Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for GOODWIN SANDS

GOODWIN SANDS, a range of sea-bank off the E coast of Kent. It flanks the E side of the Downs; extends somewhat parallel to the coast, opposite Ramsgate, Sandwich, Deal, and Kingsdown; serves as a breakwater to the Downs and the Gull stream; is about 8½ miles long, and about 3 miles broad; and consists of two parts, N and S, divided by four narrow channels, one of which, called the Swash, is navigable in fine weather. It takes name from Earl Godwin; is alleged to have been land belonging to that Earl, connected with the main land, and protected from the action of the billows by a sea-wall; and is traditionally said to have been worked into its present form by the abstraction of the stones of the sea-wall for building Tenterden steeple, and by a consequent overwhelming and submerging of Earl Godwin's land at the next storm. So firmly has popular belief received this tradition,

That oft by mariners are shown
(Unless the men of Kent are liars)
Earl Godwin's castles overflown,
And palace roofs, and steeple spires.

The bank is probably older than Earl Godwin's time; and it is not likely to have been formed suddenly, or by any single catastrophe, but in a gradual manner. Yet it appears not to have resulted from mere accumulation of sea-sand, but to have been at one time either an island or a part of the mainland, and to have undergone abrasion by the action of the billows. It is popularly regarded as all sand, or even as mostly quicksand, insomuch that a large ship, striking on it, would be absorbed by it, or swallowed up, in a few days; but it really consists chiefly of a stratum of sand, about 15 feet thick, resting on blue clay, and includes, in one part, a formation of chalk. Perhaps, as suggested by Sir Charles Lyell, it still existed as the remnant of an island in 1099, and was sub-merged by a great flood which the Saxon Chronicle records to have occurred in that year. It is all covered at high water, to a depth of from 1 to 4 fathoms; but, except in certain places, where lake-like bodies of water remain, it is dry at low water, and can be walked upon with safety.

Multitudes of vessels have struck on the Goodwin sands; and many large ones, as well as small ones, been utterly lost. No fewer than thirteen men of war were wrecked here, with loss of nearly all their crews, during a great storm of fourteen days' continuance in Nov. 1703. But the erection of lighthouses and beacons, improvements in navigation, the introduction of steam power, the use of chain cables, and the vigorous application of the life-boat system, with its rockets and other appliances, have, of late years, very greatly reduced the proportion of casualties. A lighthouse and two beacons, on the sands, have been successively erected and destroyed since 1841. Three floating lights now mark respectively the N end, the S end, and the Gull-stream points of the sands; and the lighthouses on the North Foreland and the South Foreland, as also those at Calais and Boulogne, are within view and give guidance.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a range"   (ADL Feature Type: "mountain ranges")
Administrative units: Kent AncC
Place: Goodwin Sands

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