It has been shown that the Goodwins have from the earliest times greatly exercised the imaginations of all kinds of people, and that the bones of countless dead have found sepulture there, but it would scarce be supposed that any one would choose to be buried on the Goodwins. Yet there are at least two instances known of such a strange choice; one of them prominently recorded in the well-known—perhaps better known by repute than actually read—Evelyn’s “Diary.” John Evelyn, in the pages of that not very lightsome record, has an entry dated April 12th, 1705: “My brother-in-law Granville departed this life this morning, after a long, languishing illness, leaving a son by my sister, and two granddaughters. Our relation and friendship had been long and great. He was a man of excellent partes. He died in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and will’d his body to be wrapp’d in leade and carried downe to Greenwich, put on board a ship, and buried in the sea betweene Dover and Calais, on the Goodwin Sands, which was done on the Tuesday or Wednesday after. This occasioned much241 discourse, he having had no relation whatever to the sea.”
A similar interment took place forty-six years later, and forms the subject of a paragraph in the London Evening Post of May 16th, 1751:
“We have an account from Hamborg that on the 16th April last, about six leagues off the North Foreland, Captain Wyrck Pietersen, commander of the ship called the Johannes, took up a coffin made in the English manner and with the following inscription upon a silver plate: ‘Mr. Francis Humphrey Merrydith, died March 25th, 1751, aged 51;’ which coffin the said captain carried to Hambourg and then opened it, in which was enclosed a leaden one, and the body of an elderly man, embalmed and dressed in fine linen. This is the corpse that was buried in the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago, according to the will of the deceased.”
Much has already been said of the dangers of the Goodwins, but they are not altogether evil. Like human beings, they are compact of good and ill. Their useful and beneficent function is to provide a kind of natural breakwater forming the roadstead famous for centuries in naval and mercantile shipping annals as “the Downs”:
“All in the Downs the fleet lay moored,”
as the song goes, in Gay’s “Black-eyed Susan.”
Here, in the comparatively smooth water of this anchorage, stretching from Walmer, past Deal, nearly to Sandwich, the navies of Rodney’s and Nelson’s times gathered, either for strategical242 reasons or in stress of weather. The Downs—whose name comes from dunes, referring to the Goodwin Sands and the wild wastes of sand-dunes between Deal and Sandwich—are safe and sheltered in all winds, except a southerly gale; and thus in old times, when tempests blew from any other quarter, all the shipping in the Channel made haste to ride out the storm in these waters. In those times four hundred vessels were often seen at once sheltering here; but steamships are less dependent upon the weather, and, now that sailing-vessels are comparatively few, the Downs are never so crowded as of yore.
The days when the Downs were crowded with many a ship that in the fine old descriptive phrase—which really was description and not imagination—“walked the water like a thing of life,” are long since done, and now the vessels that in fewer numbers ride out the worst of the Channel gales here are things of iron that sit deep and wallow in the water like the tanks they really are; things of steam, with a walking-stick by way of mast and quite innocent of bowsprit. They are vessels in the truest and most exact form of the word, floating tanks, made to hold things, not ships that sit upon the water, as the old sailing-ships did, like swans, or, as the poet says, “walked the water.” There are walks and walks, and I figure the gait of an old frigate, or even of a barque or brigantine, under full canvas, not as a pedestrian’s stride, but as the graceful carriage of a lady in a spacious drawing-room.
243 The ’longshoremen of all these sixteen miles of roaring storm-bitten coast between the Forelands are men of a courage and endurance proved so long ago that it has become proverbial. Nowhere have those fearless and staunch qualities been displayed to such a degree as at Deal. The “Deal boatmen” are a race famous in the troubled annals of the sea. Between their windy and exposed foreshore, from whose unprotected beach no howling gale has been fierce enough to daunt their putting off, between their shore and the Goodwins they have earned a hard-won livelihood, or have dared the worst of weathers in life-saving, for no reward. There is a nice distinction between the ’longshoremen of Ramsgate and Margate and Dover, and those of Deal; for while all have that “’longshore” appellation, only those of Deal are “boatmen.” All own boats, it is true; but the boats of Deal are different from those of the other towns, and only at Deal did the “hoveller” flourish. It is to be feared the day of the hoveller is done, now that steam is superseding sails. There are those who consider that the word “hoveller” is a corruption of “hoverer,” and it was the business—and a highly remunerative business too—of these men, in their stout luggers, to put forth in stormy weather and cruise about amid the tempest-tossed waters in search of distressed vessels that might wish to be navigated into port. In these modern times of surveillance and overmuch governing no man may, without a licence from244 the Trinity House, or other port authorities, take a piloting job, and pilots form a class of men who are chosen by examination and may only charge according to scale. This is by no means to say that the law against “illicit piloting” is not very frequently set at defiance. It is, in spite of penalties; for, given a ship’s captain of a saving disposition and a Deal boatman of pressing needs—and the boatmen of Deal are too often in that category—a bargain is sure to be struck between the two, when they are in hailing distance of one another, somewhere out yonder in the Channel, for something under official rates; and although the offender be not, in fact, licensed and has never gone up for examination, he commonly knows the coast round between Deal and Gravesend, and all its many shoals, swins, and swatchways, as well as the certificated pilots, though it is not in human nature—in official human nature, at any rate—to allow the truth of it.
But there is a vast difference in taking a vessel round the North Foreland into London River, and in snatching her off the very edge of the Goodwins on to which she is blundering in fog or storm. That was the hoveller’s ostensible business of old, in conjunction with the undeclared addition of smuggling. It was ever the smuggling, with a good deal of rascally cable-slipping and prowling the seas for wreckage, that made hovelling the fine and conscienceless trade it may most fitly be described, and incidentally245 made the Deal boatmen the finest sailors in the world. Their present-day representatives are fallen upon the worst of times, and now that days and nights of cruising these waters at their worst yields but an occasional job, the Deal lugger is becoming something of a rarity, and even that other peculiarly localised craft, the “knock-toe,” or galley-punt, does not seem to be as numerous on the beach as of yore. The Deal lugger is no longer built. It was a sailing craft, of some fifteen to twenty tons, undecked except for a forepeak. The galley-punt is built to combine the qualities of a rowing-boat and a sailing-vessel, and is thirty feet long, with a beam of five feet, a single mast, stepped amidships, and four oars.
The old story of Deal shows the boatmen of some two hundred years ago to have been as thorough a crew of scoundrels as might have been found along our coasts, except perhaps in the West, where the wreckers of Cornwall were unsurpassed in cold-blooded, calculating ferocity. We do not read of the ’longshoremen of the Kentish coast luring vessels ashore, but we hear a very great deal of their heartless leaving the shipwrecked to perish on the Goodwin Sands and busying themselves in searching for valuable wreckage the while. Defoe, one of the greatest and most industrious journalists who ever lived, whose amazing fecundity staggers research, wrote and published a book called “The Storm” in 1704. It described the great storm of 1703 and246 reflected with just severity upon the inhumanity displayed here. “I cannot omit,” he says, “that great notice has been taken of the townspeople of Deal, who are blam’d, and I doubt not with too much reason, for their great barbarity in neglecting to save the lives of abundance of poor wretches; who, having hung upon the masts and rigging of the ships, or floated upon the broken pieces of wrecks, had gotten ashore upon the Goodwin Sands when the tide was out. It was, without doubt, a sad spectacle to behold the poor seamen walking to and fro upon the sands, to view their postures and the signals they made for help, which by the assistance of glasses, was easily seen from the shore. Here they had a few hours’ reprieve, but had neither present refreshment nor any hopes of life, for they were sure to be washed into another world at the reflux of the tide. Some boats are said to have come very near them in quest of booty and in search of plunder, and to carry off what they could get, but nobody troubled themselves for the lives of these miserable creatures.”
A similar interment took place forty-six years later, and forms the subject of a paragraph in the London Evening Post of May 16th, 1751:
“We have an account from Hamborg that on the 16th April last, about six leagues off the North Foreland, Captain Wyrck Pietersen, commander of the ship called the Johannes, took up a coffin made in the English manner and with the following inscription upon a silver plate: ‘Mr. Francis Humphrey Merrydith, died March 25th, 1751, aged 51;’ which coffin the said captain carried to Hambourg and then opened it, in which was enclosed a leaden one, and the body of an elderly man, embalmed and dressed in fine linen. This is the corpse that was buried in the Goodwin Sands a few weeks ago, according to the will of the deceased.”
Much has already been said of the dangers of the Goodwins, but they are not altogether evil. Like human beings, they are compact of good and ill. Their useful and beneficent function is to provide a kind of natural breakwater forming the roadstead famous for centuries in naval and mercantile shipping annals as “the Downs”:
“All in the Downs the fleet lay moored,”
as the song goes, in Gay’s “Black-eyed Susan.”
Here, in the comparatively smooth water of this anchorage, stretching from Walmer, past Deal, nearly to Sandwich, the navies of Rodney’s and Nelson’s times gathered, either for strategical242 reasons or in stress of weather. The Downs—whose name comes from dunes, referring to the Goodwin Sands and the wild wastes of sand-dunes between Deal and Sandwich—are safe and sheltered in all winds, except a southerly gale; and thus in old times, when tempests blew from any other quarter, all the shipping in the Channel made haste to ride out the storm in these waters. In those times four hundred vessels were often seen at once sheltering here; but steamships are less dependent upon the weather, and, now that sailing-vessels are comparatively few, the Downs are never so crowded as of yore.
The days when the Downs were crowded with many a ship that in the fine old descriptive phrase—which really was description and not imagination—“walked the water like a thing of life,” are long since done, and now the vessels that in fewer numbers ride out the worst of the Channel gales here are things of iron that sit deep and wallow in the water like the tanks they really are; things of steam, with a walking-stick by way of mast and quite innocent of bowsprit. They are vessels in the truest and most exact form of the word, floating tanks, made to hold things, not ships that sit upon the water, as the old sailing-ships did, like swans, or, as the poet says, “walked the water.” There are walks and walks, and I figure the gait of an old frigate, or even of a barque or brigantine, under full canvas, not as a pedestrian’s stride, but as the graceful carriage of a lady in a spacious drawing-room.
243 The ’longshoremen of all these sixteen miles of roaring storm-bitten coast between the Forelands are men of a courage and endurance proved so long ago that it has become proverbial. Nowhere have those fearless and staunch qualities been displayed to such a degree as at Deal. The “Deal boatmen” are a race famous in the troubled annals of the sea. Between their windy and exposed foreshore, from whose unprotected beach no howling gale has been fierce enough to daunt their putting off, between their shore and the Goodwins they have earned a hard-won livelihood, or have dared the worst of weathers in life-saving, for no reward. There is a nice distinction between the ’longshoremen of Ramsgate and Margate and Dover, and those of Deal; for while all have that “’longshore” appellation, only those of Deal are “boatmen.” All own boats, it is true; but the boats of Deal are different from those of the other towns, and only at Deal did the “hoveller” flourish. It is to be feared the day of the hoveller is done, now that steam is superseding sails. There are those who consider that the word “hoveller” is a corruption of “hoverer,” and it was the business—and a highly remunerative business too—of these men, in their stout luggers, to put forth in stormy weather and cruise about amid the tempest-tossed waters in search of distressed vessels that might wish to be navigated into port. In these modern times of surveillance and overmuch governing no man may, without a licence from244 the Trinity House, or other port authorities, take a piloting job, and pilots form a class of men who are chosen by examination and may only charge according to scale. This is by no means to say that the law against “illicit piloting” is not very frequently set at defiance. It is, in spite of penalties; for, given a ship’s captain of a saving disposition and a Deal boatman of pressing needs—and the boatmen of Deal are too often in that category—a bargain is sure to be struck between the two, when they are in hailing distance of one another, somewhere out yonder in the Channel, for something under official rates; and although the offender be not, in fact, licensed and has never gone up for examination, he commonly knows the coast round between Deal and Gravesend, and all its many shoals, swins, and swatchways, as well as the certificated pilots, though it is not in human nature—in official human nature, at any rate—to allow the truth of it.
But there is a vast difference in taking a vessel round the North Foreland into London River, and in snatching her off the very edge of the Goodwins on to which she is blundering in fog or storm. That was the hoveller’s ostensible business of old, in conjunction with the undeclared addition of smuggling. It was ever the smuggling, with a good deal of rascally cable-slipping and prowling the seas for wreckage, that made hovelling the fine and conscienceless trade it may most fitly be described, and incidentally245 made the Deal boatmen the finest sailors in the world. Their present-day representatives are fallen upon the worst of times, and now that days and nights of cruising these waters at their worst yields but an occasional job, the Deal lugger is becoming something of a rarity, and even that other peculiarly localised craft, the “knock-toe,” or galley-punt, does not seem to be as numerous on the beach as of yore. The Deal lugger is no longer built. It was a sailing craft, of some fifteen to twenty tons, undecked except for a forepeak. The galley-punt is built to combine the qualities of a rowing-boat and a sailing-vessel, and is thirty feet long, with a beam of five feet, a single mast, stepped amidships, and four oars.
The old story of Deal shows the boatmen of some two hundred years ago to have been as thorough a crew of scoundrels as might have been found along our coasts, except perhaps in the West, where the wreckers of Cornwall were unsurpassed in cold-blooded, calculating ferocity. We do not read of the ’longshoremen of the Kentish coast luring vessels ashore, but we hear a very great deal of their heartless leaving the shipwrecked to perish on the Goodwin Sands and busying themselves in searching for valuable wreckage the while. Defoe, one of the greatest and most industrious journalists who ever lived, whose amazing fecundity staggers research, wrote and published a book called “The Storm” in 1704. It described the great storm of 1703 and246 reflected with just severity upon the inhumanity displayed here. “I cannot omit,” he says, “that great notice has been taken of the townspeople of Deal, who are blam’d, and I doubt not with too much reason, for their great barbarity in neglecting to save the lives of abundance of poor wretches; who, having hung upon the masts and rigging of the ships, or floated upon the broken pieces of wrecks, had gotten ashore upon the Goodwin Sands when the tide was out. It was, without doubt, a sad spectacle to behold the poor seamen walking to and fro upon the sands, to view their postures and the signals they made for help, which by the assistance of glasses, was easily seen from the shore. Here they had a few hours’ reprieve, but had neither present refreshment nor any hopes of life, for they were sure to be washed into another world at the reflux of the tide. Some boats are said to have come very near them in quest of booty and in search of plunder, and to carry off what they could get, but nobody troubled themselves for the lives of these miserable creatures.”
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