawn, and laid the whole neighbourhood under water, and
kept the besiegers completely at bay. The Royalists, to retaliate, dug
trenches to divert the stream of fresh water that supplied the town,--a
means of annoyance to which Hull, from its situation, was always liable.
In the good old times, when the neighbouring villagers had any cause of
quarrel with the townsfolk, they used to throw carrion and other
abominations into the channel, or let in the salt-water, nor would they
desist until warned by a certain Pope in an admonitory letter.
The church itself, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is a handsome specimen
of florid Gothic, dating from the reign of Edward II. You will perhaps
wish that the effect of the light tall columns, rising to the blue
panelled roof, were not weakened by the somewhat cold and bare aspect of
the interior. If you are curious about bells, there are inscriptions to
be deciphered on some of those that hang in the tower; and in the belfry
you may see mysterious tables hanging on the wall of 'grandsire bobs,'
and 'grandsire tripples;' things in which the ringers take pride, but as
unintelligible to the uninitiated as Babylonish writing. There, too,
hangs the ringers' code of laws, and a queer code it is! One of the
articles runs:--"Every Person who shall Ring any Bell with his Hat or
Spurs on, shall Forfeit and Pay Sixpence, for the Use of the Ringers."
And the same fine is levied from "any Person who shall have Read Any of
these Orders with his Hat upon his Head;" from which, and the
characteristic touches in the other "orders," you will very likely come
to some strange conclusions respecting the fraternity of ringers.
The market-place is in the main street, where a gilt equestrian statue
of William III. looks down on stalls of fruit, fish, and seaweed, and
the moving crowd of townsfolk and sailors. By the side of the Humber
dock rises the Wilberforce monument, a tall column, bearing on its
capital a statue of the renowned advocate of the negroes. And when you
have looked at these and at the hospital, and walked through the
garrison, you will have visited nearly all that is monumental in Hull.
At low water, the little river Hull is a perfect representation of a
very muddy ditch. While crossing the ferry to the citadel, the old
boatman told me he could remember when every high tide flowed up into
the streets of the town, but the new works for the docks now keep the
water out. Hundreds of piles were driven into the sandy bank to
establish a firm foundation for the massive walls, quays, and abutments.
At the time when timber rose to an enormous price in consequence of
Napoleon's continental blockade, the piles of the coffer-dam which had
been buried seven years, were pulled up and sold for more than their
original cost. Government gave the site of some old military works and
10,000_l._ towards the formation of the first dock, on condition that it
should be made deep enough to receive ships of fifty guns.
In records of the reign of Henry VIII. there appears--"Item: the Kinges
Ma'tes house to be made to serve as a Sitidell and a speciall kepe of
the hole town." The present citadel has an antiquated look, and quiet
withal, for the whole garrison, at the time I walked through it,
numbered only twenty-five artillerymen. Judging from my own experience,
one part of the sergeant's duty is to shout at inquisitive strangers who
get up on the battery to look through an embrasure, and the more
vehemently as they feign not to hear till their curiosity is satisfied.
There is room in the magazines for twenty thousand stand of arms, and
ordnance stores for a dozen ships of the line. A ditch fed from the Hull
completely separates the fortifications from the neighbouring
ship-yards.
Half a day's exploration led me to the conclusion that the most
cheerful quarter of Hull is the cemetery. I was sitting there on a
grassy bank enjoying the breeze, when a countryman came up who perhaps
felt lonely, for he sat down by my side, and in less than a minute
became autobiographical. He was a village carpenter, "came forty mile
out of Lincolnshire" for the benefit of his health; had been waiting
three days for his brother's ship, in which he meant to take a voyage to
China, and feeling dull walked every day to the cemetery; for, he said,
"It's the pleasantest place I can find about the town." I suggested
reading as a relief; but he "couldn't make much out o'readin'--'ud
rather work the jack-plane all day than read." The long voyage to China
appeared to offer so good an opportunity for improving himself in this
particular that I urged him to take a few books on board, and gave an
assurance that one hour's study every day would enable him to read with
pleasure by the time he returned.
"Oh, but we be on'y three days a-going," he answered.
I had played the part of an adviser to no purpose, for it appeared, on
further questioning, that his brother's ship was a small sloop trading
to some port beyond the North Sea about three days distant; he did not
know where it was, but was sure his brother called it China. I mentioned
the names of all the ports I could think of to discover the real one if
possible, but in vain; nor have I yet found one that has the sound of
China.
One thing I saw on my way back to the town, which London--so apt to be
self-conceited--might adopt with signal advantage. It was a huge iron
roller drawn by horses up and down a newly macadamised road. Under the
treatment of the ponderous cylinder, the broken stone, combined with a
sprinkling of asphalte, is reduced to a firm and level surface, over
which vehicles travel without any of that distressing labour and loss of
time and temper so often witnessed in the metropolis, where a thousand
pair of wheels produce less solidity in a week than the roller would in
a day; especially on the spongy roads presided over by St. Pancras.
Late in the evening, while walking about the streets, even in the
principal thoroughfares, I saw evidences enough of--to use a mild
adjective--an unpolished population. The northern characteristics were
strongly marked.