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J^arbarli CToUege librars- *

FROM THE BEQUEST OF

FRANCIS B. HAYES

(ClMSs Off 18»9).

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THE BRITISH SEAS

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The Baiters. From a picture by Colin Hunter, A.R.A.

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THE

BRITISH SEAS

PICTURES^E NOTES

W. CLARK RUSSELL

j^ND OTHER ff^RJTERS

With many lllujlrations after

J, C. HOOKy R.A., H, MOORE, R.j4., COLIN HVNTER, j1.R,j4.,
HAMILTON MACALLVMy and other ARTISTS

UEVr YORK

MACMILLAN & CO.
66, Fifth Avenue

1894

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CONTENTS.

Chaptbk page

I. The Downs. By W. Clark Russell . . . i

Historic Interest — North Foreland and Mar-
gate — Goodwin Sands — A Summer Scene — ^A
Wreck on the Sands — Ramsgate Lifeboat —
Hardships suffered by Lifeboat-men— Wreck
of the Indian C*/^/^Ramsgate Harbour —
Ramsgate viewed at Night.

II. The Downs {continued). By W. Clark Russell . 28

The 'Longshoreman — Historic Associations —
Shipping in the Downs — The Galley-Punt—
Deal Boatmen— Smuggling— Broadstairs and
Charles Dickens — Sandwich.

III. Down Channel. By W. Clark Russell . . 49

Thames below Bridge— The Docks — Historic
Interests — Gravesend— Speed of Steamers —
Passenger ships formerly— Dover and Folke-
stone — Lydd — Romney — Hastings — East-
bourne — Brighton.

IV. Down Channel {continued). By W. Clark

Russell 7^

Isle of Wight — Cowes — Shipping in the Solent
— Bournemouth — Weymouth and Bridport —
Torquay — Plymouth and its Sound and scenery
— Falmouth from Pendennis Castle — Penzance
— Mount's Bay— Newlyn — Cardiff, its Docks
and Streets.

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viii Contents.

Chapter page

V. The Wight and tjie Solent Sea. By Charles

Cagney loi

\'I. St. George's Channel. By P. G. Hamerton . 130

VII. The West Coast of Scotland. By A. J. Church. 160

VIII. The Northern Shores. By James Purves . 182

Sutherlandshire— Cape Wrath— Pentland Firth
— Orkney and Shetland Isles— Noss Head-
Wick— Herring Fishing — Cromarty and Moray
Firths— East Coast from Peterhead to East
Neuk of Fife.

IX. The Firth of Forth. By James Purves . . 209

Great Thoroughfare— The Fife Coast— The
Haddington Coast— Bait Gatherers — Oyster-
dredging Song — Fishermen's Love for Sea —
Tragedies — Berwickshire Coast— Northumber-
land Coast.

X. The North Sea. By W. Clark Russell . . 238

The Port of Newcastle— The River Tyne—
View from the High Level Bridge — Story of
the Tyne— Types of Tyne-built Ships— The
old Collier— The Tyne in Mid-winter — Arm-
strong, Mitchell & Co. — Robert Stephenson &
Co. — Ordnance and Locomotives — Tynemouth
and Cullercoats — The Story of the Lifeboat-
Henry Taylor and the Lightship — Grace
Darling— Collingwood's Crew at Trafalgar —
Sunderland : Its Narrowness, its Industries —
Seaham Harbour and Lord Byron — The
Hartlepools— A pretty Winter Picture— The
well-deck Steamer — Middlesborough and the
Tees— The Story of the Tees— Mr. John
Vaughan and the Cleveland Hills.

XI. The North Sea (continued). By W. Clark

Russell 264

Whitby — ^Joshua Coxon, Poet — Walter Besant
on Whitby— The W^haler's Yarn— In the North
Sea in a Smack — A Gale of Wind — An old
Danish Frigate — Scarborough — Steamboat
Excursions —The Thames.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Baiters. By Colin Hunter, A.RA. .

The Goodwin Sands on a Calm Day. By Barlow Moore

The Ramsgate Lifebgat. By W. H. Overend

The Shipwreck. By J. M. W. Turner .

Ramsgate. By Barlow Moore .

Shipping in the Downs. By Barlow Moore

On a Quay. From a sketch by David Cox

Old Ships in the Medway. From a drawing by E. \V
Cooke, R. A.

Fishing Boats. From a picture by J. M. W. Turner

Dover. By H. T. Dawson ....

Hay Barges off the Reculvers. From a drawing by

Robins

Hastings. By J. J. Chalon ....
In Portsmouth- Harbour. By J. R. Wells
Waves. By Henry Moore, R.A.
Off Looe Island. By Henry Moore» R.A.
A Visitor for Jack. By Hamilton Macallum .
Ironclads off the Lizard Lights. By J. R. Wells
The Armed Knight Rock, Land's End. By A. Ditchfield

PACK

Frontispiece

yj
43

T. S

51
55

63
69
75
79
81

83
87
90

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X L ist of Illustrations.

Lynton. By W. J. Miiller

The Mumbles, Swansea Bay. ByJ. S. Cotman

In Southampton Water. From a drawing by Barlow
Moore . . .

Breaking Waves. By Henry Moore, R A.

Cowes. From a drawing by Barlow Moore

The Old Blockhouse Fort, Cowes. From a drawing by
Dc Wint

A Yacht Race. By Barlow Moore ....

Off the Needles. From a drawing by Barlow Moore

Dublin Steamer leaving Holyhead. From a drawing by
J. R. Wells

Caernarvon Castle. By Alfred Dawson

The Road under Penmaenmawr. From a drawing by
David Cox

Flint Castle. From a drawing by T. Girtin .

Off the Mersey : Atlantic Steamer picking up a Pilot
From a drawing by J. R. Wells ....

Loch Fyne. From a drawing by J. Pennell

The Morning Breeze. Island of Kerrera, Mull Hills in
the Distance. From a picture by Colin Hunter,
A.R.A

Duntulm Castle, Isle of Skye. From a drawing by J
Pennell

Loch at Tarbert, Harris. From a drawing by J. Pennell

Cape Wrath. Drawn by Alfred Dawson .

Shaking the Nets. From an etching by Colin Hunter.
A.R.A

Noss Head, near Wick. Drawn by Alfred Dawson .

Herring Boats. Drawn by Alfred Dawson * .

Village near Frazerburgh. Drawn by J. Pennell

PAGE

103
107
III

115
119

127

133
M3

M7
151

155

163

169

173
177

185

191
197

201
215

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List of Illustrations. xi

PAG*

Home Again. From a picture by J. C. Hook, R.A. . .219

Tantallon Castle and the Bass Rock. Drawn by Alfred

Dawson 223

An East Coast Foreground. Drawnby J. Pennell . .231

The Mouth of the Tyne. From a drawing by Barlow

Moore 245

Sunderland Harbour. From a drawing by G. Chambers 253

Boats in the Surf. From a sketch by Henry Moore,

R.A 265

Yarmouth. By J. M. \V. Turner 268

On the East Coast. From a sketch by Henry Moore,

R.A 271

Lobster Pots. From a drawing by E. W. Cooke, R.A. . 275

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THE BRITISH SEAS

CHAPTER I

THE DOWNS.

Historic interest — North Foreland and Margate — Goodwin
Sands — A Summer Scene— A Wreck on the Sands —
Ramsgate lifeboat— Hardships suffered by lifeboat men —
Wreck of the Indian C^/V/"— Ramsgate Harbour — Ramsgate
viewed at night.

There is not a tract of water the wide world over
fuller of memories, more charged with historic mari-
time interests, than that little space of Channel sea
which washes the fragment of Kentish seaboard,
from the foot of the giant sentinel — the South
Foreland — to the fast -dissolving relic of Sandown
Castle at the north end of the quaint, salt, seething,
blowing, and desperately cold old town of Deal.
There is, indeed, no particular grandeur of scenery

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2 The British Seas.

hereabouts. The romance, the colour, the warmth,
the delicate lights and shades of such havens as
Plymouth — that Sydney Bay in little— of Falmouth,
of Dartmouth, of some scores of spots round these
coasts, are wanting. There is little or no shading of
vegetation. The stare of the cliflf is hard and bald
with chalk ; the line of land falls sharply from the
foreland altitude to the flat and dismal wastes of
Sandwich, with their one or two storks moping soli-
tarily, and nursing their melancholy on one leg.
There is a deal of mud in Sandwich Haven at ebb
tide, with something of ghostliness in the vision of a
little tug staggering on rickety paddle-wheels through
the slime-defined channel of the River Stour. A
church spire, peeping over distant trees at the ex-
tremity of the stretch of soil-like sand, hints at
civilization amidst these wastes. It is Sandwich —
quite a miniature Nineveh in its way; a fact as far
as bricks and mortar go, yet as complete an abstrac-
tion, too, as though it had been buried five hundred
years since.

As the land trends towards Ramsgate it grows
from marshes and sand-plains into a chalk front, and
by the time it has brought its shoulder to bear upon
Pegwell Bay — famous for those shrimps which, by
the way, are never caught there — it has raised itself
to the dignity of a cliff, and so proceeds, till past the
North Foreland and Margate, when it shelves again
into the bleak and insignificant seaboard of West-
gate. But though there is very Httle of beauty, and
nothing whatever of majesty, along this line of

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The Downs. 5

coast, saving the imperial height of South Foreland,
that certainly presents a kingly front as it raises its
towering head and shining eye of lantern, like to
some great giant keeping a bright look-out on that
coast of France yonder, and sentinelling these
kingdoms in their south-eastern parts; — yet a sort
of rude picturesqueness, qualities of a briny and
tarry quaintness there are in abundance, beyond
anything of a like sort that I am acquainted with
in other parts of the country: thanks largely
to Deal, which is so pre-eminently a surf-created
town that the beholder, having once surveyed it,
must not expect ever to see anything like it again.
But it is not only Deal ; right abreast, facing the
line of shingle that blackens and flashes under the
creaming arch of the breaker, is the long yellow
shoal of the Goodwin Sands. Here is a detail of
prodigious significance in the interests of this tract of
waters. A beauty it has, but of a very deadly sort.
On a calm day the gold-coloured line of it stretches
along the horizon somewhat sinuously, as though it
were some sleeping, floating serpent, measuring a
league or so from its venomous fang to its poisonous
tail. The smooth summer ripple purrs upon its
sleek coat, and a soft sound, like the seething of
champagne, floats it off into the warm silence of
the day or night. The red lightships, resembling
a little company of soldiers, guard it. They rear
their masts like muskets, and deliver their cries of
" Halt ! " in the language of small ordnance or of
sparkling lanterns. It is a spot where the con-
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6 The British Seas.

templative thinker would love to sit and muse ;
but he must take care to look very earnestly at
the barometer before he embarks for the shoal ; he
must observe the tides also, and should he be alone,
then, after he lands, he will be wise to keep a taut
hold of his boat's painter whilst he sits down and
thinks.

I was once ashore on the Goodwins on a calm,
moonlight night ; not alone — no ! but my boatman
was a man of few words ; he was a trustworthy
person, and there was no grog in the boat, and it
was without anxiety that I strolled a little way
inland and sat me down on a black rib of a dead
wreck, and pondered and moralized whilst I took
a survey of my situation, and considered the spectral
beauties which shone out ice-clear, yet of a silver}'
mistiness too, round about me and in the clear dusk
of the north and west. The moon rode high in the
south, a small ball of greenish splendour, with a fan-
shaped wake of molten silver trembling under her ;
and there was nothing to tarnish her disc saving
now and again a thin ring of gossamer scud float-
ing slowly athwart, like a little burst of steam,
and gathering tints of mother-of-pearl as it blew
stealthily, with airy sheen, off the rim of the orb.
The silence — how is it to be expressed ? It was the
deeper for the delicate, innumerable voice of rippling
waters. The white foreland cliffs showed wan in
the spangled obscurity of the distance — mere clouds
or heaps of faintness, as though they were self-lumi-
nous, with a look of ice in places. The haze of the

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The Downs. 7

lamps of Deal hung low upon the water in a dim,
golden hovering ; and the lights of Ramsgate showed
like a showering of fire-flies. A mile or so a^yay was
the Gull lightship, with her one lantern slowly re-
volving and striking a spark of fire into the moonlit
atmosphere, in the likeness of a radiant spoke of a
wheel, as it turned with pendulum regularity. The
stars never looked higher, I thought, than they did
on that night ; but I was low-seated, and the plain
of the Channel sea stretched flat on either hand of
me, tremorless as ebony, with a flake of light in* the
north-eastern heart of it dropped by some large
star that shone like a rose low in the velvet
depths.

Here one might dream until the cold black line of
the crawling tide warned one to be off. Even a
sluggish imagination may successfully transform a
fairy scene of moonlit sea into the magnificence and
horror of the thunder of the hurricane and the raging
of foam crimsoned by the lightning dart, when
inspired by such a bone of wreck as that which I sat
upon. A short line of like ribs marked all that
remained of the amidship section of a vessel of
considerable burthen. She had stranded on the
Goodwins some three or four weeks before in such
another warm night as this; but it was dark and
thick, with a near horizon, and there was a mere
oozing of moon, shapeless as a jelly-fish, up in the
smother that the orb faintly whitened. The vessel
had touched and hung with all sail set — courses and
topsails rising into royals — as bland and elegant a

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8 The British Seas.

fabric in her way as any that ever floated through
the Gulls. They burnt a flare on board her, a ruby
light that made a blood-red picture of the motionless
craft; whilst the instant her situation had been
noticed, up swept a rocket from yonder Gull light-
ship, a ball of flame that might have been caught by
the hand that discharged it, so motionless was the
atmosphere and so plumb the descent of the meteor-
signal. A minute later an air of wind came in a low
moan along the sands. It freshened, and yet fresh-
ened, and in half an hour's time the moon had dis-
appeared, the night was black with flying scud, and
the Goodwins were just a roar and tremble of surf,
the spray leaping high in fierce collision and sweeping
between the masts and through the rigging of the
doomed ship with the weight and sting of leaden
shot. One by one the masts went over the side
like clay pipe-stems snapped off" between the fingers.
All was horror and confusion. She was a foreign
barque, with a forecastle full of Dagos and such
people, and they had clung to the ship until it was
too late to leave her, for one reason and another —
uppermost, no doubt, being the desire of preserving
their property — until, indeed, their boats were
wrecked by the falling spars, and the sea was sweep-
ing their decks in cloud-like flashings of foam.

It was between two and three hours before the
lifeboat from Ramsgate came alongside. That boat
is nearly always towed out, and something had gone
wrong with the tug. By the time she had let go of
the steamer and was hanging on by the barque's

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The Downs. 1 1

quarter, with my friend Fish, her coxswain, roaring
out instructions in the bold, brave tongue of the
Ramsgate 'longshoreman to the shrieking, gesticu-
lating huddle of foreigners who were sheltering
themselves abaft some deck structure, the vessel had
been utterly wrecked aloft ; she was already a sheer
hulk hard and fast ; with a wild and ruined heap of
spar and canvas rising and falling alongside of her,
and dealing her volcanic shocks with every plunging
wash of the coil of black seas bursting into giddy
whiteness over her. There were dead men on her
deck : wretches who had been slain by the fall of
the masts, or who, lying stunned, had been strangled
out of hand by the water betwixt the rails. This
wasL the sort of scene to dream of and recreate on a
warm, stirless, moonlit summer night, seated as I
was upon a memorial of that bad loss of a ship. To
think of her floating to her doom with the airy spires
of her canvas pallid in the dusk as though feebly
star-touched — all silent aboard her — a trembling
green light like a glow-worm on her starboard rail —
a little haze round about the cabin skylight window
faintly defining the figure of the captain or mate, who
sees nothing and heeds nothing ! Did they fire a gun
aboard the Gull lightship as a hint ? Perhaps in the
thickness of that night the lightsmen could not make
sure of her ; but the true significance of these sounds
comes out in the contrast between the aspect of that
barque at the moment of her touching, with a
shudder running through every timber, and passing
like a shiver up the wan heights of cloths — and the

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1 2 The British Seas.

short length of grinning fangs, upon one of which I
sat musing on that quiet night.

There is good work done by the lifeboat all round
the coast, but no better work than in these waters.
Ramsgate tops the list of life-savers hereabouts ; but
then there is always a tug at hand to tow the boat
out, and this renders her as indifferent to the quarter
whence the wind blows as if she were a steamer
herself. There are good boats at Broadstairs and at
Deal and at Walmer ; but when the wind blows a
heavy, dead inshore gale, what are the jjeople belong-
ing to them to do ? they can only look idly on whilst
the Ramsgate steamer, with the boat belonging to
that harbour in tow, heads into the storm with a
helm steady for what is to be succoured. The life-
boat is at the best but an unwieldy fabric. She is
meant to be unsinkable, and the machinery that
achieves this quality for her renders her, it must be
confessed, an unsightly structure. Her masts are
low, her canvas inadequate, and on a wind she will
blow away to leeward like a bladder. I have some-
times watched a match amongst lifeboats in a regatta,
and admired the cleverness with which they drove
with a straight wake when the wind was over their
stern ; but a new face, I observed, was always placed
upon their trick of sailing when, after putting their
helm down to no purpose, they wore to come round
again for their starting point.

If there were no tug at Ramsgate there might be a
general endeavour amongst the other boats stationed
along this coast to head out for a wreck, let the wind

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The Downs. 13

blow as it might. But much more often than not it
is an inshore wind, and the Ramsgate boat therefore
has it all her own way. But it is a noble service, no
matter what port the boat hails from. I have seen a
deal of it in my time, have witnessed many rescues,
one or two of which I have attempted to chronicle,
and never recall what I have beheld without an
emotion of enthusiasm that quickens the beat of
my pulse. The honour, I may say the glory, of
this work, is entirely the 'longshoreman's. It is the
waterman who mans the boat and who imjjerils
his life. There is nothing that galvanizes his figure
so effectually as the lifeboat summons. A bell rings
and instantly all is hurry. The beach — the pier — is
filled with figures sprawling forwards in red-hot haste.
If the men are in bed when the call is made they do .
not wait to dress, but snatch at the clothes which
are next them and fight their way into the garments
as they run. To appreciate all the meaning that
enters into the expression " man the lifeboat," one
should survey the scene of boiling Channel waters
on some December or January midnight. The wind
is pouring in thunder over the land, and all along
from the base of the white cliffs rises an echo as of a
ceaseless explosion of great guns. The black air is
blind with flying sleet and rain ; but seaward there
will be a coming and going of hoariness, a sort of
feeble blinking of a dim and ghastly lustre that is not
to be called light, made by sudden great upheavals of
spray whipped and sent boiling in seething masses
through the wind. In the town the streets are

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14 The British Seas.

empty ; the few windy gaslights make a violent play
of shadows ; casements are shaking, trees are roaring,
every chimney seems to hold its wounded giant
groaning horribly ; the edge of the blast as it howls
round the corner has the sharpness of the scythe and
smites like steel. Hark ! through the uproar of the
gale a faint thud — a distant gun — strikes upon the
ear. From the pier-head, buried in foam and the
shadow of night, soars a rocket that sparkles bravely
out as it sweeps with lightning-like velocity into the
north-east. Another glance of hght upon the flying
obscurity seawards — a second gun ! — and presently
you can distinguish a tiny point of brightness, burn-
ing and waning, upon the verge of the vast midnight
stretch of throbbing obscurity. It is a flare — the
night signal of the shipwrecked. A ship is ashore :
there are human lives to be saved; the bell is
furiously tolling, and out from their little houses,
scrambling into their jackets as they race, the brave
hearts are running to man the lifeboat.

I believe if I were a lifeboatman I would rather
sail through such a night as this I am endeavour-
ing to describe than be towed through it. There
will be some sort of ease in the posture of a
buoyant fabric under canvas, let the sea be what
it will. Though she be close-hauled the surge is
still on her bow, and her long floating launches are
not utterly intolerable. But to be dragged head
on to it is miserable work indeed. The water flies
in sheets in a very liquid canopy over the boat ; the
men sit knee-deep in it, and will come very near

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The Downs. 1 7

to being frozen dead some while before they heave
the ship they have to succour into view. She tows
by too long a scope of rope to suffer her to obtain
any sort of shelter from the tug ahead. Nor in-
considerable are the sufferings of the steamboat's
men in this sort of midnight excursion in the heart
of a winter gale. The vessel is smothered from the
" eyes " to the funnel casing, and the skipper on
the bridge peers in vain to discover what has
become of the forepart of his little ship. Her
paddle-boxes are alternately buried, and at every
roll one wheel or the other lifts sheer out of water,
and may be seen revolving against the foam like
the sails of a windmill. Nevertheless, there is a
cabin aboard ; or on deck there is always a place
that has a lee side, where a man may crouch and
keep himself tolerably dry, and be able even to
smoke a pipe. But there is nothing with a lee
side belonging to it in the lifeboat. There is no
cabin. The men may indeed find room to lie in a
huddle, one on top of another in the bottom of the
boat, in an inextricable confusion of sou'-westers,
cork-jackets, and sea-boots; but what sort of a
mattress are they to find in planks which are above
their knees with water, and what sort of warmth
are they to obtain from such shelter as the thwarts
of a lifeboat supply ? In wild, fierce, wintry weather,
lifeboating is desperate work indeed ; a species of
seafaring that is without parallel in any other walk
of the vocation. What is the temptation ? It was
half-a-sovereign a day, each man, and a pound for

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1 8 TJie British Seas.

night work ; and the pay was the same be the
weather what it would. It will be admitted that
there is nothing very potent in such rewards to
coax men into hazarding their lives and into accept-
ing the harshest extremities of suffering. I will
not, indeed, say that this sovereign and this half-
sovereign do not provide a small animation in
themselves ; but no man who has witnessed the
work can doubt that the true seminal spirit of it lies
in a noble humanity, in intrepid resolution to save,
without thought of what is to follow, whether it be
applause, or emolument, or death.

The risks are frightful. To be sure, the boats are
self-righting, but the men in them are not ; and
when a whole crew are rolled out overboard it is by
no means inevitable that they shall all roll in again.
Every man is equipped in a cork-jacket, which cer-
tainly provides him with a chance ; but if he float
away in the blackness and is no more heard of, his
death is rendered distressing beyond expression
by the protraction of his sufferings. He may be
hours afloat without dying, enduring all the anguish
of the cold, the slowly-kiUing drenchings of flying
spray, and then perish when help is at hand.
Another condition of the service, too, is the memo-
ries it breeds. Amidst such a rude population as
our 'longshoremen form, one might hardly hope to
find so tender a sentiment as that of sympathetic
recollection. Yet, in my own experience, I am able
to say that for weeks and months men, formed
apparently of the roughest and homeliest fibre,

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The Downs. 19

with seemingly no more romance in their composi-
tion than there is gravy in a cube of shipboard
salt beef, have suffered horrors by day, have been
unable to close their eyes by night, through memory
of some dreadful sea tragedy they have had to bear
a part in.

I can recall one instance of this, and it much
impressed me at the time. A ship named the
Indian Chief went ashore on the Long Sand, to the
northwards of the Goodwins. It was such weather
as never could I recall the like of — a hurricane out
of the north-east ; all betwixt ocean and sky boiling
with snow, and such a sea as brought the heart
into my throat, viewing it, as I did, from over the
edge of the North Foreland. The boat and the
tug were two nights away; the magnificent spirit
of the men defied the weather, and they continued
to hunt for the ship, resolved not to shift their
helm for home until they had boarded the wreck
and saved the people, if any man remained to be
saved. They sighted her at daybreak on the second
day, a mere filament of mast in the heart of a
very hell of warring white waters. The lifeboat
slipped and bore down, and found the ship there
breaking up, with her foremast standing and a
knot of seamen in the foretop ; her mizzenmast lay
over the starboard quarter, and to it were lashed a
number of dead men — men who had been alive when
the spar fell, and who had drowned in full sight of
their shipmates above. The boat rescued the living,
and was about to let go when her coxswain sung

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20 The British Seas.

out, " Pick up that poor fellow first ! " He pointed
to a figure of a man who was leaning on his breast
over the spar. His gaze was fixed upon the boat ;
his lips seemed busy with ineffectual articulation ;
the heave of the sea swayed him into postures and
motions of entreaty. But he was dead, and had
been dead for hours. One of the lifeboat's men
was haunted by this dreadful mocking image of
life for days afterwards. He told me that he could
not sleep ; that when he lay down in the dark the
figure was at the foot of his bed, from which it
would force him to spring, covered with perspiration
and in the utmost anguish of mind, to find relief
by taking a turn outside.

Ramsgate, we may suppose, is the most popular
of the seaside towns which lie within the embrace
of the two famous points of Foreland. This will
not be deemed very high praise perhaps when it is
considered that in addition to Ramsgate there are
but Broadstairs and Deal — Walmer being a mere
extension of the latter town. Ramsgate is greatly
beloved by the cockney — not more so perhaps than
Margate ; between them, indeed, they fairly divide
the heart of 'Arry. That Margate should be very
highly favoured by the lower classes of the metro-
polis is not hard to understand ; whatever is allur-
ing to the East-end imagination and tastes are, at
Margate, accentuated with all the judgment and
skill of persons who know their business as enter-
tainers. But Ramsgate is without a Hall-by-the-
Sea; it is without a Menagerie. Its sands in

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The Downs. 23

the height of summer do, indeed, support a few
nigger melodists, a Punch-and-Judy show, and one
or two other diversions of the kind. But the local
police keep a very strict eye upon the respectability
of the place ; and certainly no baits of any sort are
offered to the cockney to tempt him to take lodgings
in Ramsgate. Yet to Ramsgate he comes in a very
great multitude ; he is to be seen overrunning the
place in suits of clothes of indescribable hues and
pattern ; he gallops madly along on the back of the
donkey ; he crowds the pleasure sailing-boat to suffo-
cation, and loads her down to a strake upon which no
Board of Trade official would sanction the painting
of Mr. PlimsoU's disc. Happily he is powerless to
deform the picturesqueness of the town. A pretty
place it is, viewed from the sea ; I know of none
prettier; the milk-white cliffs contrast pleasantly
with the green and slate, the red and cream of the
houses which line the summits. The Granville
Hotel is a bold and imposing seamark, and rounds
off the town at its eastern extremity with a hand-
some heap of glowing colour, of sparkling window, of
waving banner, and castellated wing. It is a pity
that the fine harbour should be very nearly dead
and gone. Certainly, if it is not quite gone, it is
fast going. The excavator seems to me to toil only
for the smacksman and the waterman ; for if not
for theirs, then I know not for whose keels the
slime and ooze are lifted and despatched to sea with
soul-subduing monotony of regularity.

Time was when the west gully and the length of

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24 The British Seas.

the east pier were crowded with vessels of burthen —
as burthen then went — two, three, and even four
deep. Those were high old times for the local
shipping agents ; the era of cable-slipping and divers
other sorts of nautical caper-cutting ; when a wink
was as good as a nod, and when the worthy folks of
Lloyds were satisfied to pay, with a humble thanks-
giving that the bill was not twice as long. Very few
vessels enter Ramsgate Harbour now. The explana-
tion is that it has been ruined by steam ; but this
reason is not quite satisfactory. Whoever has any
acquaintance with the Downs must be fully aware
that there is still a great number of sailing craft
afloat, to all of which Ramsgate ought to be useful
in a time of difficulty. Yet it seems to me that a
ship must be in dire distress indeed before she will
make for Ramsgate Harbour. Have not the exces-
sive charges something to do with this ? The cost
of maintenance is probably considerable ; but surely
the dues are out of all proportion to the accommoda-
tion offered by piers without metals, without steam,
with appliances of so crude and primitive a species
that it is impossible to view them without laughter.

Yet as a picture the harbour gains by the policy
that has long stultified and is now destroying it. It
is hard to imagine a more animated and engaging
scene than the space of water betwixt the piers offers
on some breezy autumn morning when a fleet of
smacks are getting under way for the North Sea
fishing-grounds. Some are towed out three and four
abreast, with the white water flashing between them.

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The Dawns. 25

the livelies aboard them sprawling about in their
enormous boots, the red canvas thundering. As they
clear the entrance the tide catches them, and away
they go in fine style, scattering as the tow-ropes are
let slip, and plunging like galloping cart-horses as
they take the first of the seas and wash away to
the northward. Others again, to save towage-charge,
" ratch," out as it is called, and a spirited sight it is
to witness. The seamanship of the fellows is
excellent ; they appear to know their little ships as a
man the horse he has ridden for years ; you see a
smack under a heavy press leaning down to it till her
waterways are under and heading direct for the
granite of the pier ; her bowsprit seems to be in the
act of spearing the solid wall, when down goes her
helm, round she spins like some waltzing girl nimble
of foot ; in a breath or two all is flattened in fore
and aft, and she is smoking through it on the other
tack. But there are other details of interest
besides the fishing craft ; notably the French three-
masted lugger, with her enormous rotundity of bow
and thickness of scantling. She goes full of men,
often with several women aboard, and the rude
hubbub of the marine /tf/^w of Gravelines, of Calais,
and of Boulogne, fiirnishes an odd contrast of noise
to the calls, shouts, and talk of the booted represen-
tatives of the fishing populations of Penzance,
Shoreham, Lowestoft, and Plymouth, whose smacks
congregate about those of the artless Wooden- Shoes
on the west side of the harbour. There is always a
crazy old tug panting to and fro, obnoxious to the

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26 The British Seas.

eye and full of business, dragging barges loaded with
mud or towing out some unspeakable figure of a
brigantine, which came in the other day filled with
coal that depressed her to her covering boards, and
now swims out gaunt with tall and worm-eaten sides,
which are scarcely to be made to stand upright by
the few tons of chalk which have been pitched into
her for ballast.

Ramsgate, however, never looks so well as by
night — a calm summer night, when the Hngering
rustic hectic in the west throws into a black mass
the Catholic Church and buildings at the extremity
of the town, and when the lights of the foreshore are
springing up, striking tremulous lines of gold into
the placid surface of the inner harbour or upon the
oil-like breast of water that steeps to the sea-wall
where the railway pierces the chalk terraces. There
is real beauty in the picture at such a time. Rams-
gate is prodigal in lamps, and when all is in full
blaze she becomes a very Milky Way of radiance.
She pencils her extent with fire ; and, viewing the
coast from the sea, you might, of a summer night,
imagine that every evening brings around its obliga-
tion of festival or of celebration to the place. There
are lights low down under the cliflf along what is
called the Marina ; there are lights along the length
of the narrow iron pier that forks out from the foot
of the cliflf that is crowned by the Granville Hotel ;
there are lights down upon the sands where the rail-
way and its station are ; and lights sparkle at the
pier ends in divers colours. Against all this brilliance

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The Downs. 27

the motionless sails of a craft lying in the harbour
waiting for a slant of air will show in spaces of liquid
gloom, and impart a singular beauty of shadow to
the faintness of white cliflf past them, and its
spangled heights, and its glittering base.

By day, however, the seaward view of Ramsgate is
much deformed by the railway. I can remember
the time when the sands went in billows of gold to
the foot of the huge spurs of chalk, and when the eye
could sweep a magnificent expanse and length of
foreshore, starting from the pier-wall and stretching
on over many a hundred fathom, till it rounded in a
noble platform out of sight, past some tall shoulder
of cliff drawing on to Broadstairs. Now, instead of
the cry of the seagull, it is the hideous whistle of the
locomotive. The secret memories of the staring,
milk-white, fortress-like front have been transformed
into the impertinence of glaring advertisements. All
is smoke and rattle, the screech of the engine, the
distracting jar of shunting. It is a convenience that
has ruined the sands. It is, of course, a convenience
to be able to run up to London in two hours ; but all
the same the sands are not as they were ; they are
full of holes and gullies, and bathing grows more
dangerous every year.

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CHAPTER II
THE DOWNS {continued).

The longshoreman — Historic associations — Shipping in the
Downs— The galley-punt— Deal boatmen— Smuggling —
Broadstairs and Charles Dickens — Sandwich.

Compared with Deal, Ramsgate, in respect of its
maritime interest, makes but a poor figure. It has,
however, I believe, a licensed pilot, who is sometimes
fortunate enough to fall in with a job. At long inter-
vals there will blow into the offing some little barque,
some little foreign brig with the clews of her top-
sails out of hail of the yardarms and a jack at the
fore, and she is the licensed pilot's opportunity.
He springs into a wherry and away he goes; but
there is also a licensed pilot at Broadstairs — he, too,
accepts the jack at the fore as his opportunity, and
will start also, and then there is a race. It is a
contest, however, that excites but little interest. It
is universally felt along the coast that this licensing
of pilots is an injustice to the 'longshoreman.
There are men belonging to Deal, Ramsgate, and
Broadstairs, to the full as capable of navigating a
ship in these waters as any Trinity House man ; but
they are forbidden to do so, and are punished, along

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The Downs. 29

with the master of the ship who employs them, if
they are caught. But hunger renders them defiant,
and as the smallness of their charges, in com-
parison with those of the licensed pilots, is an en-
couragement to shipmasters to darkly and covertly
employ them, they still manage to earn here and
there a few pounds. How, nevertheless, the 'long-
shoreman contrives to live is a problem I have never
yet been able to resolve. The summer season is
perilously short and the winter inordinately long.
The wherry is hauled ashore before the autumn has
fairly set in, and there is nothing more to be done
with her till June comes round again. The chances
supplied by hovelling are slender and scarce worth
naming. A man may not pilot without a license —
how, then, does the 'longshoreman live ? It is sur-
mised that his wife takes in washing ; but when it
happens that the 'longshoremen make a numerous
population, it is impossible to suppose that all the
women of his order are laundresses. He sells fish ;
he will paint a house ; he will work aboard a collier ;
failing everything he will lean against a post, in
which art he may certainly be said to excel. Built
up in fearnought trousers of ponderous quality, stiff
and taut in boots and in many thicknesses of jersey,
watertight about the head, and possessed of pockets
in which he is able to bury his arms to above the
elbows, the 'longshoreman of the Downs' district is
the most incomparable of loungers. Still, poor as
he is, he usually seems to bear about with him the
value of a pipe of tobacco and a pot of ale. One

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30 The British Seas.

cannot but think kindly of him. He is often the
central memory of the seaside holiday ; he carries
us out a-fishing ; and he encourages us to continue
the sport long after the misgiving that there is no
fish in the sea has become a conviction. His cry
of "Boat, sir? — beautiful day for a row, mum ! "
vibrates upon the ear, and remains a cheerful
recollection, even in the heart of a November Lon-
don fog.

Time was when there was plenty of good fishing
to be had off Ramsgate ; but the pleasure trawlers
have confirmed the injurious labours of the
" toshers," and the ground has been so overdragged
that its yield is now utterly insignificant. Further
south there is better sport, and off Deal there is
often excellent fishing. The finest whitings I have
ever seen have been caught abreast of Walmer ;
shoals of herrings and mackerel come in close to the
shingle in their respective seasons, and cod, codling,
pouting, dabs, and plaice are abundant ; but the sole
is a rare fish, though large ones are occasionally
hooked. Whether, however, one gets a bite or not,
whether one catches anything or not, there is a
dreamy pleasure in overhanging the gunwale of a
boat on a quiet, slumberous, warm afternoon, that
to many ranks highest amongst the enjoyments of
the holiday outing. Life is at a distance ; sounds
by remoteness are sweetened into music ; the cry
of the hawker, the pealing of a bell, the stir of
vehicles, combine into a note of softness which
steals soothingly upon the ear, across the smooth

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The Downs, 3 1

and gleaming surface of the intervening water.
The fishing-line over the side inspires expectation
enough to keep one awake, but it is a drowsy wake-
fulness that has in it the rest of slumber, leaving
the faculties still sensible of the peace, the beauty,
the coolness round about, the soft respiration of the
swell, the vision of strange objects gliding past the
boat through the glass-clear green profound, the
inexpressible sweetness of old ocean's breath. Yet
one's romantic moods are not left long undisturbed.
The boatman, like the poor, is always with you,
and his volubility is commonly proportioned to the
quality of the sport. The less you catch the more
he has to say. He converses with an eye to extend-
ing the time, and his language, if not always en-
gaging, is at least diverting with the prosaics of the
'longshore vocation. I knew a worthy man named
John Goldsmith, a Ramsgate boatman, and perhaps
the most talkative man on the English coast. He
had taken Charles Dickens out fishing with him;
Wilkie Collins had also used his boat ; and amongst
others he would tell of were Benjamin Webster,
General Tom Thumb, and Commodore Nutt. The
General, he would say, lighted a cigar nearly as big
as himself, and sat sucking at it very steadily, occa-
sionally standing up to look over the gunwale, which
he was too short to overhang. But in a little while
the ground-swell or the cigar, or perhaps both,
proved too much for him ! he was oppressed with
nausea, and was glad to get ashore. John Gold-
smith would boast that Charles Dickens drew a

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32 The British Seas.

highly correct portrait of him, and printed it in
"Household Words" or *'A11 the Year Round."
He had a vivid recollection of Benjamin Webster.
He rowed that excellent actor out to a red buoy,
where in those days there was some good fish to be
caught. Webster looked a little pale and ill, but
sat nevertheless manfully feeling for fish with his
line. " Tell 'ee then what happened, ' Goldsmith
would say, " I got a boite and hooked a plaice size
o' moy arm. He was a stiff 'un to draw up, and I
had to put some strength into the job, and in swing-
ing him inboards the flat of him struck the gent
right across the cheek and knocked his wig over-
board. He hadn't been reg'lar sick afore, but I
allow that the smack of that there cold, moist
sarface of fish about did his business. He took no
notice of his wig, but just lay over the side, helpless
as a young lady in a gale of wind." John Goldsmith
found his yarns acceptable to his customers, and
was never at a loss. Probably, had he lived, we
should have heard of the Archbishop of Canterbury
going out a-fishing with him; and, indeed, one
might have thought him modest had he stopped at
his Grace.

The Downs — the famous space of water where
black-eyed Susan came aboard — lie over your ship's
bow as she rounds the North Foreland, coming out
of the North Sea, or from the River Thames. The
Goodwin Sands are on your port bow, the range of
white cliff on your starboard ; and right ahead is a
space of water which, were it land, would be more

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The Downs. 33

consecrated by memory than any equal area of soil,
point to what country you may. Let any man run
through the earlier annals of these kingdoms : the
sea fights were nearly all here ; hereabouts the
armies, glittering with helmet and breastplate, with
spear and pennon, were embarking or arriving ; here
the vast convoys were preparing to weigh; here
were adventured most of the attacks of the foreign
foe against the country; up yonder bight, called
Pegwell Bay, floated Saint Augustine to as high as
Ebb's Fleet ; a little further along Julius Caesar is
supposed to have landed. Enough yet remains of
old Sandown Castle to bring Colonel Hutchinson
to the memory and to fire the imagination with
thoughts of deeds done here whilst it was yet such
another fortress as the grim-looking castle of Deal,
and the one beyond it at Walmer, where Nelson left
a card upon Billy Pitt on finding him in bed, and
where the old Iron Duke fetched his last breath.
The history of these waters is a panorama of
splendour, a gorgeous arras into which is woven
very much indeed of what has gone to the making of
Britannia. Just past the Goodwin Sands yonder,
the ships of the great Armada were chased by those
lions of the deep, Frobisher, and Fenton, and Drake,
and the others of them. Abreast of that cold height
of South Foreland Blake curled his whiskers and let
fly a shotted and sulphureous intimation to Tromp
to lower his flag ; in other words, to pull off his hat
to Britannia's sea-sovereignty. But a few cables'
lengths further on that brave and honest old

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34 The British Seas.

Admiral, Sir William Monson, requested a like
obeisance from the haughty Don, and with one ship
to oppose a squadron would have sunk the
Spaniards or foundered himself sooner than be
denied. Let us but consider the flags which this
small surface of narrow sea has reflected : Shovel,
and bold Benbow ; Ayscue, and noble-spirited
Rooke ; Vernon, and Hood, and Hawke ; and last,
but always first, the glorious bunting of Nelson him-
self, floating for weeks in defiance from the mast-
head of the frigate from whose quarter-deck the
Hero of the Nile was keeping a bright look-out for
the flotilla and the troops of the warrior Boney, as
the sailors called him.

There is, indeed, plenty to think about and plenty
to look at as you come sailing or steaming into
these Downs. Sometimes, but -very seldom, the
water is a bare waste ; then there must be a soldier's
wind blowing, good for the inward as well as for
the outward bounders. But for the most part the
congregation is lively, and frequently thick. Every
species of craft brings up in the Downs, saving, of
course, the great ocean palaces. To the land-going
eye there would seem but little variety in the rigs ; but
the nautical gaze may, with a little patience, witness
almost every fabric that hails from north of the Medi-
terranean. One is occasionally astonished, too, by
manifestations of survivals, of a sort to make a sailor
stare as though he beheld a marine spectre. It was
but the other day that I saw a frigate all of the olden
time — such a frigate as Blackwood's Euryalus; such

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The Downs. 35

a frigate as the Tluseus or the Shannon — sailing
through the Gulls. I searched in vain for a hint of
a funnel. She was of timber; her gunports were
closed, her bowsprit had the steeve of an old East
Indiaman's ; she carried a standing jib, her topsails
were single with four reefs to the main, and her royal
yards came close under the trucks ; her slight heel to
port disclosed a line of yellow metal, and, though
but of one tier of guns, she stood upon the water like
a cask. It was like going back fifty, nay, eighty
years to see her. A deep-laden screw, a veritable
ocean-tramp, passed her ; and, somehow, such was
the reality of the ship, such was the fitness of the tall,
spacious-winged frigate to the scene I surveyed, that
it was the steamboat which seemed to me to be the
anachronism ! The war-vessel flew a small Swedish
colour and floated stately and bravely out of sight,
watched by me (who would rather have seen her
than the grandest armoured battleship that now
swims) till her spanker fluttered out of sight past
the round of the Foreland.

It is commonly the south-westerly wind that fills
the Downs. Ships come struggling to abreast of
Deal and Walmer, and then bring up to await a slant
that will enable them to get round the South Fore-
land into the Channel. The detention is often
cruelly protracted. I have known ships to lie six
weeks in the Downs. The shift of wind they require
never seems to happen. Day after day the dog-vane
points as though some demon had crawled aloft and
fixed it with a nail. It has often amused me on

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36 The British Seas.

such occasions to bring a powerful telescope to bear
upon the people on board and observe their coun-
tenances. The constant glancings round the sea —
the sour stare aloft — ^the darkening of purple-nosed
visages to the forecastle-fancies which the dead-on-
end wind excites — ^the impatient walk — the frequent
flourish of a large fist in the direction from
which the breeze blows ; all this is irresistible when
one's acquaintance with the seafaring character
enables one to understand the moods and the
language which these pacings, these grimacings, and
cortortions of posture illustrate. But six weeks in
the Downs ! Figure lying off the cold and windy
town of Deal in some small lump of a brigantine,
whose masts are for ever swaying like a baton in the
hand of a band conductor ! Nothing to look at but
a foreshore of shingle and luggers and little* houses,
most of them small shanties of tarred timber ; and
nothing to think of but when the wind is going to
change : listening all day long to the weary groaning
of the bones of the tossed and harassed carcase one
is aboard of; and of a night incessantly rolling out
of one's bunk whenever the ship, swinging to her
anchor, comes athwart the rim of the sea ! It is
generally understood that sailors are not choice in
their language; but, then, what vocation is more
exasperating than that of the mariner's ? When I
think of six weeks' detention in the Downs, and add
to that reflection the several considerations of the
salted horse, of unspeakable pork, of biscuit honey-
combed with worms, of wet, cold, and kicks, of poor

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The Downs. 39

pay and Dutch seamen, I cannot feel greatly
astonished that the nautical mind should at long
intervals utter itself in a few gentle sea blessings.

But from the shore the ships at anchor make a
fine show. We are not sailors ; we are not aboard ;
and, therefore, are not sufferers. We may be per-
mitted then to view the scene with delight as a pic-
ture, without distressing ourselves in pitying the
unfortunate Jacks who have to lie out there waiting
for a shift of wind. It was but the other day that I
was looking at a collection of upwards of two
hundred sail of ships at anchor. They had all come
together as if by magic. When I had gone to bed
the night before there was but a single craft
straining abreast of Deal town. The wind had
been a light southerly air ; the water had stretched
flat and black to the Goodwins, with here and there
a star-gleam in it, so little did the brushing of the
delicate breeze tarnish the mirroring power of that
moonless breast of sea. But next morning when I
looked, a very forest of shipping filled the arena of
the anchorage. Nearly every species of craft had
come together in the darkness, and there they lay
with a strong south-westerly wind blowing through
them, and a sea running with weight enough in it
to put the largest of the structures into motion. It
was a true sea-piece ; with its sky of pale Hquid
azure, its large stately- sailing masses of cloud rising
with a milk-white softness off the coast of France ;
the water a dark and sparkling green, rich and
flashful with heads of froth, and the vessels of all

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40 The British Seas.

sorts in the heart of the windy day coming and
going in light and shadow as the eastern sun sank
into or leapt from the edge of the bodies of vapour.
In every vessel's side, lifting wet from the brine,
shone the glory of the morning in stars — a ceaseless
winking of white fires like flashes from artillery.
Upon every head of sea, as it broke against the
bows of the ships and went smoking away upon the
wind in a mist of crystals and diamonds and prisms,
there was painted a little rainbow. Where to
witness the like of such combinations and contrasts
of colour as I found in the Downs that morning I
believe I could not say. The slate-coloured metal
plates of steamers ; the brilliant wet black sides of
sailing craft ; the white and ebony lengths of broken
ports ; the dancing gleams of brass and glass ; the
red, the blue, the green of bunting ; the lines of
radiant flags, denoting the ships' numbers ; the
vision, past all these anchored craft, of an upward-
bound vessel chased by a tug — a structure foaming
through it from some antipodean port under full
breasts of canvas that clothed her in marble-white
cloths from her waterways to her skysail-masts —
such an assemblage of tints, such effects of graceful
movements, such variety and play of light and
gloom, of bursts of glorious splendour and of sullen
violent shadow, I have never before witnessed.

Conspicuous amongst the shipping was the galley-
punt — a craft that hails from Deal, and that is to be
met with only in these waters — under a fragment of
lug, with three men of a crew sitting to windward.

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The Downs. 4 1

She was sweeping with the ease and buoyancy of the
gull over seas which were making even the brigs and
barques round about bow to their hawsepipes. She
is, I suppose, the one illustration yet extant of the
skill of the Deal boatmen. The famous lugger sur-
vives, but she finds little employment. High and
dry she lies upon Deal beach, suggesting times when
smuggling was a roaring trade, when fresh anchors
and cables were in constant demand, and when her
crew by the work of a week might earn money
enough to set them up as gentlemen for life. Her
services are scarcely needed nowadays, and such
slender shipping requirements as yet continue here-
abouts are supplied by the galley-punts. They are
the carriers of the Downs ; they act as bumboats ;
they serve as a communication between the ships
and the shore ; they convey pilots to vessels ; and in
all weathers may be seen roaming about in search of
jobs. They are stoutly built boats, but undecked,
and therefore require such handling, having regard
to the seas they encounter, as only men who have
been brought up to the work from boyhood are equal
to. The launching of these little craft from the
beach ranks very prominent amongst the interests of
Deal. When a boat arrives from a cruise she is
hauled, by means of a tall and crazy-looking old
capstan, high and dry up on the shingle, where she
rests until there is occasion to " go off*' again, as it
is called. There must be a bad beach of surf on to
hinder her from starting when a summons comes,
so expert are the fellows who man her, and so dire

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42 77/^? British Seas.

are the wants which the long winter begets. Figure
a lead-coloured day, a gale blowing out of the east,
an horizon shrouded by rain and sleet to within a
mile or so of the shore. Some steamer looming
large in the flying haze is sighted ; she has a pilot to
land ; there are a few shillings to be earned ; the
boat must be launched, and a crew of three, helped
by others, spring to release her. The surf is large
and thunderous, and one looks on, making little
doubt that the boat will fill and be rolled on shore
again as she slips into the white and throbbing
dazzle. But nothing of the sort happens ; her gun-
wales are seized by a number of muscular hands,
and down the slope of peebles she rushes with roar-
ing keel, her crew tumbling into her as her stern
smites the yeast. In a breath she is off and away,
clear of the surf and the breakers, and a few moments
later you will see her foaming through it to a flattened
sheet, now sinking, till nothing but the yard of her
lug shows, now soaring till she hangs poised like a
toy on some flickering head of sea dissolving in a
wide rush of froth under her.

This sort of interest is wanting at Ramsgate and
Broadstairs. It is peculiar to Deal ; and it is a
survival that contributes not a little to the old-world,
salt-water flavour of the place. At Ramsgate and
Broadstairs the 'longshoremen own wherries, and are
called watermen ; but at Deal the fellows who put off"
are pre-eminently boatmen. The distinction may
seem a little nice, but it is easily rendered intelligible
by reference to the vocational practice of the men.

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The Downs.

The Ramsgate or Broadstairs man will take you out
for a row on a fine day ; so, too, will the Deal man,
but the Ramsgate or Broadstairs man does not think
of getting a living by hovelling or hunting the waters
in search of ships whose captains have a pilot to land
or who want assistance in other ways ; whereas this
is precisely the dominant business of the Deal man.

On a Quay. From a sketch by Da\kl Cox.

He is a descendant of the old race of smugglers, not
degenerate by any means in his view of the Revenue,
but deprived of the opportunities his forefathers
enjoyed — not because he is without a lugger or
because the nights are no longer as black as they
formerly were — but because smuggling, as Customs'
imposts now go, scarcely repays a man for the
very heavy risks which attend it. Some small
" running " still goes on, of course, but it is of the

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44 The British Seas.

meagrest sort, and cuts a most insignificant figure
alongside the old great hauls of silk and tea, of
tobacco and spirits. What is it now if it be not a
little pocketful of black cakes of tobacco ?

But though Deal was the headquarters of
smuggling in the time when a frigate lay in the
Downs, and detachments of her crew were sent
ashore to protect the Revenue under the name of
" blockaders," — prior to the establishment of the
preventive man, as we now have him — such romance
as the contraband traffic possesses must, I think, be
sought for down among the cliffs in Pegwell Bay and
in the white chalk range betwixt Ramsgate and
Broadstairs. For there you have the genuine thing
in the shape of the old smuggler's lair; winding
corridors hewn out of the solid chalk ; secret subterra-
nean retreats, whose grave-like stillness is scarcely
vexed by the dull voice of the sea washing the base
of the natural ramparts. The sympathies of nature
seem to have been enlisted by the Ramsgate and
Broadstairs smuggler ; and though the signs of his
pickaxe are very visible, yet the exploring of one of his
corridors might make one fancy that old Earth her-
self had gone to work for him, had made a home for
him in her heart, and pleasantly concealed him by
growths of greenery above and by boulders and con-
venient spurs below. Refuges and storing-places of
this sort at Deal are artificial. There are no cliffs,
consequently holes could not be made; and the
smuggler had to build what he wanted. Many
smugglers' houses in the old town are still standing*

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ThC' Downs. 45

and their occupants are incessantly making fresh
discoveries of secret places ; of such a very shrewd,
constructive genius were the race of contrabandists
possessed. A wall is to be papered, and to the
general surprise a small panel, yielding an aperture
big enough to receive the figure of a boy, is exposed.
When it is penetrated a short flight of mouldy steps
are encountered, and to the amazement of the tenant
two or three rooms, of whose existence the oldest
inhabitant apparently had no knowledge, are dis-
closed. There are probably now people at Deal who
would not recognize as their own the houses they
lived in were the mysteries of the buildings laid bare.
Broadstairs has a charm which many might think
superior to the quaintness of Deal. Its short length
of pier has a black-letter look, that, be its age what
it will, still carries the mind back to the days when
the passing ships lowered their topsails in salutation
of the figure of the Virgin Mary in the little church
hard by the spot that is spanned by the arch.
Charles Dickens loved the old town, and printed
some delightful things about it in his serials. The
high and windy building he occupied stands like a
foreland lighthouse, and we should think that there
must have been times when the imagination he
exercised for the novel he wrote there abandoned
itself to concern for the safety of the windows. That
Bleak House, as it is called, should never have been
unroofed is not a little surprising. It looks every
quarter of the wind in the eye, and certainly nowhere
on the east coast does it blow harder than where the

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structure memorable as the residence of the famous
novelist defiantly opposes its glass and its chimney-
pots to the elements. Broadstairs has a pretty bit
of foreshore. Its bight of yellow sands has a
wonderful air of English homeliness, of genial and
hospitable warmth. The wherries in a group of
bright colours ride quietly in the shadow of the old
pier; the surf sings with the note of a fountain as it
slides up and down the heap of shingle to the left ;
and a true marine 'longshore garnish is present in
the form of the ** Tartar Frigate Inn," with its sign of
a ship that carries the fancy back to the days of the
famous Captain Lockhart, the terror of the hardiest
French privateersmen. There is no more popular
resort than Broadstairs, but it attracts a sort of
people very different from those who crowd the
lodgings at Margate and Ramsgate in summer. It
is quiet, it is exclusive, and exactly fits the word
** genteel," that was good form in the heyday of the
little place.

There are no marked contrasts, however, in the
shore-going features of this district until you get to
Sandwich. The change from Broadstairs to Rams-
gate is not very pronounced ; but the change from
Ramsgate to Sandwich may be compared to a swift
transition from Cheapside to a country churchyard.
At Ramsgate, in summer-time, all is bustle and
crowd ; the streets are alive with excursionists, the
atmosphere is hoarse with the throats of coster-
mongers, pianos are in every room, and German
bands at every corner. But at Sandwich, in the very

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The Downs, ^j

height of the summer, the same deadness and stagna-
tion of the fossilized condition is visible. All is
hushed ; the air is flavoured with a smell of dust, and
a coldness as of the decay of centuries penetrates the
system, even in the dog-days, as one enters this
venerable and fast-crumbling relic of ancient times.
I never think of Sandwich without regretting that it
is not preserved as an old ruin might be — in the
integrity of its own mouldiness and decay. The
senses are shocked by innovations here: the gas-
lamp, for instance, affects one as a wrong; what
should illuminate these grass-grown streets, these
dim and leaning houses, but the quivering lustre of
the oil-flame staggering windily in some swinging
lanthorn of horn or of crude glass ? Why should
there be a modern water supply ? Why not some pic-
turesque town pump, or some immemorial well, from
which the soldiers of Caesar might have refreshed
themselves, or with which the warriors of Edward
III. moistened their parched tongues? Sandwich
still has the curfew ; but what can be her theories of
picturesque fitness when, despite such another antique
knell as rings for all time in Grey's ** Elegy," the town
suffers a real policeman to walk about the streets,
draped in the Corporation livery, and looking on the
whole very much like a policeman of Deal or
Ramsgate ? Everything should be in keeping here.
We construct lath-and-pasteboard structures to
represent old English streets ; but at Sandwich you
have the real thing as Queen Elizabeth viewed it, as
generation after generation has known it ; and the

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48 The British Seas.

hand of the improver should not be allowed to meddle
with it. The spirit of antiquity is on the side of
Sandwich, and makes a sort of sacrilege of the
application to the aged town of all ideas animated by
modern sentiment. There is a regatta, for intance,
it is ludicrous to think of a regatta in connection
with Sandwich; let us talk of a morris dance, of
Maid Marian, of the antique caper-cutting of fast
days and feast days ; but not of regattas Jure ! The
very river flows to and from the town in a sort of
senile trickling, and a kind of violence is done to its
narrow banks and its bed of slime — in which I
believe the great ship of Poj)e Paul still lies buried —
by the clamours and impertinences of the modern
aquatic festival.

Sandwich is like an old black-letter book upon
which one could long continue to pore ; but it is
stranded high and dry; it yields but a glimpse of
the sea, and the marine interests of the district are at
a distance from it. It is to Deal and Walmer that
one must come for a sight of the Downs ! and he
who has the good fortune to sight this little space of
narrow sea when it is full of shipping, whether it be
by night with the high moon riding, or by day when
the gale is fresh, and the seas are running in snow,
will carry away with him a memory which he will
not let die.

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CHAPTER III

DOWN CHANNEL.

Thames below bridge— The docks — Historic interests— Graves-
end — Speed of steamers— Passenger ships formerly — Dover
and Folkestone— Lydd— Romney — Hastings— Eastbourne
— Brighton.

I SUPPOSE there is no river in the world comparable
with the Thames in the variety, beauty, and human
significance of its shows. It does not take very long
for a man to pass from one extreme into another :
from the summer colours and garden-like elegance of
sloping emerald lawns, of structures of grace and
charm, of a surface of steel-bright water mirroring
the white shapes of swans, and reflecting in its
margin whatever of tender shadow or of refulgent
hue its banks have to paint upon it ; to pass, I say,
from all that is reposeful, gentle, and engaging in
mile after mile of purely English scenery, into the
noise and business of the chocolate-coloured stream,
as it muddily foams against the supporters of London
Bridge and sweeps its flotilla of dumb barges into
the aromatic regions of Bugsby's Reach and the Isle
of Dogs.

It may be, however, that a man is not to be

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50 The British Seas.

charged with want of taste for avowing that his
sympathies are rather below than above bridge.
The swan, the angler, the houseboat, the lock,
the little sparkling creek sulking off into some
verdant niche of bankside — upon such things the eye
will dwell with a delight that presently languishes ;
but the attention must be of a very flimsy sort that is
to be easily wearied by the scene of the Thames from
London Bridge to Gravesend, and on yet to where
the shores of the noble river dissolve upon the
oceanic atmosphere off Sheppey.

I am acquainted with no more interesting voyage
than the run from some one of the docks of the Port
of London — as high up as you will — ^to Gravesend.
My own special leaning is towards the East India
Docks. From them it was that I always sailed
away when I was at sea as a sailor. The very name
awakens a crowd of ghostly memories. Once again
the old Brunswick Hotel is in ** full fig," doing a
roaring business, with hungry midshipmen, fresh
from twelve months of "salt-horse," eating roast-
beef and delicious cauliflowers with the voracity of
sharks, whilst their pleased papas look smilingly on ;
the air resounds with the tempestuous shouts of Jacks
at the capstans warping in or out ; ships, which
carry one back to the days of Nelson and the East
India Company, seem to abound ; there is the
Bombay, for instance, that might have fought at
Algeciras with Saumarez, or that might have con-
veyed Clive to India. I suppose there are sailors
who find the change in maritime life as marked at

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Down Channel, 53

St. Katherine's or Milwall as in the docks in the Isle
of Dogs ; but, to my fancy, the transformation never
seems more acute than when I emerge from one of
the little dirty carriages which convey you from
Fenchurch Street to Blackwall and look about me.
Here, what is new is accentuated by what is old.
Yonder, for example, is a fine, new Cape steamer,
embodying everything that is most modern in the
shape of engines, electric light, ice compartments,
pumps of prodigious power, and the like, lying
abreast of a warehouse that has received the com-
modities of ships which were lifting frigate-like
heights into the fog-thickened air of this part of the
world when our gracious sovereign was a little girl
playing upon the Ramsgate sands. The great
docks down the river are new ; the ships which
use them are in keeping. What should fit the
colossal undertaking at Tilbury but the leviathans
for which its giant repairing cradles are contrived ?
One looks for nothing less than for structures of
6000 tons after one has rounded out of Bugsby's
Reach and is in the fairway for the Barking and
Erith and Gravesend tracts. But there yet lingers
a deal of homeliness in the shipping huddled within
ken of the Tower and within bugle call of Shadwell
and Limehouse and Deptford. It is even possible
hereabouts to recast the panorama of the ages ; to
note the old Margate hoy floating onwards, loaded
with bilious holiday-makers ; to witness the stem-
ming barge as Cooke painted her ; nay, even to
view with the eye of retrospect some smart priva-

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54 ^f^^ British Seas.

teering schooner off Erith with her seasoned and
determined company of men busily employed in
taking in powder ready for Monsieur Woodenshoesi
and especially for those straggling Dons who, like
the stray silver spoons to the Irish footman, were
peculiarly regarded as the picaroon's " perquisites."

For a thorough enjoyment, however, of the smoky
scenery and active interests of the river past London
Bridge, one should carry to the contemplation of it
a sort of dreaminess of observation. The impres-
sions produced should have the kind of material
vagueness, the unsubstantial massiveness as of
mountainous clouds, so to speak, which the atmo-
sphere of the great stream obliges the object it
encloses to exhibit. To say that " yonder is Dept-
ford ; " that " tlure are the West India Docks ; "
that " that place abreast is Woolwich ; " and so on,
is to say nothing at all. Recollection can take no
heed ; when everything is over the stern there is
still little or nothing left to muse upon. The river
scenery here must be surveyed in groups, and desig-
nations are a species of impertinence. Let yonder
concentrated forest of spars, gay with bunting,
suffice. As we lean over the rail of our speeding
ship there are begotten a hundred half-fancies, sen-
sations, emotions, imaginations of an unfinished kind
which individualization must annihilate. Campbell
has expressed the fancy that possesses me : —

There is a magnet-like attraction in

These waters to the imaginative power

That links the viewless with the visible,

And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond

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Down Channel. 57

Yon highway of the world my fancy flies,
When by her tall and triple mast we know
Some noble voyager that has to woo
The trade winds and to stem th' ecliptic surge.

The coral groves— the shores of conch and pearl,
Where she will cast her anchor and reflect
Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves,
And under planets brighter than our own.

The historic interests of the eastern reaches of the
Thames stand high above those of all other rivers.
The Mersey, with its spacious range of docks, is un-
deniably more impressive, but there is a majesty in
the memories of the Thames which enters like a
seminal principle into the aspect of the renowned
stream, and gives it a dignity not to be matched by
rivers a thousand leagues long and shoreless to the
eye that centres them. All about Erith and Graves-
end is classic ground, if one may apply the word to
this liquid highway. Here one beholds again with
the gaze of fancy old Sebastian Cabot taking a fare-
well of the gallant company of men under the com-
mand of the lion-hearted Sir Hugh Willoughby;
here, again, one views that sumptuous little ship,
the DaintiCy bearing the banner of the renowned Sir
Richard Hawkins at her masthead, sweeping stately
through what was then most undoubtedly a surface
of crystal, her quarters radiant with gilt, her stern
flashful with glass, her sides of a toy-like grimness
with the little grinning artillery of those days of
brass popguns, hex decks glittering with the many-
coloured apparel of her shipmen and with the
glancing of armour aft — for Sir Richard was one of

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those mariners who went to sea in a suit of mail.
Here, too, one reconstructs the past in a vision of
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fielding aboard that terrible
little Lisbon packet, whose master, the most insolenX
of sea-bears, was, to the universal delight of pos-
terity, forced to go down upon his knees in the
cabin and respectfully apologize to the great novelist.
Who can see Gravesend without thinking of Field-
ing — of the bowsprit of the little cod-smack shear-
ing like the blast of a twenty-four pounder through
the cabin window into the state-room where the
novelist and his wife and others sat at breakfast ; of
the sea-blessings which were heaped upon one
another by the crews ; of poor Mrs. Fielding's miser-
able toothache ; of the gout, the dropsy, the com-
plicated anguish of the author of "Tom Jones,"
bound on a voyage that was to end only in killing
him after causing the great spirit such sufferings as
must grieve the most insensible, even in these late
days, to read about ?

Gravesend has been very happily termed the Sea
Gate of London. One is sensible of the felicity of
the expression as one sits at a waterside hotel-
window and views the noble marine processions out-
ward and inward bound. Gravesend is the great
point of departure. You hardly seem to have said
farewell to the old country whilst you are gliding
down the Thames to the revolutions of a propeller or
in the wake of a tug ; but once let the helm be star-
boarded for The Hope, with the old town of Graves-
end in a looming heap astern fast veering out of

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sight, and then, though you have the whole stretch
of the English Channel before you to measure, yet
the voyage seems to have really begun. You will
presently be opening the deadly shoals to the north-
ward of the Goodwins — the Sunk, the Long Sand —
names which must needs sound sinisterly in the
maritime ear for their tragic associations of ship-
wreck, for their memorable traditions of human
suffering and of magnificent courage. Yes ! Graves-
end is truly the Sea Gate of London. For many a
long hour in my time have I sat witnessing the scene
of Thames water from the pier or from some other
good point of view, never wearying of it, incessantly
finding something stealing into view to catch and
detain my eye at the moment when I was about to
turn away. It is the huge ocean steamer fresh from
an American port — some colossal National liner with
sides of a scarred look from the blows of the
tall Atlantic surge ; it is some outward-bound
Peninsular and Oriental steamer smart with paint,
with window-cleaning and brass-polishing, skipper
and mates twinkling in buttons and lace like real
Royal Naval men, the flutter of ladies' dresses, a
black man cradled at the extremity of the awning
holding a little flag.

Somehow or other, leave-taking — tearful and
choking as it must always be — seems to my mind to
lack the profound significance it used to possess.
What with an average speed of twelve knots an hour
and what with the Suez Canal, the other side of the
world is brought, so to speak, just round the corner.

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62 The British Seas.

It is like saying good-bye to a man who is about to
enter his brougham and whose house is at the other
end of the town. But in my day there was distance
at sea — the distance of time. This entered into
one's good-byes and made them almost as solemn as
a death-bed farewell. Four months to Australia!
three months' stay there, and four months for the
homeward passage ! What was to happen in eleven
months ? But now one talks of days. " I passed
your house at Ramsgate," wrote a friend of mine,
the captain of a large mail steamer, to me ; "it was
half-past five o'clock in the morning, the blinds of
your bedroom windows were down, and no doubt
you were taking an off-shore cruise. We were doing
a cool fourteen." Just so. His ship was doing a
cool fourteen, and in some thirty days or so from
that date all her passengers would be ashore at
Dunedin or Otago, having measured the parallels of
the two Atlantic Oceans, and every meridian from
Agulhas to the distant Pacific coasts of the Maori.
Thirty-four and thirty-five days to New Zealand !
One cannot weep very bitterly over a parting that
is to interpose between us and those we love a piece
of water so narrowed by time that even when the
voyage is ended we still feel as though within hail of
those left behind.

Very different from " cool fourteens " was progress
in my day — in the sixties, alas 1 so fleetly works the
Scythe, so remorseless is the run of the Sand ! I
very well remember one of the ships I was aboard
of occupying a whole fortnight in beating down

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Channel from the North Foreland to Plymouth
Sound. Such endless goings about ! such distrac-
tion of sea clamour ! Passengers groaning, every
timber straining, every treenail with a shriek of its
own, the pigs under the longboat filling the air with
their lamentations, the water up to a man's waist in
the scuppers, and the vessel herself always most
abominably heeling over on one tack or the other,
plunging viciously and going to leeward like a
balloon under her bands of topsail with the yards
fore and aft. I have a lively recollection of being in
a hired troopship at the back of the Goodwin Sands
through a long, roaring, black November night.
The craft was a thousand-ton ship stuffed full with
raw Irish recruits all deadly sick to the uttermost
man. They lay helpless as logs of wood upon the
deck, and the sailors, to come at the ropes, had to
run over them. Every time the ship went about —
nearly every half-hour, I should think — the poor
soldiers rolled like casks into the lee-scuppers, where
they lay in a mass of floundering figures, too ill even
to be profane. Figure this sort of thing with the
Goodwin Sands close aboard, a night of ink so thick
that a light had to be under your bow to see it, cold
as Nova Zembla — for as Lord Nelson truly said.
Deal and the Downs are the bleakest places in
England — and the wind steadily growing from top-
gallant breeze into a howling gale from the south-
ward and westward.

Not much of the coast scenery of the English
Channel comes into sight in the run down, after the

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tug has cast your ship adrift or your steamer has gone
clear of Dungeness. The one who gets the best sight
of the noble or tender or romantically ugly points of
the coast must be the yachtsman ; after him, possibly,
the coaster ; only that the crew of the collier, of the
little butter-rigged trading schooner, of the barge, or
indeed of any other of the craft whose business it is
for the most part to keep the land aboard, are not
commonly comprised of persons remarkable for
their appreciation of nature. A little brig blowing
leisurely along within cannon shot of the beach may
be accepted as typical. If the old skipper in the tall
hat directs his eyes at the land, it is not to admire
the many beauties he may be abreast of, but to find
out how fast he is going and what the shore has to
tell him in the way of bearings. His old wife, sitting
in the companion-way, continues to darn or knit for
a whole watch together without diverting her gaze
from her work, unless it is to fasten it upon her
husband's pimpled and purple countenance. The
fellow leaning in the dooi*way of the little caboose,
smoking a pipe with its bowl inverted, is in all pro-
bability meditating rather upon the sign of " The
Three Thirsty Sailors " (with which house he is well
acquainted) than upon the sparkling and pretty
picture the town in which that tavern is situated
presents in the crisp morning light as it lies directly
in the wake of his sight.

It must be the yachtsman, then, who knows the
coast as it deserves to be known. He creeps from
port to port in his bland and elegant little fabric of

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Down Channel. 67

yawl or schooner. He is often becalmed for hours
at a stretch opposite some spacious and gleaming
terrace of cliff, or some low foreshore rising with
twenty alternations of hues into a blue atmospheric
perspective of hill. He has the leisure, and, as we
may know by his literature, the taste to dwell with
emotions of delight upon the scores of varying
pictures which the progress of his little ship unrolls
shorewards — a very tapestry of marine colour and
subject.

It must be admitted, however, that there is not
much to look at after Gravesend has been dropped
until you are abreast of Margate and rounding the
bold point of North Foreland, when you have the
whole stretch of Downs under your forefoot. The
pictures from this point are numerous. Of Dover
and Folkestone as towns there is little to be said —
with enthusiasm at all events — when you are in them
and surveying them as an assemblage of precipitous
streets and level rows of houses ; but from the sea
nothing shows more prettily along the whole line of
seaboard down to Penzance. Much is owing to the
magnificent domination of the marble-white heights
of cliffs here. The dim land of France hovering in
a cerulean mirage above the snow-like gleam at the
extremity of the horizon, gives a startling significance
to the majestic natural walls of Dover. It would
seem as though nature had specially constructed this
part of our island home with a view to the theories
and ambitions of those gentry across the way whose
forefathers kept many generations of British

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Admirals riding in the Downs keenly on the look-out.
The fall to the flat plains of Lydd is somewhat
abrupt, as though all the chalk of the immediate
district had been dedicated to Dover and Folkestone.
Sandwich, perhaps, is a more lamentable instance of
the effects of a retreating sea upon the hopes and
prospects of men than Lydd ; yet next to Sandwich
must, I think, stand Lydd as a melancholy example
of the disastrous consequences of too much Ebb.
There is not a more stranded place the wide world
over. Compared with Lydd, Winchelsea is gay,
giddy, and festive. Nevertheless, a man might own
without reluctance to having lingered awhile upon
the water off the miles of billowy shingle to gaze with
mingled pleasure and astonishment at the vast
surface of pebbles motionlessly counterfeiting the
swell of the ocean, and brimming into a distance
which there is little more to define than the
dark square tower of the venerable church of Lydd.
Man here submits himself to the imagination with
something of the desolateness of the seabird. I
figure the lighthouse people as dutiful but spiritless
to a degree ; and the figure of the solitary coastguard
might well pass as Robinson Crusoe masquerading
in the costume of the preventive-man, and keeping
an eager look-out for Friday, who is hourly expected
in his canoe.

Hastings viewed from the sea has but a formal
and insipid appearance : I am speaking of it as a
town. Despite its antiquity there is no glow of
warmth, few or no suggestions of the shading of

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time in the exterior it submits to the seawardly eye.
St. Leonards, in a structural sense, is also defective
in qualities of boldness and tint. More must go to
the production of picturesque effects than bay-
windows and houses of four or five stories. The
Marina is an agreeable lounge, and after the bleak-
ness of the Forelands district the temperature here
might be accepted as quite West Indian. The
sovereignty of the demon of flatness, whose cradle
and whose home must surely be Romney Marsh,
abruptly ends before Hastings heaves into view.
The land is now hilly and swelling, with here and
there features which come very near to being grand
in their way. Fairlight Down is indeed a regal
eminence, and an object of commanding interest and
beauty viewed from the sea.

Eastbourne has the distinctive merit of Beachy
Head. This triumphant rampart of chalk and cliff
rising to a height of nealy six hundred feet, makes
handsome atonement for the defects of the land
about Hythe and Dungeness. One finds another
suggestion of nature's anxiety that Britannia should
sentinel herself, in this noble rise of cliff. By this
time the Channel has made a wide stretch. The
coast of France is seventy miles distant, and, there-
fore, the giant on the look-out hereabouts must be a
head and shoulders taller than the Colossus whose
eye is upon the Dover Straits. What is to be said
of the Sussex shore from Seaford to Selsea Bill ?
Brighton is between, and Newhaven, that dirtiest of
little towns, whose utter and entire dismalness not

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even the memory of *' Mr. Smith," nor yet a slash-
ing wet day, can deepen. Supposing ourselves on
board ship, however, these are places of which we
shall not obtain a glimpse. It would certainly not
be worth a shift of the helm to survey the front of
Brighton town* One must look very close here for
what is picturesque, and then, perhaps, after peer-
ing narrowly, find little that is effective outside some
old wherry bilged in a shaggy nook of cliff. It is
noteworthy that in this country the most popular
" resorts,'* as they are called, are the least pleasantly
situated of all the considerable towns and cities of
the realm. Could anything be more flat and iriste
than the Isle of Thanet ? No resolution to make
the best of what cannot be helped can manufacture
a romantic or engaging vicinity for Dover and
Folkestone. Had George IV. occupied fifty years
in making a choice, he could not have selected a
more barren and inhospitable neighbourhood for
that Brighton which we may take it his presence and
his patronage created out of the Brighthelmstone of
an earlier period.

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CHAPTER IV

DOWN CHANNEL {continued).

Isle of Wight — Cowes — Shipping in the Solent — Bournemouth
— Weymouth and Bridport — Torquay—Plymouth and its
Sound and scenery — Falmouth from Pendennis Castle —
Penzance — Mount's Bay— Newlyn — Cardiff, its docks and
streets.

In the warm months one is readily advised of one's
approach to the Isle of Wight by the white canvas
of yachts hovering in the blue distance like wings
of gossamer. They are the butterflies of the deep,
announcing that summer is at hand or has arrived.
There is something wonderfully proud, yet tender,
too, in the aspect of the southern majestic terraces
of the Isle of Wight. From the summit of St.
Catherine's Hill you command an elevation of hard
upon eight hundred and fifty feet, as though the
coast of France, more distant yet from this point,
must be proportionately watched by some Eye of
Old England, whose giant owner here has stepped a
pace from the mainland and stands, knee-deep and
isolated, gazing.

It is impossible to imagine a set of pictures more
delicate than those the interior of this little gem

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of Channel land offers to the gaze that centres it.
Cowes, divided by its rippling stream of river, I do
regard as the sweetest, toy-like, most charming,
memory-haunting spot in Great Britain. All is
garden-like and of an exquisite refinement. I seem
to find such airy delicacy of atmospheric effect, of
floating fabric, of rooted structure ashore all about
this little bit of island coast as is nowhere else to be
matched — indeed, I may say, as is nowhere else to
be witnessed. The impression left is that of having
surveyed a mass of fairy-like work wrought in ivory.
There is a suggestion of littleness here of an especial
sort of choiceness, with the grace of a dainty pris-
matic radiance over all ; the Solent and Spithead
are little seas; the shipping is little, by which I
mean the shipping that is proper to the island — the
yachts ; the sheer hulks of old line-of-battle ships do
but seem to accentuate with their clumsy looming
forms the charm of minuteness. Heave your ship
to off Ryde, and look at the little town : it has
the appearance of a toy-town incomparably well
finished ; it produces the same sort of fancy you get
at Table Bay, where, though the houses be of the
average size, every dwelling is dwarfed into elf-like
dimensions by the towering mass of Table Moun-
tain, at whose gigantic foot from a distance the
white dwelling-places appear to nestle. The adja-
cency of Portsmouth and of the Southampton
Docks higher up supplies these waters with the
most composite of imaginable sea-pictures, for here
may be seen the British yacht, the British merchant

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man, and the British man-of-war, in the highest
form of development. Our maritime domination is
nowhere better suggested. The crimson cross is
much, but it is the red commercial flag that makes
it everything, and, as though a detail were yet
wanted for the completion of the represented sea
interests of these dominions, there is the gay bunt-
ing of the pleasure craft always at hand. As some
massive leviathan metal structure with five masts
and two funnels, with here and there a dot of red,
where a marine keeps guard, and some admiral's
flag at the fore or mizzen floats into the field of
sunny waters, a noble ocean steamer, fresh from
Southampton Docks, bound to the United States, to
the Cape, to the West Indies, her decks full of
passengers, her appearance out and away more
graceful and but a very little less imposing than that
of the armour-clad, speeds under the warship's stern
for the Solent faster than a gale of wind could blow
a clipper ship along ; hard by, glancing through the
satin-like surface, is a schooner yacht, her canvas of
a milk-white softness, her figure-head burning like a
golden star, her glossy black sides trembling back
the glory lifting off" into them from the sun-touched
waters, through which her keen stem is ripping as a
knife shears through silk. These are but types ;
figure, then, the assemblage of scores of them with
fifty variations of build, of rig, of dimensions — the
torpedo boat, the old collier, a lustrous royal yacht
some North German Lloyd craft, all windows and
wings of steam ! The catalogue cannot be con-
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tinued, but the spectacle is something to live for
ever in the memory.

The woods and hills . of Bournemouth make a
pleasant picture of the town. No nobler expanse of
water could be asked for than the great bay that lies
within the embrace of Hengistbury Head and
Ballard Down. The climate of this place is a note-
worthy feature, but much too much stress, I think,
is laid upon what is termed " the advantage of the
odour of the pine-woods." Few people have suffered
more from rheumatism than I, and I do not scruple
to pronounce pine entirely worthless as a remedial
agent for this disease, whether in the form of
" odours," or in the more defined shape of turpentine
or terebehe. But, nevertheless, Bournemouth may
be honestly termed the best place to reside in, during
winter, on the coast. It is not incessantly raining
there, as at Plymouth ; the wind rarely blows with
an edge ; yet Bournemouth combines with a pleasant
temperature an elevation that lifts its population
above all risk of the obnoxious exhalations of flat
lands and their inevitable marshes.

But we must needs be in a little ship to witness
this scenery. Assuming ourselves to be towing down
Channel, or aboard some big ocean steamer out of
the Thames, we shall most certainly see nothing of
Bournemouth, nor of the rest of the line of coast
that forms the western frame of the extensive bight
down to Durlston Point. Indeed, Portland High
Light is about as much as we may expect to behold
by night, whilst by day there is nothing to look at,

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unless it be a mere film or blob of land, faint as a
fancy, in the remote distance. But aboard a coaster
or a yacht we are at liberty to crawl pleasantly
around, past Swanage and St. Alban's Head into
that large and pleasant bay in which Weymouth is
situated. The coast has a fine curve here, and
though low and flat to the north, rises at Jordan

Off Looc Island. By Henry Moore, R.A.

Hill to a height of a hundred and sixty feet, with an
eastern trend of picturesque cliff, broken and rugged
with steep ravines.

The eye is impressed by the abrupt rises and falls
of the land hereabouts. The best charm, perhaps, of
Weymouth lies in its extrinsic qualities of agreeable
country. What the local guide-book would call
" walks," are very numerous. There are some solid
antiquarian interests also ; the Well of Rodwell, for

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instance, Sandsfoot Castle, one of the defences of
Henry VIII., and contemporaneous with the well-
known castles at Walmer, Deal, and Sandown. In
the churchyard at Wyke Regis lie the remains of
eighty of the people who were drowned in the
wreck of the Abergavenny \n 1805. The loss of this
fine Indiaman is one of the most memorable in the
marine annals. The tradition is preserved fresh and
green to this hour, and I have somewhere read —
though I cannot quote my authority — that in calm
weather, when the water is clear, the remains of the
wreck are visible.

The beauties of the coast thicken and grow richer
as you proceed on your westerly course. Bridport :
a volume might be filled with descriptions of this
district only. There are twenty features of positive
magnificence betwixt Rotherwood and Eggardon
Hill and Lewesdon alone. Then there is the quaint
little town of Charmouth, an ancient Roman station,
and a free borough so long ago as 1320. It is a
very garden viewed from Catherstone. Sailing past
Exmouth — Devonian to the core in scenic beauty —
past little Seaton and Sidmouth, whose harbour, like
others along this line of channel coast, is filled with
sand and rendered useless without hope from the
dredger, and Exmouth, with its shelter of Withycombe
and Woodbury Hills, and Dawlish, one of the most
lovely of the gems which jewel this sea-washed line of
land, and Teignmouth, that, to be viewed aright,
should be beheld when the sun is low in the west,
and when the air is crimson with the expiring beam

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Down Channel. 85

— we heave our little ship to off Torquay, and spend
a long hour in leaning over the side, admiring as
perfect a piece of Channel scenery as mortal eye
could wish to rest on.

The town is a crowd of villages built upon hilly
ground exquisitely vivid with perennial growth.
The guide-books shock the idealistic memories which
one carries away from this place by irreverent talk of
imports, of harbour dues, and other vulgarities of
the commercial life. This is very well when one has
to deal with Southampton, with its fine docks, even
with little, grimy Newhaven and its excellent break-
water ; but the very name of statistics sounds upon
the ear as a sort of violence done to such a fairy-like
spot as Torquay.

But we must push on, and with a glance only at
that opening in the coast which would admit us to
the spectacle of the beauties of Dartmouth, we head
for Plymouth Sound, and let go our anchor for a
little spell inside the Breakwater. My last recollec-
tion of Plymouth is of a night-time of glorious moon-
shine. The planet stood high over the Sound, and
amidst the pear-like haze in which the atmosphere
lay steeping there sparkled the powerful light of the
Eddystone, the gleams on the Catwater side, and a
little hovering constellation of the riding light of
ships. In the heart of the tremulous, greenish,
silver wake of the moon lay the massive, motionless
shapes of two ironclads. The hush of the night was
upon the scene. I could not distinguish the faintest
creeping noise of surf. At intervals some clock

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ashore would strike and set a number of bells
tinkling in the Sound, but seawards the repose was
grave-like, without anything to vex it in the subdued
hum of life floating up to the Hoe, on whose summit
I stood, out of Plymouth town.

Whoever has visited Sydney will witness in
Plymouth and its stretch of waters and adjacent
shores a copy of the noble Australian bay in little.
Drake's Island floats like an emerald in quick-
silver ; the greenery of Mount Edgcumbe, with the
bright and vivid spaces of sward, falls to the very
wash of the water, where it sips the salt. Penlee
Point makes a dark and massive object beyond.
Eastward the point is crowned by the green and
reddish heights of Staddon and Batten Castle.
The scene of Catwater, to as far as Laira Bridge,
has a beauty beyond the power of the pen to
express. The space of green beach, the smacks
hauled up for repair, some old hulk perhaps to be
broken up, a group of quaint cottages, far away
the dark blue of the Dartmoor Hills and ranges
of limestone cliffs, extravagantly quarried ; here is
such a combination as the brush of the artist could
alone convey. From where our little imaginary
ship is lying we see the grass-clad Hoe surmounted
by handsome houses, the spires of churches rising
past them, and a foreground of ironclads, smacks,
full-rigged ships, and ocean steamers, not to men-
tion the little training-brigs, which no nautical eye
can view without delight as a memorial of the
days when ships of the State truly walked the

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Down Channel. 89

waters like things of life, when their vitality was
that of the wind and their grace that of the sea-bird.

Even the Scotch mists which are very unpleasantly
common here will communicate a new element of
beauty to the Sound by the mere effect of revela-
tion. The smother comes rolling down out of a
clear blue sky, and very wetting and intensely dis-
agreeable it is whilst it lasts, but its gradual clear-
ance is a succession of noble hints. Massive green
and reddish heights seem to shoulder their legal
proportions out of the thickness ; the ships ooze
out one by one ; a windy flash of pale sunshine
trembles upon some steel-blue space of water;
then the azure heavens open to the horizon, and
all Plymouth and her Sound lie radiant and laugh-
ing before you.

Falmouth, too, is another of our west-coast ports
whose hundred beauties beggar description. Quit
your little ship and make for Pendennis Castle,
and from that vantage-ground survey the scene,
and you must own, I think, that there is nothing
fairer to be witnessed in all England. It is the
same whether surveyed from lofty summit or from
low foreshore. The summer fields, bearing their
yellow harvest, slope in shining billows of gold
to the dark blue water. The crystal surface of the
creek mirrors the white cottage or the leaning tree
with the delicate glory of reflection that you
notice in an image shining upon a soap-bubble.
Afar the tall hills swell in splendour under the sun,
and blend with the distant azure till their sky-

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lines become an illusion, and one knows not where
the earth ends and the firmament begins. Near to
where your anchor has taken the ground rises the
Black Rock; on the port side is St. Anthony's
Point, rearing a cream-coloured lighthouse, and
clothed with the rich foliage that is everywhere

The Armed Knight Rock, Land's End. By A. Ditchfield.

superabundant. In the Carrick Roads are a number
of craft, some of them very large ships; every
vessel flies a colour, and every colour has its tint
mirrored in the still water upon which the vessels
lie as though bedded in a sheet of glass.

But one must quit the deck for the shore to
obtain anything resembling a satisfying view of

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Falmouth. Pendennis Castle gives you the com-
mand of vision you need. In the north-west the
land is covered with houses ; roofs glow and
windows sparkle ; the inner harbour is gay with
little shipping, with yachts and small steamers;
the Helston Hills are beyond, and far away stand
the phantom Carnmarth Hills. From the beach of
Gyllyng Vaese to the distant Manacle Rock the eye
follows the bright green land as it slopes to the
dark crag and the brown sand. To the right of
you are wide stretches of fields flanked by the glit-
tering brows of the St. Austell Hills, with a sight of
St. Mawes' Creek and its little nestling village, and
further away, past Carrick Point, is the Dodman.

Meanwhile the atmosphere is sweet with the aroma
of a luxuriant vegetation. The perfume of the exotic
plant and of the wild flower is in it, for here is a
country where the melon needs no hothouse. The
wild strawberry grows side by side with the wild
rose; it is the land of plenty, and particularly of
clotted cream.

There is an absence of all conventionalism at
Falmouth and about its district that is soothing and
refreshing in the highest degree. Its moral atmo-
sphere seems tempered by the drab-coloured qualities
of the many members of the Society of Friends who
dwell here. It is somewhat strange that so much
loveliness of seaboard as we find in this part should
be without houses. Is it too far distant for the rich
yachtsmen? There are creeks which are like
glimpses of Paradise. In these land-locked waters

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it is conceivable that there should reign a perpetual
summer. And he who has explored the River Fal
has knowledge of as much fairy-like loveliness of
scenery as any portion of this habitable globe has to
submit to his gaze.

Penzance is an exceedingly quaint little town. It
opens upon you as you round into Mount's Bay, and
is like a finishing touch to the impressions you have
received from the magnificent scenery of the Devon
and Cornwall coasts down to this point. I am not
sure that the run by rail is not more prodigal in its
yield of memories of beauty than the coastwise trip ;
for ashore, as you travel along, it is one moment
some river shining with summer glory, then league-
long stretches of blue moorland closing upon green
and yellow distances, then a little sheet-like space of
lake or arm of water mirroring perhaps a boat half
full of people indolently rowing ; then a sudden rent
in the green land, with a glad disclosure of bright
blue sea beyond ; and always the locomotive is wind-
ing you through acres of swelling, tree-covered land,
past noble bays and dark and frowning cliffs, with
here and there a sight of some wharf, at which a
little cluster of colliers are swinging their cargoes in
and out. The scene from the esplanade at Penzance
must, I think, be held out and away more romantic
than when the picture is viewed from the water.
This, to be sure, is a matter of opinion ; I write from
my own impressions. I have come ashore and stood
looking seawards, and found myself charmed to a
degree I was certainly insensible of when aboard.

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The hills, rich in vegetation, which back the town,
make a fine setting for the houses. The little island
called St. Michael's Mount, with its stronghold of a
house on top of it, is rendered a very delicate
creation by distance. As you look out upon the
ocean there are the lofty Marazion Hills upon your
left ; the town of Marazion lies in a white huddle at
the eastern foot of the range, and the dark blue of
Cudden Point goes stealing and melting into the
silver azure of the Lizard district. To the right of
you the coast shows in green, and gold, and yellow,
and down upon it, not very far distant from Pen-
zance, are clustered the singular structures of little
Newlyn, with the odder and quainter Mouse Hole
further on.

I have a very clear recollection of Newlyn.
Viewed from afar it is a really exquisite picture, with
its grey-white structures standing out upon the
background of softly shadowed, wooded slopes. It
might belong to the sixteenth century in respect of
modern scientific appointments. It knows nothing
of drainage ; it is without gas and without pave-
ments. When I was at Newlyn it had a population
of between 3000 and 4000 people, the males of whom
were principally employed in the mackerel and
pilchard fisheries. As mere sights one should be
very well satisfied to have seen Penzance and New-
lyn In the summer-time the hills and the district
round about, rich in the beauties of the harvest, are
a perpetual feast to the eye. There is no magic in
ink to reproduce the colours, the shadows, the play

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of light, the effects of the moonbeam in this part of
the English coast. Cornwall, I think, must be the
despair of the painter in prose. One can only look
and dream ; the most eloquent expression of one's
sensations must prove but the most flippant imper-
tinence in the face of the truth.

Taking Cardiff as our final port, I own it is not
without pleasure that I find it time to shift my helm
for the prosaics of that remarkable town of docks.
The mind, almost wearied with romantic splendour
of the coast, long after that point has been rounded
where old England, in the name of the Land's End,
expires in a final effort of two or three rocks, turns
with honest hope of refreshment to a part of the
British foreshore that is without grace, and whose
interests are entirely human. Whoever is ac-
quainted with Cardiff can talk with melancholy
conviction of one immensely long street, which, of a
Saturday night, is crowded in parts almost to suffo-
cation by processions of every species of human
being, whose legs remain unwearied even after
midnight has struck. Here may possibly be en-
countered representatives of all the Jacks in the
world, from China to Peru. Humanly speaking,
then, Cardiff is of some interest ; otherwise, there
is but little of it that the memory will much care to
preserve. It is true that St. John's is a fine old
church, and the castle has been made a very won-
derful interior of by Lord Bute, whose father, in
creating the docks, created Cardiff. But one must
go to those same docks to be entertained. There is

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no scenery within the reach of a walk round about
Cardiff; all is business and hurry. It is not hills
and lakes, crystal rivers and enamePd meads, but
ironmasters and coalfactors, shipowners and ship-
brokers, timber merchants and attorneys. Sup-
posing one's little ship to have been docked, a walk
to the end of the pier will enable one to obtain a
view of the place. The scene is extraordinarily full
of vitality. The eye bends carelessly upon the
Somersetshire coast looming somewhat vaguely
across the grey sea ; upon the brown heaps of the
Flat Holms, and the Steep Holms, and Bream's
Down, and upon the towering acclivity of Penarth •
Head, from whose church you may look forth, from
an elevation of about two hundred and fifty feet
above the ocean line, upon the distant Welsh hills,
where the valley of the Taff divides Garth Moun-
tain from Caerphilly. But when the gaze comes to
the docks the attention is promptly arrested. You
witness a vast forest of masts, and yards, and
funnels, intricate as a cobweb with the complexities
of standing and running rigging, and gaudy with the
flags of all nations. Tugs are plying, dredgers are
working, sailors are chorussing, locomotives puffing,
and the offshore wind is charged with odours of the
produce of the world. It is to pass from the
romance of nature to the romance of human in-
dustry to arrive at such a scene as this after the line
of coast we have been glancing at as we came along.
There are some noble passages of district in the
shores which form the Bristol Channel, and from

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St. David's Head, or, say, from Milford Haven, to
Barry Island, there is much to be seen to deepen the
delights of a summer cruise. But it dwells most
upon the memory as a foreshore of business. It is
not easy to dissociate it from Swansea, with its
docks ; from this same Cardiff at which we have
halted ; from Newport, that infant giant of a place,
and from those gates of the Avon — Portishead, and
the Avonmouth Dock. But enough has been said.
To proceed now would be to land us in a very waste
of dock statistics, than which I should say there is
nothing, unless it be the Tonnage Question, more
profoundly uninteresting.

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CHAPTER V.

THE WIGHT AND THE SOLENT SEA.

Southampton Water in the early part of the
yachting season, before the cruisers have gone to sea
and the western regattas have attracted the racing
fleet to the sailing matches in other ports, presents an
aspect grateful especially to the yachtsman, but
which cannot fail to make glad every heart that loves
the sea. The craft have been hibernating like the
chrysalis throughout the colder months. Stript of
every rope and spar, they have lain on the mud of
the Itchen shore, or at Gosport, where their denuded
masts show in the winter like a thicket of dead tree-
stumps. It is now July, and, like the butterfly, they
appear in all their proper garb to sport in their own
element. As the ebb-tide runs swiftly past, they
seem to strain on their anchors as if they would be
free to go with it to the open sea, and there frisk and
frolic with their old playmates, the wild sea-waves.
The hull that spent the winter high and dry on the
cold, cheerless shore, now new-blacked, sits pleasantly
on the stream. The varnish no longer disfigures the
deck, which shows an immaculate white. Figure-
heads and brasses glisten like precious metal in the
sun's rays, and the slender topmasts slowly wave to

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the summer breeze as the boats rock gently on the
water.

It is a graceful sight, this fleet of yachts lying
between Southampton and Hythe piers as close as
they can with room to swing. Here are steamers,
whose burthen would suggest a commercial employ-
ment, but whose real use is declared by their graceful
lines and man-of-war smartness. Some of them are
known in the Spanish main and beneath the South-
ern Cross. Cruising schooners there are, and yawls
and cutters, that have traversed great oceans during
many seasons, though they look as fresh as if they had
but lately parted company with the stocks. Here also
are bold little cutters, in which the landsman will
tell you that you could not '* swing a cat," but on
which practical amateur seamen have weathered
many a gale in the Channel and the ** Bay,*' and are
ready if needs be to do so again. Here are some of
the heroines of past racing seasons challenging com-
parison with formidable new-built boats, yet untried,
but of which much is spoken and much is hoped,
for the designer has exhausted his art upon them
under a commission from an aspirant to racing
honours, who will be content with any cost provided
his vessel cannot be beaten. Here lies, the cynosure
of all eyes, a cutter which before many days will sail
bravely across the North Atlantic sea to make a bold
endeavour to bring home again the Cup won by the
America f and since so jealously guarded by the
centre-board vessels, which show no desire to come
hither for more. From yacht to yacht, and from

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 105

the fleet to the shore, steam launches, gigs, cutters,
and dingeys, are busily plying, for greetings have to
be exchanged amongst those who meet here annually,
and stores brought aboard. The afternoon train also
has brought down owners released from business or
from pleasures not less wearying, and guests fortu-
nate in the prospect before them, fortunate in friend-
ship which will stand the severest test known in
social intercourse, a lengthened sojourn in the close
companionship of a yachting cruise.

When evening falls, the tall spars look taller in
the growing gloom, burgees are hauled down, and
anchor lights begin to show in the deepening twilight.
Down the water those of Calshot brightly gleam.
The north-western sky, in the direction of the Test's
mouth, where in old days the great logs of trees
felled in the forest used to lie awaiting towage to
Portsmouth, gives promise of sailors' weather. A
little later, the yachts' fairy lights are all aglow in a
grove of masts and shrouds but dimly seen. Cheery
sounds of mirth are carried over the water from many
a deck. From a distant schooner, a girl's sweet
voice comes blended with the notes of her guitar.
From the forecastle of a nearer vessel is heard the
muffled music of a band such as only performs in a
yacht's forecastle. The crew have leave to make
merry to-night in their boyish, delightful way, for to-
morrow they sail. They will drop down the water
with the morning's ebb, to seek the open sea beyond
the Needles, and then to go wherever pleasure may
lead.

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io6 The British Seas.

It is a time for reverie. Perhaps the mind will
travel back to the days when this scene of present
peace and pleasure knew bloodshed, rapine, and
war. It must have been somewhere near the present
site of the Docks, that Canute, after the capture by
storm of the old town, had his regal chair brought
down to the edge of the Trianton, to prove in a
practical manner that he really could not control the
ebb and flow, whatever might be the view of his
sycophant courtiers as to his power in that direction.
One wonders whether he himself was not a little
more disappointed, when his ancles were moistened
by the disobedient flood, than the histories of our
youth would make us believe. It certainly indicated
some degree of chagrin to refuse to wear his crown,
and to send it ** to be set upon Christ's head at
Winchester.*' Old Hanton town, which Canute and
his Danes captured, was sacked in the wars of
Edward the Third's reign by a party of marauders
from Genoa. Stow gives a quaint narrative of this
event : —

**The fourth of October, fiftie galleys, well manned and
furnished, came to Southampton about nine o'clock, and sacked
the towne, the townsmen running away for feare ; by the breake
of the next day, they which fled, by the help of the countrie
thereabout came against the pyrates and fought with them, in
the which skirmish there were slaine to the number of three
hundred pyrates, together with their captaine, the King of
Italie's Sonne. To this young man the French king had given
whatsoever he got in the kingdome of England, but he being
beaten down, cried * rancow ; ' notwithstanding, the husbandman
laid on him with his clubbe until he had slaine him, speaking
these words : ' Yea,' (quoth he), * I know full well thou art a
Francon, and therefore shalt thou dye.' For he understood not
his speech, neither had any skill to take gentlemen prisoners

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 109

and to keepc them for their ransomme. Therefore the residue
of these gennewayes, after they had set the town on fire suid
burnt it up quite, spedde to their galleys, and in their flying
some of them were drowned, and after this the inhabitants of
the towne compassed it about with a greate wall."

Considerable parts of this ** greate wall " are still
to be seen, buried for the most part (the Bar Gate is
a notable exception) in the slums of the modern town.
There was, until quite recently, a good view from
the water of the fine old Bridewell fortress ; but that
has been interrupted by the interposition of a ware-
house, which no doubt may prove commercially
useful, but is not a satisfactory substitute for the
picturesque remains which it hides.

Southampton is indebted for its popularity as a
yachting centre to the proximity of the Isle of Wight.
Indeed, to all ports of the Solent, that famous isle
has always been '* et decus et praesidium," since the
far-oif days when the Phoenician mariners, and,
after them, the Grecian galleys and ships of Armorica,
brought thither the merchandise of the Mediterranean
to exchange it for the tin of the Cornish mines. At
a later time, Drayton thus sings its praises : —

" Of all the southern isles, the first in Britain's grace,
For none of he accompt so neare her bosom stand,
'Twixt Penwith*s furthest point and Goodwin's quechy sand ;
Both for her seat and soyle that's farre before another,
Most justly she accounts Great Britain for her mother.'' *

And in our time the Wight has secured the
warmest admiration of Sir Walter Scott, who has
left on record the impression it made upon a mind
' ** Polyolbion." Song ii.

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I lo The British Seas.

pre-eminently appreciative of lovely scenes in his
description of it in the ** Surgeon's Daughter : *' —
"That beautiful island, which who once sees never
forgets, through whatever part of the world his future
path may lead him." To one sailing from South-
ampton to Cowes, when abreast of the Calshot Spit,
a comprehensive view is presented of so much of the
Wight as is washed by the Solent Sea. Seen from
this point the general character of the island is flat,
but the Southern Downs rise high in the blue
distance to relieve a landscape otherwise tame. For
it must be confessed that the point just suggested as
one from which the island should be viewed, is
recommended by the extent rather than the beauty
of the scene displayed. The " fair isle " is always
fair, but to appreciate its majestic aspects you bear
away to sea beyond Hurst Castle and the Needles.
Not yet, however, for you will have caught a distant
glimpse of the Roads of Cowes, sufficient to compel
a nearer view. The Roads are occupied by a fleet of
yachts, such as nowhere else in the wide world
assembles. Great steamers, which it is hard to
believe serve the luxurious but wholesome pleasures
of individuals. Sailing yachts of every size and rig,
designed some for racing speed, others for the ocean
voyage, gay with bright and varied bunting, amongst
which is predominant the white ensign (which the
vessels of the Yacht Squadron alone are privileged to
fly), here cluster round the great hull of the ship of
war, whose presence amongst the graceful craft that
fill the Roads, indicates the near neighbourhood of

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 113

the monarch herself. The "yellow leopards of
England,*' extended by the breeze from the main of
one of the royal yachts, proclaims that there is a
prince aboard who loves the sea as Britannia's princes
should. Time was when Cowes was a commercial
port of importance, and as such, knew palmy days.
A brisk trade with the American plantations in their
early age was here maintained. At a later period,
good profit was made in provisioning the ships of
war, and large fleets of merchantmen would lie off
the Medina, waiting for the wind to take them down
Channel or for the convoy promised from Portsmouth,
Those days are gone, but Cowes is famous still, for it
is par excellence the place of tryst and tournament for
yachts, and the Yacht Squadron, if it be proud and
exclusive, is the chief of yacht clubs. The Club
occupies the old blockhouse fort, on the west of the
Medina, which was built in the reign of Henry VIII.
Another, similar, stood upon the eastern point, which
has long since disappeared. These were deemed
very formidable in their day, and Leland said of
them that they were wont to " roar in great thunder
where Newport enters stately Wight." *

To-day we see Cowes at its best and brightest, for
it is the morning of a great event — a race for a
Queen's Cup. The rising sun saw the crews busily
at work upon the racing craft, weighing anchors and
stowing them below, sending ashore gigs and
dingeys laden with spare spars and cabin tables.
Sails have been uncoated and set with anxious care
* Leland, " Cygnca Cantio,*' v. 560.

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114 The British Seas.

— one reef earing rove in the expectation of a breeze
likely to freshen as the day grows older. For
though it has been a morning of dazzling bright^
ness, occasional catspaws now fitfully ruffle the
water, and sundogs stream down from the fleecy
clouds, and there are other signs of wind not lost
on the wary skipper. At present there is just
enough to stretch the wings of the competing ships,
some of which are already reaching on and oif in
the neighbourhood of the mark-boat, awaiting the
signal to prepare, the sails meanwhile being criti-
cally watched by the mate, who directs from time to
time yet another pull on the halyard or sheet. As
the time appointed for the start approaches, the
racing fleet gathers closer, the vessels now running
before the wind with sheets pinned to ease the
pace, now gibing, now wending. The premonitory
gun is heard, and each skipper is intent upon the
other's movements, striving for the weather gauge
and place of vantage. Two vessels are luffing
with this design, and another, sailing obliquely
too near the line, is observed from the castle to
have passed it. With grief and chagrin she sees
her recall numeral hoisted and pays dearly for
her rashness. Ere she can come about and take
a station behind the line the signal is fired for the
start. Her competitors are away like hounds from
the leash, and have left her at a disadvantage which
good fortune and good seamanship will with diffi-
culty retrieve. The latter may do much in this earlier
part of the race, for it is a dead beat to the wind-

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ward and Lymington Spit. This is not regretted
by those who, like ourselves, are following the fast
racers on vessels less fleet in the wind. The tide
serving, all work the island shore past Egypt Point.
To the west, beyond this point, is Gurnet Bay,
between which and the mainland opposite at Leap,
there is said to have existed in very old times
(that is to say where history and fable blend, so
that it is impossible to separate them), a drj-, or at
any rate, a fordable connection. An obscure passage
in Diodorus Siculus, whose information with regard
to the geography of Britain was probably both
scanty and vague, is responsible for a good deal
of bold speculation and heated controversy upon
the subject of Victis having been an isthmus at a
period within the range of tradition. That a branch
from one of the Roman highways led to the Hamp-
shire shore at Leap is pretty well established.
That the tin was conveyed to the coast by this
road is probable enough ; that it was conveyed to
the Isle of Wight is certain, for it has been found
in considerable quantities along the line of the
old Roman road, which ran from Gurnet t Bay
through Newport to Puckaster. If there is any-
thing in etymology, we may safely conjecture that
Stansore Point was that of the departure of the
tin from the mainland. After all this it remains
an open question whether it was carried by boat
or not, and that with a strong bias of probability
in favour of the boat. Bede thus states what he
had heard of the Isle of Wight : — ** It is situate

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ii8 The Brihsh Seas.

opposite the division of the South Saxons and the
Gewissae, being separate from it by a sea, three
miles over, called the Solente. In this narrow
sea, the two sides of the ocean, which flow round
Britain from the immense Northern Ocean, daily
meet and oppose one another beyond the mouth of
the river Homelea, which runs into that narrow
sea from the land of the Jutes, which belong to
the country of the Jewissae ; after this struggling
together of the two seas, they return into the
ocean from whence they came."* The historian
thus accounts for the well-known phenomenon of
the double flood in the Solent; a tradition that
the island had once been a part of the mainland
could hardly have escaped mention by him, had
any such existed in his time.

But this has been a digression. We are follow-
ing the now scattered fleet of racers down the
western arm of the Solent. The promise of the
morning is fulfilled, and the wind blows every
minute with greater force. Each squall shows
more strength than its predecessor, and the riplets
swell to small but angy waves as the frequent
gusts harass the water. The sky, too, wears
a threatening aspect, and is loaded with great
clouds rolling up and over one another. One
vessel has lost her bowsprit, and, bearing up dis-
consolately, runs home to her moorings. None
carry topsails now, but all are under snug canvas
long before the turning-point seaward is rounded.
* Bede, Ecclesiast. Hist., iv. i6.

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 1 2 1

As we hold on our way to sea, we pass through the
fleet; the vessels running home for the Brambles
before a spanking breeze, some regain positions
they had lost in beating to windward.

Standing in on the port tack for Lymington
River, you must needs go about when still far
from the shore, for great banks of mud now choke
the estuary. Yet there was a time when it was
free enough to expose the old town to much haras-
sing from French pirates and freebooters, who twice
set it on fire. At the beginning of the last cen-
tury, great ships (as vessels of seven or eight
hundred tons were then considered) found easy
access to its wharves. Now even the once famous
saltpans are forgotten. Repelled by Lymington
Spit, our vessel heads for Yarmouth, and there it
is well to bring up, unless you can carry the tide
through the Needles. There is safe anchorage in
Yarmouth Roads, and at times also a rolling swell.
It was here the Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles
the Second) anchored his little fleet, when he
landed his handful of loyal Hampshire men to
make a bold but bootless attempt to release his
father from Carisbrooke, where Hammond, his
favourite chaplain's nephew, was his gaoler. The
King was afterwards on parole at Newport, while
negotiations were proceeding with the Parliament,
both the negotiations and the King being jealously
watched by the chiefs of the army. When it
seemed that there would indeed be a treaty of
Newport, these gentlemen resolved to act. In

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1 22 The British Seas.

Christmas week, 1648, ** on a night of storm and
rain, Ewer beset His Majesty's lodgings with strange
soldiers and a strange state of readiness, the smoke of
their gun-matches poisoning the air of His Majesty's
apartment itself; and on the morrow morning, at
eight of the clock, calls out His Majesty's coach,
moves off with His Majesty in grim reticence and
rigorous military order to Hurst Castle, a small soli-
tary stronghold on the opposite beach there." ' It
was a grave offence that coming together of the
King and the Commons,"and both must be punished.
To the King, the lonely wind-swept fortress, at the
end of the projecting beach opposite Yarmouth,
proved but a stage on the way to Whitehall. Colonel
Pride was deputed to bring the House of Commons
to its senses.

Having weathered Hurst Castle, we are now in
the deep and narrow channel between Colwell, Tot-
land, and Alum Bays, and the Shingles. The rush-
ing ebb is ruffled by an opposing wind. The
bowsprit occasionally dips into the crest of a sea,
and the water coming through the scuppers forward
swishes along the lee-deck, as we bowl along under
a single reef. There is an appearance of a freshen-
ing breeze outside, and the prudent skipper thinks
well to haul down a second reef. Therefore on our
next tack, the jib is laid a- weather, the stay- sail
lowered, and we lie head to wind. The weather-
topping lift being hauled taut, the orders are given,
as only a skipper can give orders, " Ease away the
> Carlyle's *• Cromwell," 3.

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 1 23

peak-purchase," — " Steady there," — " Stand by the
throat halyards," — " Lower away a little," — *' Belay
all." Every available hand is now put to the fall
of the reef tackle. Meanwhile, the mainsail flaps
and flounders in the breeze, and resents with loud
roars of anger the effort which is being made to
reduce its dimensions. But with a " One, two,
three — haul ! " they make fast, and in a moment
later have tied the reef-points. Again the mainsail
is peaked, the staysail set with a single reef, the
vessel's head pays off from the wind, and again she
is forging on her way. Clear of the Needles, the
view ranges to the west beyond Christchurch Bay
and Durlston Point to St. Alban*s Head. To the
east, the coast of the island runs away to the tower-
ing height of St. Catherine's. Given a bright sky,
a fresh summer breeze, and a white edging of foam
at the base of the cliflFs, the sea thundering against
the Needle rocks as if to bring them, like old Lot's
wife, to ruin, and you will confess yourself well re-
paid for your beat down the Solent, and a wet
thrash through the Needles.

Having weathered the Needles, and heading for
St. Catherine's, the land is not well discerned after
Scratchall's Bay : the stupendous Main Bench runs
inland to form the bay of Freshwater, and is but
dimly seen ; but as you draw towards the headland,
beyond Brixton and Chale Bays, the land again
comes into nearer view, and the general features of
the Blackgang Chine are perceptible. This in-
terrupts the cliff, a little to the west of St. Cath-

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124 The British Seas.

erine's, in a place where it is over eight hundred feet
in height. Two converging chasms join to form
one declivitous crumbling gorge, from which, after
heavy rains, the water is projected over the lower
line of cliff in a cascade which falls unbroken for
seventy feet. The seaboard is encumbered with
huge masses of rock lying pell-mell in the wildest
confusion. When the angry seas break furiously
upon these, the thought occurs that the place was
meant for shipwreck. Here, at any rate, in 1836,
the Clarendon^ West Indiaman, drove ashore in a
gale of wund and was lost with all hands. To
describe, with the detail they merit, the majestic
cliffs and commanding promontories of this south-
ern coast of the island ; the still loftier downs that
rise behind ; the terraced towns nestling between the
highlands and the sea ; the chines that break the
cliff at intervals, presenting at times the aspect of
weird and awful chasms, at others of ravines leafy
and picturesque, — to describe all this would, if done
by an expert hand, form the material of an interest-
ing book. Much has been written of the Undercliff
alone, the result of a primeval landslip between the
headlands of St. Catherine's and Dunnose, which
has left the hill-side standing sheer for miles, like a
w^all of the Titans' building, while below lies a
wrecked but beauteous mingling of rock and sward
and water, the victory of nature asserting itself over
chaos.

North-east of the Undercliff and the town of
Ventnor, Dunnose is reached, the seaward abutment

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 1 25

of the towering heights of St. Boniface. " Between
this and the Culver stretches the open bay of
Sandown. Off this part of the coast, especially
with a wind off shore and a falling barometer, the
mariner is warned to be on the alert for dangerous
squalls blowing from the land. Terrific blasts
descend from the uplands and bring destruction to
the unwary. Thus perished off Dunnose, on a
bright day in March, 1878, the ill-fated Eurydice.
At half-past three in the afternoon she was seen
from Ventnor by many who watched her with
admiration, standing under all plain sail for her last
headland, homeward bound with her crew of bright
youths, ripe for their country's service, and now
yearning for home after long absence. Before four
o'clock, when almost in sight of port, she was struck
by one of those awful squalls for which this coast is
noted. This, before sail could be shortened, bore
her over on her starboard broadside. The water
rushed in through the open ports ; she never righted,
but in a moment sank, two persons only out of two
hundred and fifty being saved. Never did a ship
meet so heartrending a fate. Assuredly she was
named in an ill-omened hour, for her lot was that of
Orpheus' wife : —

" Jamque pedera referens casus evaserat omnes
Redditaque Eurydice superas veniebat ad auras,

En I iterum crudelia retro
Fata vocant."

(ViRG., Georg., iv.)

Sandown Bay terminates in the bold escarpment

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126 The British Seas.

of the Culver, a dizzy height, upon the face of which
the samphire-hunter to this day pursues the calling
the awful perils of which are described by Edgar
in the fourth act of " King Lear," a description
which many believe was suggested by a visit paid by
the poet to the Isle of Wight. Leaving the for-
midable Culver astern, our course lies across White
Cliff Bay and east of Bembridge Ledge. With the
Nab on the starboard quarter, we catch a glimpse
of the land-locked Brading Haven. In the effort to
recover this from the sea's domain Sir Hugh Middle-
ton expended much money and energy, with less
success than attended him in his New River ven-
ture.

But little now remains to complete our little
cruise. Passing under the lee of ^the lightship on
the Warner sands, we keep to weather of the fort,
then head to windward, leave the Noman sands
on the port hand, and come to anchor off Ryde.
A line of low-lying forts breaks at intervals that flat
shore that stretches from Gilkicker Point to Hayling
Island. A little inland rise the frowning Portsdown
Hills. We can discern, between the grim batteries
of Sallyport and Blockhouse, the point that the
fortifications which meet the eye on every turn on
land and water are designed jealously to cover — the
narrow entrance to the great harbour, which for
centuries has been the nursery of Britain's naval
prowess. Within, on the Gosport side, the tapering
spars of the Victory and the Wellington are plainly
seen, lit up by the slanting rays of the declining sun.

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The Wight and the Solent Sea. 129

and recall the imperishable associations of the place.
Hard by, on the eastern side, lies the pleasant
Southsea Common, where in old days the strength
of England was marshalled when invasion threat-
ened ; while in the intervening space the racing
fleet is scattered over the Solent, beating from the
Warner to the Brambles against a strong headwind
— so strong, indeed, that topmasts bend and creak,
and ropes are strained to the utmost as the vessels
gracefully yield to the breeze, and dipping the lee
rail in the rushing sea display on the weather side
the burnished copper of their hulls. A yacht-race
is not always to the swift, and cautious seamanship
will often count for more than natural speed sailing
on a wind. As we watch the contest a sad disaster
overtakes the leading schooner. .Her foretopmast,
overtfied in such a wind by the great foretopsail she
has been carrying, has parted at the cap and fallen
across the foresail gaff. Grievous the havoc and fled
the hope of victory. Her more prudent rival, with
sail clewed up, shoots by, jubilant at the other's
mishap.

*' Ilia noto citius volucrique sagitta
Terrain fugit, et portu se condidit alto."

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CHAPTER VI

ST. GEORGE'S CHANNEL.

I HAD not originally intended to contribute a chapter
to the present series of papers. It happens, how-
ever, that our distinguished contributor, Mr. Clark
Russell, has not felt able to go further than the
estuary of the Severn in his description of the coast,
though he has promised to resume it later on the
south-eastern side of the island. Other contributors
will deal with Scotland ; but the publisher has
requested me, as a Lancashire man, to write upon
St. George's Channel. I wish that my knowledge of
the coast had been more recent and more complete.
Unluckily I have no personal knowledge of the coast
of South Wales, and shall therefore frankly borrow
the descriptions of others. North Wales is, for me,
bound up with the recollections of youth ; the first
sands I ever galloped over w^ere the sands at Rhyl,
and the first water I ever swam in was that of the
Menai Straits. The Irish Sea was visible as a long
thin line of silver, low on the evening sky, from the
wild moorlands where I used to wander in my boy-
hood. On my early excursions to Scotland, I used
to go a roundabout way by Liverpool in order to

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vSy. George s Channel. 131

enjoy the pleasure of the sea voyage from that
place to Glasgow. Still it is one of the regrets of
my life not to have made better use of the Irish
Sea when I lived near it — a regret intensified just
now, when it has become a duty to write about it.
I learned the rudiments of sailing on the Lanca-
shire coast, but if it were all to come over again,
there is not a nook or a corner from the Severn
to the Solway that I would not explore ; and it may
be affirmed quite seriously that a lad would under-
stand his *' Odyssey " better after knocking about
through good and bad weather in a little yacht than
by much fumbling of his lexicon.

The Irish Sea is a sort of little Mediterranean,
having land at least on three sides of it, for Scot-
land would block the view to the north (if one
could see so far), notwithstanding the escape to the
ocean by the narrow north channel between Fair
Head in Ireland and the redoubtable Mull of
Kintyre. To the south the exit is much more
open, yet between Cardigan Bay and the British
Channel the land curves towards Ireland as if St.
David's Head had a wish to meet Carnsore Point
across fifty miles of sea. The basin, which is more
specially called the Irish Sea, as distinguished from
the two Channels, approaches more nearly to the
circular form in consequence of the eastward retreat
of the land on the coast of Lancashire and its
advance in North Wales, so conveniently terminated
by Anglesea, which makes the distance across to
Dublin less than half what it is from the Lanca-

K 2

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132 The British Seas.

shire river Ribble. This little Mediterranean has
two islands, or more properly one island only, for
Anglesea is never felt to be an island when seen
from the water, and is, in fact, no more than a
broad promontory cut off from the mainland by a
narrow channel that modern practical science has
twice easily bridged over. The Isle of Man is a
genuine island, well set in the midst of its own sea
a little to the north, with a handsome margin of
w^ater all round it, and this bit of isolated territory,
once a kingdom, rules rather grandly with its moun-
tainous mass over its own expanse of waves. I con-
fess that it has sometimes been a matter of almost
personal regret to me, as a Lancashire man, that
our little Mediterranean was not an archipelago,
studded over with islands like the Cyclades; indeed,
if we could but invite some of the Hebrides and
Orkney Islands, so cold and uncomfortable up there
in the north, just to come and settle amongst us in
the Irish Sea, the climate would seem to them, by
contrast, almost delightful, and for us there would be,
in the way of sketching and boating, a positive in-
crease of happiness. When I think of that lovely
inland sea of Japan, with its numerous beautiful
islands, a place to wander over endlessly in a boat, I
feel a little dissatisfied with our own — ^yet it has at
least a great variety of coast, and its waves wash
three kingdoms and a principality.

The geography of the coast of South Wales may be
remembered by its three principal bays — Caermar-
then, St. Bride's, and Cardigan. The first is about

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sixteen miles across at the entrance ; the second,
thirteen ; and the third, sixty-four. The coast on
the whole is dangerous, so that vessels give it a wide
berth when their destination permits ; and yet this
dangerous coast has an opening that makes one of
the largest and most perfect harbours in the world.
The north side of the Bristol Channel is interesting
for us by artistic associations. Turner was in this
region when still in his youth, before the close of
the eighteenth century. Some of his earliest work
was done on the banks of the river Towy. In
our day the name of Kidwelly has become famous
in the art-world as the subject of one of Mr. Haden's
etchings.

Tenby is one. of the most fortunately situated
places on the shores of Great Britain, with rocky
heights, a castle, and a wide view over bay, and
island, and shore. The situation is at the same
time sheltered and commanding. It is sheltered
from the south-west winds that beat into St.
Bride's Bay across an unlimited expanse of sea
(for Ireland is just too far north to protect it), whilst
the east winds arrive at Tenby after crossing England
and South Wales and troubling Caermarthen Bay.
For shelter it is almost comparable to Oban, and the
climate (being about three hundred and thirty miles
more to the south) is more temperate. If this
region reminds one of Western Scotland by its bays
and islands, it carries the resemblance still further
by the possession of a salt-water loch — a genuine
loch that would have borne the title if it had been

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north of the Clyde. There is nothing like Milford
Haven in England or France. When nature under-
takes to do anything in the way of engineering, she
does it supremely well. The Menai Straits are a
better maritime canal than Panama could be made
with twice the sixty millions that it has cost. There
is no artificial harbour like Milford Haven, with its
** thirteen roadsteads, affording anchorage to the
largest ships,*' its fifteen creeks and bays, and its
fifteen to nineteen fathoms of water almost every-
where. Guarded by its sheltering hills, the fleets of
England might rest at anchor on its waters. Such
a haven is a great national possession ; it is unfor-
tunate only that circumstances have not favoured
the growth of some populous commercial city there,
such as Manchester, which is now creating a sea-
port for itself by a vast expenditure. The forces of
Nature make natural harbours ; commercial or mili-
tary reasons determine the sites of cities. The town
of Milford is remarkable as being one of the very
few which have been built by a single human will,^
as ancient cities were sometimes founded by the fiat
of a despotic sovereign. It is easier to build a
tow^n than to induce a population to settle there.
Milford has not been very prosperous, but now it is
said to be brightening, and there is some animation
in its once almost deserted streets. There were but
three streets originally, and yet too many. Even
old historical Pembroke, at the end of one of the

1 That of the Hon. C. F. Greville, nephew of Sir William
Hamilton, the diplomatist.

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SL Georges Channel, 137

great bays of Milford Haven, is said to be a dull
place, but it has the artistic and antiquarian
interest of a great historical castle whose ruins
occupy a promontory between two inlets of the sea.
Salt-water lochs are, however, very rarely compar-
able to fresh-water lakes for the amenities of beauti-
ful landscape, and Milford Haven has the usual
characteristics of treeless hills and shores left deso-
lote by the receding tides.

Yachtsmen know little of the coast of Wales,
which is so dangerous that they give it a wide berth.
I am fortunate in being able to quote from a vivid
description of its perils. Mr. Richardson, of Bala,
corresponded with me many years ago on the subject
of lifeboats, and sent me a narrative, which is very
little known, of ** The Cruise of the Challenger Life-
boat, and Voyage from Liverpool to London in
1852." He coasted all Wales as far as Mumbles'
Head, close to Swansea Bay, and kept much
nearer to the land than a yacht would have done,
as the Challenger was, in fact, a catamaran, drawing
only nine inches of water with twenty persons on
board, and able to go through the wildest seas
with no risk except that of a wetting. The only
inconvenience of Mr. Richardson's narrative is that
he travelled from north to south, and we are going
northwards. The boat, or catamaran, was rigged
with two lug-sails and a jib, and her want of keel
was remedied to some extent by centre-boards.

The Challenger left Caernarvon in very wild
weather, towards the end of April. A sloop at sea

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had her main-sail blown to ribands the same
morning. The Challenger herself was obliged, five
times, to let everything fly, that the sails might not
be torn to pieces. '* The coast was rocky and dan-
gerous, the sea perfectly white with foam, and the
Welsh mountains enveloped in clouds, with the scud
whirling round and past, flying away to seaward.
At times the sun shone brightly, and the scenery-
was magnificent.*' Near Porthdynllaen, the sea was
breaking furiously on a lee-shore, and the Challenger
nearly got upon the rocks, but she reached a place of
shelter behind a rude breakwater. At the western
entrance of the port there was a sunken rock called
the Chwislan, which at that time was not marked.
In the afternoon they ascended a hill behind the
village, *'and walked across the isthmus to view the
sea on the opposite side, and visit a remarkable
subterranean passage which its waves had excavated
some distance towards the centre of the mountain,
which then breaking out, wash up its sides, occasion-
ing extraordinary sounds."

Boats with a very small draught of water often
do things alarming to spectators on the shore. On
leaving Porthdynllaen, the Challenger ran through a
passage close to the western rocks, whilst the inhabi-
tants, shouting to warn them off, believed they were
going to destruction. '' The coast is indented with
miniature bays and creeks, and fringed and studded
with rocks, for the continual breaking of the sea on
them gives an appearance of fringe; and sea-birds
and gulls of all descriptions are here more numerous

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Si. George s Channel. 1 39

than on any other part of this coast." At Bardsey
there is a well-known tide-race; but the ChalLngcr
passed it at a comparatively favourable moment,
and " sailed across the bay called Hell's Mouth,
which, in a south-westerly gale, must be a perfect
Phlegethon." The crew take to their oars towards
evening on approaching St. Tudwald*s Island and
Roads ; then the wind, drawing round to the south-
ward of east, they make all sail, and run ashore
through the surf in Abersoch Bay.

The voyage is resumed on the following morning,
when Barmouth is dimly visible, north of Cader
Idris, about twenty miles away. " It was a beautiful
wild row. We passed under a high, bluff-headland,
covered with sea-birds, so tame that they permitted
our approach within an oar's length. Sheep also
appeared, perched on the points and ledges of the
rocks hanging over the sea, and where they seemed
to have scarce footing or herbage."

In this bay there is a remarkable shoal. The
Challenger took soundings on passing over it, and
found three fathoms and a half. It is attributed by
tradition to human agency, and particularly to St.
Patrick, who must have been truly a wonderful
engineer. The southern extremity is at Sarnbwlch,
and runs out to sea about five miles ; the northern,
off Harlech, extends for twenty miles, ** and it is
singular that at its extremity the compass loses its
power and will not work. They are fearful and
dangerous shoals to vessels embayed." The Challen-
ger here met with squally weather, and struck on the

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rocks near Sarnbwlch, but got off without damage,
after which the crew had a row of seven miles,
against wind and tide, to Barmouth. Detained here
or in the neighbourhood by bad weather the Oiallenger
leaves Barmouth finally on May 19th, at one p.m.,
and about four in the afternoon runs into the mouth
of the Towyn river. Here the shore was composed
of sand and shingle, and tolerably flat, so that it was
possible to tow. In the afternoon of May 20th, the
crew row into Cardigan, and find a strong tide
against them between the mainland and the island.
Next day they have a hard pull round Dinas Head,
and find the rock scenery bold and grand. They row
into Fishguard and leave towards midnight in the
dark, pulling through a chopping sea without wind.
In this way they pass Strumble Head at half-past one
in the morning. After a glorious sunrise they reach
St. David's Head.

" Salt sprays deluge it, wild waves buffet it, hurricanes rave ;
Summer and winter the depths of the ocean girdle it round :
In leaden dawns, in golden noontides, in silvery moonlight,
Never it ceases to hear the old sea's mystical sound.
Surges vex it evermore,
By grey cave and sounding shore."

Mr. Richardson gave a stirring description of the
headland, which the reader may thank me for quoting
in his own words : —

" * Too late for the tide,' said the pilot, ' the race has begun.
And it was running in earnest. We lay on our oars for a few
minutes to get breath previous to having a dash at it. It was a
splendid sight ; the rocks towering over our heads in the
wildest and most rugged forms ; vessels coming through with

^ Lewes Morris : " Songs of Two Worlds. — St. David's Head."

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SL Georges ChanneL 141

the tide, rolling and plunging, the seas going clean over some
of the smaller ones, and the water spouting out of their scuppers
as if in a heavy gale, although there was not a breath of wind.
* Now for it ! ' exclaimed all hands ; * you steer, pilot, and keep
us within oar's length of the rocks.' A few strokes and we were
fairly into it ; the tide caught her bow and canted her head off
into the overfalls. (At this point of the narrative the pilot loses
his wits, looking behind him and expecting to be pooped, so the
captain replaces him.) The captam kept her steady, and we
soon shot into the smooth water of Whitesand Bay, where we
anchored amidst an amphitheatre of towering rocks and pre-
cipitous headlands, thrown in mixed, confused, and chaotic
masses, grand and beautiful. As we lay thus moored to the
rocks we observed with surprise the beautiful blue colour and
pellucid character of the water, so clear that small fish
swimming, and shells, and small crabs crawling, could be easily
discerned at a great depth, whilst a few hundreds yards off,
in the Sound, the race was running, boiling, and roaring with
inconceivable violence."

Being now safely moored to the rock, the crew ot
the Challenger enjoyed a quiet sleep in their rugs,
and afterwards pulled round Horn Point into St.
Bride's Bay, and sailed across it with a light breeze.
In Broad Sound they encountered very wild water, and
a strong head-wind, but had the tide in their favour
till they saw the two lighthouses on St. Anne's Head,
when it turned against them, and they rounded the
point laboriously at the oars, landing in Milford
Haven at eight in the evening, in the Cove of Dale,
utterly exhausted.

This is the right way to see a coast, but it re-
quires a lifeboat, and some hardihood. Yachts and
steamers keep at a respectful distance from shores of
this only too picturesque quality. Our voyagers had
evidently an eye for the picturesque, but they were
practically more concerned with tide-races. Mr.
Richardson just mentions Harlech, which by the

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dignity of its situation and the imposing grandeur of
its ruins has attracted many a landscape painter. The
contrast between the castles of Harlech and Caer-
narvon is that each has what the other lacks.
Harlech is a simpler and smaller building than
Caernarvon, but it has a magnificent situation,
whilst that of Caernarvon is low, and only gains some
advantage by being near water and shipping, and by
its hilly distances, including the Snowdon range.

The Castle at Caernarvon is one of the grandest in
the world, with its thirteen polygonal towers and its
numerous turrets scattered over a vast irregular site
and connected by massive and lofty walls. The
irregularity of the architectural arrangement gives a
charming variety to the views. This castle is not
quite so sternly simple as some other great feudal
fortresses. There are traceried windows in the state
apartments, and there is a little sculpture, if only the
damaged eagles on the Eagle Tower, and the canopied
statue of Edward I. over the great entrance. The
architecture is not, however, in itself very various,
and it seems to want the dominant feature of a great
central keep, which is so conspicuous a merit in
Windsor. The prevailing idea at Caernarvon is the
repetition of the polygonal tower, as at Beaumaris
and Conway it is the repetition of the round tower.
At Beaumaris there are ten round towers in the outer
defences and ten for the inner, besides four that flank
the gateways. Beaumaris has no advantage of situa-
tion, except that its meadows are beautiful, and so are
the views from them across the widening Beaumaris

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5"/. Georges Channel. 145

Bay with Penmaenmawr in the distance. Conway, on
the other hand, is magnificently situated, and has
eight round towers of a more imposing size than
those of Beaumaris. One of them was cut away for
half its lower circumference by the railway engineers*
but as the upper half still remained suspended in air,
like a corbel, they left it. These magnificent old
castles would be pleasanter objects of contemplation
if they had been erected in defence of liberty rather
than as instruments of oppression. Penrhyn Castle
is interesting as a modern experiment in Norman
baronial architecture. It is a long time since I saw
it, but I well remember the impression produced by
its hugeness and the gloom of the grave Norman
keep with its walls of dark Mona marble. It is
strange that so grave and military a style should
have been chosen for a modern habitation, but Pen-
rhyn, in an age of revivals, was a more successful
attempt than the false and meagre Gothic of Eaton
Hall, which the present owner has wisely concealed
or demolished.

The Menai Strait is the prettiest little channel any-
where amongst the British Islands. It is rather
longer than Windermere, and would present exactly
the appearance of a narrow lake were it not that the
tide often changes the lake into a rapid river.* The
shores being very rich in wood, and rocky in some
parts, with mountainous distances, compose delightful

Mf I may trust the authorities before me, the speed of the
tide in the Menai Strait must be, at times, considerably greater
than that of the Rhone between Lyons and Avignon.

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146 The British Seas.

landscapes, which are not spoiled by the two
wonderful bridges. The Telford Suspension Bridge
is a model of elegance, certainly one of the most
graceful suspension bridges in the world. Ste-
phenson's tubular structure, the Britannia, is sternly
simple, but it is not ugly. Considered as archi-
tecture, it is but a return to the primitive con-
struction with the beam on pillars, before the in-
vention of the arch. The towers were judiciously
designed so as to break the long line of tube. At
the time of its construction everybody believed that
tubular bridges would be generally adopted, but they
have not been, and now that the cantilever principle
is triumphant on the Forth, and proposed for the
Channel, they are, in fact, superseded.

It appears from a letter from Lord Clarendon
that towards the close of the seventeenth century
travellers from Conway to Beaumaris passed over
Pehmaenmawr. Lady Clarendon was in a litter,
and the rest of the company on horseback, except
that his lordship walked. As for his coach, it was
to have been taken off its wheels and carried over
the mountain by sheer strength of human arms.
However, it was drawn over the hill by horses, tan-
dem fashion, with three or four men behind " that it
might not slip back," and this was a great inno-
vation. The servants and horses were ferried over
in little round sea-boats. In Anglesea I^ady
Clarendon is put into the litter again, '*for never
was or can come a coach into that part of the
country.''

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Si. Georges Channel. 149

Anglesea is not one of the ideal islands. It is not
sufficiently detached from the mainland, and its hills,
such as they are, do not give it a decided unity like
those of the small mountainous islands. Murray
says that ** the west coast of Anglesea, which is
seldom or never visited, contains coast scenerj' of a
high order."

Between Anglesea and the river Dee there is
some of the grandest coast scenery in Great Britain.
I do not remember any sea-cliff, even on the west
coast of Scotland, that produces a more overpower-
ing effect than the mass of limestone called ** Great
Orme's Head." The steamers from Liverpool to
Beaumaris pass, as it seems, almost close under it^
so that travellers by water enjoy its full magnificence,
and have the pleasure of looking at a very dangerous
place from a position of safety. Mr. Richardson
mentions the wreck of the brig Ormsby, that went
ashore here in the dark : one man was stowing the
jib, not usually a safe occupation in a storm, yet it
proved so in his case, for when the vessel struck he
dropped off the bowsprit on a ledge of rock, and
was the only man saved. Mr. Richardson adds : —
'* Lifeboats of little or no service here with the wind
dead on ; difficult to say what would be of service,
as the cliff rises nearly perpendicular. Here the
tide met us running like a sluice; the evening
closing in and getting very dark, our position was by
no means pleasant." They pulled out to sea and
got a breeze.

The shipwreck of " Lycidas " took place some-
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150 7'Ae British Seas.

where near the mouth of the Dee. Milton's
** learned friend was unfortunately drowned in his
passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637/'
Turner appears to have misunderstood a passage
towards the close of the poem in which Milton
thinks of the body as possibly washed away as far
as the Hebrides in one direction, or the ** guarded
mount '* in the other. Turner makes the shipwreck
of *' Lycidas " occur close under St. Michael's
Mount.

The fine estuary of the Dee looks very important
on the map, but the commercial value of it is as
nothing in comparison with the narrower Mersey.
The antiquarian and artistic interest belonging to it
are connected mainly with Flint Castle and the
curious old city of Chester. Our reproduction of
Girtin's drawing will give some idea of the castle as
it was more than ninety years ago. Forty-six years
after Girtin's premature death, a considerable part
of Flint Castle fell, in consequence of having been
slowly undermined by the sea. The citadel of Flint
Castle is round, and is called the Double Tower,
because there are two walls, a larger and a lesser
circle. I have not seen Chester for more than thirty
years, but when I visited the place it was as good as
old Rouen for the preservation of mediaeval houses,
though on a less important scale. I remember
especially the long and broad galleries of oak which
made it possible to walk a considerable distance on
the level of the first floors. Liverpool I know much
better, having been there frequently, the last time in

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Si. Georges CkanneL 153

1882. The impression it gave me then was that of
a place now very truly and completely represent-
ative of everything that is best in Lancashire except
its scenery, and except, of course, that rural life
which still survives in some parts in spite of manu-
factures. The Mersey did not seem to be greatly
changed, except that the docks and sheds were
more extensive, and the shipping on a still more
important scale. I visited one of the vessels of the
White Star Line, the CeltiCy and examined all the
wonderfully ingenious arrangements by which a
dense population of emigrants and richer people
are conveyed across the Atlantic in tolerable
decency and comfort. The most obvious qualities
of the ship were her size, space, cleanliness, and
orderly subdivision ; but I was more surprised by
the extreme promptitude with which, by the
discipline of long practice and incessant improve-
ments, a vessel of that importance could be dis-
charged and reladen, so that she lost a minimum of
time between her trips. An engineer told me that
he had visited many interesting places, but without
seeing them, as during the short rest of the engines
in port they had to be thoroughly cleaned and ex-
amined. The workers must look upon the passen-
gers as enviable idlers, but the passengers for the
most part are either sick or dull, and only want to
be put ashore. The modern contest with distance
has never been better exemplified than in these
swift vessels, terrible consumers of coal, that are
always rushing across the Atlantic without a pause,
but never without danger.

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154 I'h^ British Seas.

Liverpool left a mixed impression on my mind ;
the brownish-yellowish waters of the Mersey were, as
it happened, agitated by a strong breeze as the
ferry-boats plied on them rapidly under a dull sky,
and the steamers went out to sea, leaving the smoke
of Liverpool behind them for the bleak and grey
expanse, the unquiet plain, that stretches thence to
Ireland. Liverpool, itself, seemed more gloomy
than I remembered it of yore, but a finer city, with
increasing magnificence of architecture. It is diffi-
cult for English towns, with all their wealth, to make
themselves charming or beautiful — the climate and
the smoke forbid it — but they may be grand, and
that Liverpool certainly has now become. It may
seem strange that so practical a place should be the
home of Rossetti's most poetical picture, Daniels
Dream; yet if men are to feel the ennobling in-
fluence of imaginative art, it must be made accessible
to them in great cities. The Walker Gallery is a
fine institution, which has a great future before it.
I had not time to visit any private collections.
With regard to a more practical matter, the Man-
chester Ship Canal, I was told by a civil engineer
that it was a wild scheme that could never be
realized : an opinion then prevalent in Liverpool.
It seems, however, at the present day, rather more
hopeful than Panama. The reader will not require
me to attempt a description of the enormous Liver-
pool docks. He knows what a dock is, and what to
expect when there are forty miles of quay.

The Lancashire coast above Liverpool is flat and

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5/. Georges ChamteL 157

uninteresting from the sea, the chief variety of it
being in the prosperous villages. Southport,
situated just opposite to Lytham, on the south side
of the estuary of the Ribble, has grown into a water-
ing-place of much importance, having a reputation
for a mild climate. Southport, Lytham, and Black-
pool, the three principal watering-places of Lan-
cashire, have changed so much since I knew them,
that it is useless for me to describe them. They
have lost the charm of obscure little places to gain
the advantages, with the drawbacks, of celebrity, and
they have long since passed out of that primitive
condition most appreciated by artists. From
Lytham northwards, the coast becomes more inter-
esting as it rises in cliffs, not comparable, however,
to those on the coast of Wales. The sea comes in
grandly at Blackpool when the west wind is strong,
as the width from there to Ireland is about a
hundred and thirty miles. I remember seeing the
Isle of Man from Blackpool, its mountains pale but
distinct in the clear air across sixty miles of sea.
My recollection of Fleetwood is that of a new port,
just struggling into existence. Like Milford, it owes
its origin to the foresight of a single landowner.

Fleetwood is not, even yet, very important or
attractive, but for us it has a peculiar interest, as
that point of the western English coast where it
first becomes northern in character, at least in the
distant views. From Fleetwood one can see across
the dozen miles' width of Morecambe Bay to the
Cumberland Hills ; to my eyes a most refreshing

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158 The British Seas.

and exhilarating sight, especially after the muggy
distances of South Lancashire, where the genuine
mountain blue is a colour utterly unknown. It is
probable that the existence of The Portfolio once
depended upon an incident on the shore of More-
cambe Bay. I had ridden on horseback to Lan-
caster, and wished to ride across the sands. A man
in Lancaster asked if my horse was to be trusted.
I said he was strong, but liable to fits of sullen
obstinacy, and the man dissuaded me from the at-
tempt. It so happened that my beast had one of his
worst fits of obstinacy that day, but in a safer place
than the middle of Lancaster sands. Many a man
and horse have been drowned there, from a prefer-
ence (on the man's part) of the segment to the
arc.

After Morecambe Bay comes the entrance to
Wordsworth's River Duddon, and then the shore of
Cumberland up into the Solway. The Cumberland
mountains are seen as distances from the sea, but
they are not so near the coast as Cader Idris.
Those about Wast Water are as near the sea as
Snowdon. Even the distant sight of them is full of
pleasant suggestion, as we know that the beautiful
lakes are nestling in their hollows.'

The reader will, perhaps, excuse me if I do not
attempt a description of Ireland and the Isle of Man.
My way of describing places is simply to give my
own impressions of them, with an occasional refer-
ence to geography when it clears up such a matter as
the width of a lake or a bav. I have seen Ireland

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Si. Georges ChanneL 159

and the Isle of Man several times, but have never
landed on either of them. What I saw was nothing
but hills across a few miles of water, so that these
islands remain for me as indefinite as the ** Kingdom
by the sea," in Poe's poem of " Annabel Lee." As
all true poets are aware, there is a poetical value even
in this very vagueness, and my Ireland, with purple
hills mingling with the clouds of sunset, beyond
troubled waters rolling far and wide, is in some ways
grander for me than the rather too much detailed
Ireland of my daily newspaper. I will go no further
into politics than to express a sentimental regret that
the second Earl of Derby, in 1504, relinquished the
title of King of Man. One of his successors approved
of his resignation, on the ground that the island would
not maintain its independence against other nations,
and that it was " not fitting for a king to be subject to
any other king but the King of kings," a principle
not much respected in the present German Empire.
My regret is purely sentimental and poetical. The
central island of the British dominions is neither an
English nor an Irish country, it is not a part of Scot-
land — it is truly a little nation, with a language and
even a local parliament, and some coinage of its
own. The retention of a kingly title would have
marked this nationality, and there would have been
little danger to the ** adjacent island of Great Britain "
from the fleets of his Manx Majesty.

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CHAPTER VII

THE WEST COAST OF SCOTLAND.

It may almost be said that Scotland has two
western coasts, which may be roughly described as
an inner and an outer. The inner is sheltered by
an almost continuous line of islands. Thanks to
the Crinan Canal/ which divides the neck of the
peninsula of Cantyre, the tourist may make his
way from Greenock (which, rather than Glasgow,
is practically the point of departure) to Tobermory,
in Mull, without feeling the force of the Atlantic
waves, though now and then, if the wind sets in a
particular direction, he will get some idea of what
they can be and do. Tobermory past, the shelter
ceases, or becomes very slight indeed, till Skye is
reached. Skye, sheltered itself by the line of the
Outer Hebrides, protects the channel between it
and the mainland. The winds indeed, come down
from the hills on either side with terrific force, but
the waves have no space to rise. North of Skye

* The Crinan Canal was constructed for the benefit of the
fishing and coasting trade of the Western Highlands in the
years 1793— 1 80 1.

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T/ie West Coast of Scotland. i6i

comes the broad channel of the Minch. Of this the
north wind is the master,

** To raise or still
The angry billows at his will."

And very angry they can be; for they come, not
with the majestic roll of the Atlantic waves, but with
a shorter and more ** choppy '' motion, not unlike
that of the English Channel, acknowledged to be the
deadliest of all seas that are. Both routes have
singular, though different, attractions. Following
the one, we watch, through an endless variety of
scenes, how the sea, to use the graphic words of
Tacitus — ^words suggested, we may easily believe, by
personal observation — " makes many a deep inlet
and circling sweep, and thrusts itself into the midst
of hills and mountains as if into its own domain."
If we are venturesome enough to take the other, we
have the spectacle of the Atlantic breaking on the
coast with a grandeur of which, monotonous as it
may be, one never wearies. Of both routes I shall
have something to say.

The two water-ways divide at the southern end of
the island of Bute. If we elect to follow the inner
line we travel almost due north, and before long
find ourselves in the famous waters of Loch Fyne.
No classic sea, or stream, or lake, has achieved
the reputation which has been given to Loch
Fyne by its herrings. Some speciality of flavour,
as indefinable as such specialities mostly are, and
often, we may believe, the creature of imagination,
is said to distinguish them. The fisheries of the

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loch itself are not what they were. Experts say
that the shoals are now rather to be found in the
open seas than in these land-locked waters, where,
indeed, the pursuit is urged more incessantly and
with deadlier effect, but the name survives in full
force, and probably will survive, even should the
reality cease.

Loch Fyne is one of the largest of the Scottish
** fiords.*' From the point where the rivulet from
which it takes, or with which it shares, its name,
to that where it merges in the Sound of Bute, it
has a length of more than forty miles. Not far
from its head waters on its western shore is
Inverary, the famous seat of the Maccallum More,
now represented by the ducal house of Argyll.
The loftiest mountains it can boast are Ben-an-
Lochain (2955 feet) and Ben Bheula (2557), and
it must yield the palm for grandeur to some of its
more northern rivals ; but it is often very beautiful,
especially where, as among the woods of Inverary,
nature has felt the improving hand of man. The
southern end, where the heights of Arran rise
directly in front of the spectator and Bute can be
seen on his left hand, is perhaps the finest piece
of scenery that it can show. Mr. Pennell's sketch
is taken from a point looking towards Inverary.

We will now turn for awhile to the outer route.
To follow this we must sail almost due south till
Arran, which has been lying on our right hand, is
passed, and then turn in a westerly direction, but with
still a slight leaning to the south. So we reach in

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due time the ** Mull," or headland which terminates
the remarkable peninsula of Cantyre. As we round
this we experience the full force of the Atlantic waves.
Even on a windless day the long swell comes rolling
in from three thousand miles of ocean, for there is
nothing here between us and the Labrador coast.
And when the wind blows, as it does blow with
a quite remarkable frequency, from the west, there is
a scene of magnificent turmoil. The waves dash
wildly on the rocks, broken already into countless
shapes by the storms of centuries, sweeping far up
the height of the cliff, and sending showers of spray
a long way over it. When we turn our eyes away
from this ever-changing spectacle, we see, some
do^en miles to the south-w^est, the dim outlines of
the Irish coast.*

No other land is in view, for it is only on the
clearest day that we can possibly catch a glimpse of
Islay, and this hardly from the Mull itself. But if
we land and climb Knockmoss (the Hill of the Plain),
we can see to the west and north Islay and Jura,
and sometimes even, but this is very rare, the distant
mountains of Mull, while the hills of Arran rise to
the east, and Ailsa Craig is dimly seen on the
horizon.

There is scarcely a quieter region than Cantyre,
or one less touched with the stir and change of
modern times. It lies out of the range of the tourist,

* The nearest point of Ireland is Turpoint, in the county of
Antrim. The exact distance between this and the Mull is
eleven miles and a half.

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and so keeps undisturbed its primitive ways of life
and thought. In earlier times it had a very stirring
and even tragic history. At Saddle Castle, on the
eastern coast, the Bruce was entertained by Angus
Macdonald, Lord of Cantyre, who afterwards did
good service for him on the right wing of the Scottish
army at Bannockburn. Three centuries later the
Macdonalds had to fight for their land and lives
against their neighbours and rivals, the Argj'U
Campbells. They were driven from Cantyre in the
early part of the seventeenth century, but recovered
it again after Montrose's victory at Inverlochy.
Montrose's brief career of victory — it lasted scarcely
eight months — came to an end at Philiphaugh, and
two years afterwards Cantyre was the only place
that held out against the party of the Covenant. In
July, 1647, their last refuge, Dunaverty Castle, was
compelled to surrender. All the garrison were
massacred, but one young Macdonald, an infant at
the breast, son of Archibald Og of Sanda (a little
island which the traveller passes on his way to the
Mull), was saved by his nurse.

Our course now lies through the Sound of Islay,
with Islay on the one hand — an island ranking
fourth in size among the Hebrides, and famous for
its manufacture of whiskey — and the bolder heights
of Jura on the other. We leave some way on the
right Coryvrechan, - the Maelstrom of these coasts,

* At full length ** Corry-vreachan,' or Caldron of Breachkan.
Breachkan, according to the legend, was a Norwegian prince
who sued for the hand of a princess of the Isles. Her father
consented, if Breachkan would anchor his vessel for three days

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Tfie West Coast of Scotland. 167

the terrors of which are even more the creatures of
imagination than those of the Norwegian whirlpool,
and on the left Colonsay, with its satellite of
Oronsay. Were we to follow the route of the open
sea, we should come to lona (Icolmkill) and, some
ten miles further to the north, to Staffa. Both these
islands lie to the westward of Mull. But the track
of the steamers lies on the eastern side of that
island, and the steamers are, with the exception of
a few yachts and fishing boats, almost the only
frequenters of these seas. Beautiful as these waters
are with a manifold beauty, they do not offer to
those who would traverse them the inducements
either of safety or of gain. The great routes of
commerce are far away, and the shore is one of
those which the sailor loves best when he sees it
least.

The next spot at which I will ask my readers to
halt is Oban, which we reach by a channel which
bears the name of the " Firth of Lorn," a name full
of historical associations. Oban is quite of the
present. No spot in the Western Highlands is
better known or more frequented. Daily, for some
months in the year, the double stream of travellers
flows northward and southward through it. This
constant stream has left little that is characteristic

in the whirlpool. The prince, instructed by the wise men,
procured three cables, one of hemp, one of wool, and one of
woman's hair. The first day the hempen cable broke, the
cable of wool on the second ; the hair would have held out, but
that one lock that had been woven into it came from the head
of a faithless '^air; and Breachkan was drowned.

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in the town itself. The English have conquered it
as they have conquered Boulogne. But there is
little change even in the immediate neighbourhood.
This island of Kerrera, for instance, protecting the
bay of Oban from the westerly winds, in which Mr.
Colin Hunter has found a subject, is probably little
different in aspect from what it was some six
centuries and a half ago, when Alexander II, of
Scotland died there. Possibly these gulls that are
seen in the foreground are vexed somewhat by the
idle sport by which the Englishman gratifies the
national passion for slaughter; but they are the
descendants of tribes which have dwelt on these
rocks for more centuries than one can count.
Here, in this almost nameless island, we find, as
so often in these regions, places that are now, so to
speak, left high and dry, but were once in the full
stream of history. This rugged little Kerrera, for
instance, reminds us of all the interesting story of
the rise and fall of the Norse dominion in the
Western Isles. It was the business of asserting the
supremacy of the Scottish throne that brought
Alexander and his fleet to these parts. Angus of
Argyll, we are told, had been wont to do homage
for certain islands to the King of Norway. Alexander
claimed that this homage should be done to himself,
and, on Angus refusing to obey, gathered a force to
compel him, and, being seized with fever, died on
Kerrera, at a place still called, it is said, Dalree, or
*'the King's Field."

Straight before us as we leave Oban, lies the island

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The West Coast of Scotland. 171

of Lismore, the "Great Garden/' at the entrance to
Loch Linnhe. This beautiful fiord runs inland, if
we reckon as one with it what is commonly known
as Lower Loch Eil, for a distance of more than
thirty miles. If we penetrate to its higher end we
shall find ourselves at the south-western end of the
Caledonian Canal, the useful work by which the
Glen-More-nan-Albin (the great valley of Scotland),
between the North Sea and the Atlantic, has been
made a practicable route for vessels of moderate
size.* But this would take us too far away from our
route. Lower down we may see on either hand a
region famous in story. On the right hand — I am
supposing that our faces are turned landwards — is
Appin, familiar to us from that admirable story, the
best, surely, of all that have been written on the
subject of the Jacobite wars, Mr. R. L. Stevenson's
** Kidnapped." On our left rise, with a somewhat
bleak aspect, the hills of Morven. The name
suggests the legendary heroes of Scottish story —
Fingal, the king ; and Ossian, warrior and poet ;
and Oscar, the short-lived Achilles of the North.
Whether these were real men, who knows ? Who
can say whether Hector, or Achilles, or Ajax, or
-fEneas ever lived in the flesh ? But that they were
genuine in the literary sense there can be very little
doubt. Macpherson, of course, travestied them, and
made them as little like their real selves, the weird

' The Caledonian Canal is sixty-two miles in length, forty
passing through natural lakes (Loch Lochy, Loch Oich, and
Loch Ness), and twenty-two having been cut.

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creatures of the old Celtic imagination, as ** car-
penter's gothic " is like Wells Cathedral. But that
they had a true poetical existence ages before
Macpherson was heard of is most certainly true.
Whether these heroic personages, or such dim
prototypes as they may have had, had any special
connection with this Argyleshire Morven is more
doubtful. Morven, according to one etymologj',
for which, however, I do not venture to vouch, is
simply More-Earrain, the *' mainland."

I hope that the seals which Mr. Colin Hunter
has put in the foreground of his picture, will never
become as mythical as Ossian's heroes. They are
certainly rarer in these parts than they were some
years ago ; in fact, they have many enemies.
Their hides are valuable, not as fur, it must be
understood (for the ** fur seal " is never found on
the British coasts), but as leather, and so is the oil
yielded by their fat. Salmon-fishers, too, whether
they seek profit with the net or sport with the rod,
have a grudge against the creature, and it must be
confessed that he has a way of haunting the mouths
of streams, and catches not a few fish while they
are waiting in the sea for a freshet or spate {Anglice,
a flood) which will enable them to seek their wonted
breeding- places in the upper waters. It must go
hard with any creature against whom the greed of
gain and the still more cruel jealousy of sport com-
bine to make war. The larger dwellers in the
sea, however, are not yet wholly banished from
these waters. Sometimes the inhabitants of one of

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The West Coast of Scotland. 1 75

the remoter islands are delighted and enriched by
the capture of a "school " of bottle-nosed whales.
Sometimes the traveller catches sight, as I myself
have done in former years, of the huge Greenland
whale, showing its vast bulk of seventy feet or
more in some of these sounds or channels. Eigh-
teen centuries ago it was known as the " British ''
whale, and though it is now a rare visitor to our
seas, it has not wholly deserted them.

We will now leave Loch Linnhe behind us,
thread the Sound of Mull, and passing Tobermory,
nestling among its verdure, venture to round " Ard-
ramurchan's Point." The shelter of Mull failing us,
we meet again the full strength of the Atlantic
waves, and nowhere do they seem more formidable.
As the steamer emerges from the Sound, she has to
steer so close to the shore that, to use a common
phrase, we could " throw a biscuit on to the rocks."
Let a crank or a piston give way, and we sh6uld be
dashed to atoms on that inhospitable coast.

Half an hour's sail or so brings us to the southern-
most of those three strangely-named islands — Muck,
Eigg, and Rum, the " Small Isles," as they are col-
lectively called. One of these has acquired an evil
fame, by the well-known tragedy of the Cave of Eigg.
In this cave, some three hundred and fifty years
ago, the inhabitants of the island, a haunt of the
Clan Macdonald, took refuge from an invasion of the
Macleods of Skye. Some footsteps in the snow
discovered their retreat. The Macleods Ht great
fires at the mouth of the cave and suffocated all the

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fugitives. The bones of the victims were to be seen
less than a hundred years ago. The sight of the
islands always has reminded me of a story told by
Hugh Miller of the trouble that followed the disruption
of the Scottish Church. The landowners in many
parts were unwilling to sell sites for the new manses,
and the Free Church minister of Small Isles had to
reside in a yacht. In fair weather this may have
been well enough, but as there is no safe anchorage
in any one of the islands, whenever it came on to
blow he had to put out to sea.

Skye we must pass hurriedly by, though there is
much to keep us in its scenery, scarcely surpassed
elsewhere for variety of charm, ranging as it does
between the soft woodland beauty of Armadale, the
seat of Lord Macdonald, who claims to represent
the ancient Lords of the Isles, and the desolate
grandeur of Loch Corruisk. Sir Walter Scott's
words, often as they have been quoted before, may
be given once again : —

"Stranger, if e'er thine ardent step hath traced

The northern re dms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed

By lake and cataract her lonely throne,

Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain-height,

Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,
And with the sounding lake and with the mourning sky.

** Such are the scenes where savage grandeur wakes

An awful thrill that softens into sighs ;

Such feelings rouse them by dim Bannoch's lakes,

In Dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise :

Or further, where beneath the northern skies

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The West Coast of Scotland. 1 79

Chides wild Loch Eribol his caverns hoar —

But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize
Of desert dignity to that dread shore,
That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Coriskin roar."

Scarcely less wild and desolate than Corruisk is
Duntulm Castle on the western coast of the island,
of which Mr. Pennell gives us a picture. It was
once the seat of the Lords of the Isles. The story
is that they were driven from it by a ghost.
Duntulm is a ruin, but another castle — Dunvegan —
the seat of the Macleods, is still inhabited.

The rugged Skye mountains, with their almost
fantastic shapes, bearing traces, we are told, of
volcanic origin, should be particularly noted.
Their special character is continued in the scenery
of the next land that we reach, Harris, separated
from Skye by the Sound of Harris, a channel some
twelve miles broad. Harris, it must be understood,
forms one island with its northern neighbour, Lewis,
or The Lews ; but its scenery is wholly different
— a difference represented, curiously enough, by the
fact of its belonging to a different county. * Tarbert,
which Mr. Pennell has chosen as the subject of one
of his illustrations, is one of the many Tarbets,
scattered over West Scotland. It is the " isthmus,"
which divides from each other the Atlantic and the
Channel of the Minch. Southern Lewis resembles
somewhat the bordering region, for its hills are
lofty and bold. But the character of the island
quickly changes. The mountains give place to long
sweeps of moorland, interspersed with innumerable
* Harris is in Inverness-shire, Lewis in Ross-shire.

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lakes. The height of the hills constantly diminishes
as we go farther north, till, north of Stornoway, the
country becomes almost level. The coast-line, how-
ever, continues to have a certain picturesqueness,
and the northern promontory of the Lewis, or Butt
of Lewis, is a noble-looking rock.

Lewis, though it has little to attract the casual
visitor, is an interesting island. It is the largest and
most populous of the dependent islands of the
British group, and its social condition offers one of
the most perplexing of problems. Its population
far exceeds its means of support, even when these
are supplemented with the earnings of the herring
fishery. Every rood of available ground has been
utilized, and yet the population continues to in-
crease, while it almost refuses to emigrate. I some-
times think that it presents an epitome of what the
world will be some thousand years hence— it may be
less.*

But these are too grave matters for the present

occasion, and would certainly keep my readers too

long. Before I part with them I would mention the

two sights of the island — Callernish, with its so-

' The economic history of the island is curious. Some fifty
years ago Sir James Matheson bought it of the old proprietors,
the Mackenzies of Seaforth. He laid out a vast sum of money
on it, after spending at least 3o,cx)o/. in the first year of his
ownership in feeding the people. Moor was leclainied, only to
fall back into original barrenness, and lochs drained, only to
add a few more acres of stone and peat to a region which had
already more than enough. And now the people for whom all
this money has been spent are so hostile to the proprietor
(Sir James's widow^ that she has been forced to leave the
island.

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The West Coast of Scotland. iSi

called Druid Circle, inferior only to Stonehenge of
all that are known in the British Islands, and the
Sands of Uig, a little bay on the western coast, im-
mortalized by Mr. Black in his ** Princess of Thule."
The " Princess " the traveller will hardly find,
though there are many local claimants to the title ;
but the sands, with the green hills about them and
the blue sea in the distance, are there in unalterable
beauty.

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CHAPTER VIII

THE NORTHERN SHORES.

Sutherlandshire- Cape Wrath— Pentland Firth— Orkney and
Shetland Isles— Noss Head— Wick — Herring fishing —
Cromarty and Moray Firths— East Coast from Peterhead
to East Neuk of Fife.

In the British Isles no coast is so grandly pic-
turesque, so full of weird and massive rock scenery,
as that which faces the great northern seas. The
northern coast forms a majestic and appropriate
rampart to a great island, as if Nature herself, with
a due appreciation of the value of what she has in
charge, had piled her cliff-towers and fashioned her
buttressed munitions of rocks so as effectually to
drive back the most furious onslaughts of her
fiercest seas. To pass from the graceful charms of
the western isles and the western shores to the
rugged shores of the North is to enter a new and
sterner world. Both nature and man are engaged
in an almost perpetual w^arfare. The stress of the
sea prevails over all. The whole lives of the people
are devoted to an endless struggle with the deep for
their very existence, and harbours have been forced
by art where denied by nature. And yet elements of
softer beauty and gentler grace are not wanting;

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The Northern Shores, 183

and there are times when the storm-battered and
wave-riven diffs look down with more than monu-
mental calm over as peaceful an expanse of sunlit
ocean as ever smiled to summer skies.

In summer the west coast of Sutherlandshire is of
great beauty in colour ; the very air idealizes one and
lifts one's whole being into happier health. In the
bight beneath Storr lies graceful, lovely Lochinver ;
further up run Lochs Cairnbawn, Laxford, and
Inchard, with seas spreading their arms among the
high mountains. On high slopes or on low-lying
stretches of fertile land you may notice, as you
gently sail along by day, the dots of crofter town-
ships — brown, thatched patches of civilization in the
wild wastes, refugees from the madding crowd, with
their small boats drawn far up from the reach of the
sea, and by night their peeping lights make the
coast friendly. The eye wanders over the back-
ground of the coast — long noble ranges of picturesque
mountains, that make the craggy promontories of
Assynt seem afar off. Near Storr the Baddach
Stack, with arms and legs, and broad shoulders, and
flowing garments, resembles a preacher ; Queenaig's
spectral peak, near Kyle-Sku, appears through mists
which add to the mysterious vagueness : and in the
Kyle you have to be lively to avoid the changing
eddies which, ere you know, may smash your boat
against the rocks. About the host of creeks, lochs,
and mountain-sides what charms of colour ! what
sparkling, glowing sunsets ! and, where nature revels
in tints and hues that defy the painter's brush or the

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184 The British Seas,

penman's skill, what many-coloured and many-shaped
clouds are to be seen reflecting the deep rich hues
from the lochs, and how luminous is the atmosphere
over all ! The beauty of the sea and its saline
flavour fill one with rapturous health. Here your
oars at night lift fire from the sea.

You approach Cape Wrath. How suggestive the
name! how terrible its tragic realities! Vessels
steering northward with westerly wind and hazy
weather are apt to think when they have passed the
rocky harbour of Loch Laxford they have rounded
the north-western point of Scotland. Cape Wrath
springs up from the mainland some six hundred feet
high, in great masses of broken rocks, with its light-
house warding ofif mariners from destruction on the
cliff's ; and although it is the lot of most of us not to
see it by day, the ship's convulsive motions afford by
night sufficient indication of the force of two meeting
and contending seas about this formidable coast.
Across this bold precipitous headland, with the
Lewis as a speck on the horizon, and the Orkneys
breaking the northern line, and the mountainous
screens shutting in the south, there breaks the vast
continual roar and turmoil of the long range of
northern seas, the Minch and the German Ocean by
the Pentland Firth (is it not true that in the north
all natural voices, including the sound of the sea, are
stronger and louder than in the south ? ), and you
feel how Cape Wrath merits its name, and how
wisely mariners give it a wide berth, and do not
approach land till they reach the Pentland Firth.

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The mention of the Pentland Firth makes a sailor
knit his brow and consider. Here I should be glad
to gratify my Rugby canal bargee friend, who con-
fided to me he should like to go to sea in a real
herring-boat for a day. What could he make of a
swirling, eddying tide from the Western Hebrides,
and the Western Ocean, and the North Seas, which
at spring tides races at a speed of from four to twelve
miles an hour, and with such force that when Her
Majesty's Fleet attempted to pass through in teeth
of it at Westray all their horse-power engines were
of no avail, and they had to turn tail ? What would
he think of this sea where some, on letting go their
anchor, have had to leave it at the bottom ? How
could he catch the prime lobster there ? This, the
eastern gulf-stream of the Atlantic (and when storms
rage from the south-east, and the tide is running
in the wind's eye, boats are lost to view in the
hollow of the majestic waves), is of considerable
interest, and, as if to add another zest to danger,
thick fogs come down, accompanied by calms, and
sometimes it has happened that ships have been then
carried to Dunnet Bay, while the crew thought
themselves becalmed in the Firth ! The Pentland
Firth is a noble scene. The Orkney Isles close in
the north horizon ; on the western side of the Hoy
rises the thin rock pillar, and above the Old Man of
Hoy, the spirit of the storm piercing the air, where
the entrances and highway are watched by five light-
houses — Noss, the Skerries, Dunnet Head, Holborn
Head, and Cape Wrath. From Thurso lies the

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way to Holborn Head. North-eastward we have
the Bay of Dunnet, with its massive headland, high
cliffs, and further east the noble headland of Duncan's
Bay and the famous sands of John o'Groats, where
the shores are washed by rapid tides from more oceans
than one, and the sand-beach, rich in peculiar shells
of great beauty and rarity, is of such spotless chalk-
like whiteness that it is unequalled except at Tiree
in the Outer Hebrides. In favourable weather fleets
of ships and boats innumerable pass this great
highway from the east and west of our island, the
large liners looking like dots from the high cliffs.
To hear the terrible voice of the sea here in storm is
to carry it in our ears for ever. It is not a place to
nurse day-dreaming ; one cannot moon about in the
presence of great rocks and cliffs, great seas and
great views ; they all make their presence felt, and
keep you wide awake. Here the British Seas, the
vast world of great waters, are, whether in calm or
in storm, most majestic.

But it is possible to pass even the Pentland
Firth without sign of danger. One evening in
August I crossed the Firth from Scrabster to
Scapa ; the sea was calm as a lake, the sultry
night fell fast, and made the Orkney Isles, as we
with many gliding turns approached, seem like
ethereal scenes in dreamland, where lights — humble
cottage lights, no doubt — on spectral isles sparkled
so kindly, and the islanders* flit-boats, now and
again shooting out so unexpectedly and so quietly
from projecting points, seemed to row from the

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The Northern Shores. 189

unknown. A message or parcel was delivered, or
a passenger stepped down the ship-ladder, and the
oarsmen lifted their voices, as they did their oars,
gently, and departed peacefully into the midsummer
night's drowsy islands ; and early on Sunday
morning one almost thought he was in Arcady, not
in Orkney. One would not have been surprised to
have then and there had sight of ** Proteus rising
from the sea, or heard old Triton blow his wreathed
horn."

One thinks at North Ronaldshay of the Armada
ship that struck there, and one may trace to this
day among the islanders a touch and dash of
Spanish blood and beauty, and find in the gorgeous
Spanish colours of their knittings the tradition of a
warmer clime. About contented, happy Orkney,
where all fowls, from statistics, seem to lay eggs,
not much need be said : Kirkwall, a smart town,
with its solitary tree ; Stromness, out of the world,
with its houses built endways beyond the water-mark,
protected by bulwarks and quays and with doors
opening into the sea — some say, to make the art of
smuggling easier ; Hoy Head, which natives believe
to be a profile likeness of Scott — a proof of their
vivid imagination and warmth of affection for the
author of the " Pirate " ; and the Isle of Hoy, with
yellow and red cHffs, as if the sun shone on them
always, and the flat cultivated fields, Orkney is
well-to-do, and makes no claim on your sympathies,
nor do the folk on the seas.

From Stromness we sailed in the paddle-steamer,

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St. Magnus^ which pitched and tossed to a merry
tune, and in the early morning crept up, in the
midst of dense fog, the west coast of Shetland, so
far that the captain thought we had done our
journey : he waited till the fog lifted, and when the
sun shone later we were just at our destination
outside Scalloway, so well do these captains steer.
Ultima Thule, Shetland, the land of Udallers, the
birthplace of sailors, of superstitious fishermen, a
strange, wild land of stacks and skerries, voes and
gios, of whales and ponies, of Pictish castles, and
caves and sea-trows (mermaids), where men fish and
women work, the home of the Aurora Borealis,
which carries the gorgeousness of sunset into the
night and gives the dawn on the sea an opaline
radiance. The sea is the Shetlander's home and
provider, and, alas ! but too often his grave — the
sad home of a sad race. In the wilds of these isles
one drinks in the spirit of the sea, and its deep
voicefulness fills the air. The sea reigns over all,
and asserts its interest or influence over every
household, and hardly a cottage but the sea takes
toll out of. Treeless, gardenless, fieldless, the salt sea
pervades the whole islands, and the dull grey over-
shadows both folk and land. The weird and the
picturesque is the prevailing mark of these hundred
odd islands — these Scotlands out of Scotland — so
rugged, and irregular as if the sea had torn them
asunder. Some of the outlying rocks seem to keep
continual watch, and there are the drongs out at sea
that are so like fishing-boats with empty sails that

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Shaking the Nets. From an etching by Colin Hunter, A.R.A.

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The Northern Shores. 193

we might almost think they were the product of
some miraculous process of petrifaction. The coast
to the north and north-west surpasses anything in
Britain in grandeur. The mighty cliffs of Foula,
1300 feet high — the beautiful pillars and caves of
Papa Stour — the contorted fantastic rocks at Hills-
wick — the Sumburgh Head, with its bare scalp and
side to the surge from the Roost — the skerries,
arches, and tunnels in every island — the most
fantastic shapes and figures of the rocks, the
interlacing of lochs with mainland as in friendly
grasp; and over all is the great deep blue sea,
with patches of vivid green from the shore, and a
fringe of brown rocks and dashing foam. Whether
they like it or not, the law of nature makes the
natives, for love of their lives, know all the sunk
reefs and tides as you know your own house ; and
in their large six'erns (six-oared boats, prow-built
at both ends) the waves bound beneath them as
horses that know their riders, and the same spirit
takes these pensive toilers of the deep yearly to
the whale-fishing in winter, or in spring sends them
in smacks to Iceland and the Faroe Islands in
pursuit of fishing. These islands amid the melan-
choly main witness the most sublime, raging,
terrific storms, when woe betide the boat that is
not at home. At the Skerry of Eshaness, with its
steep precipices, is a refuge for myriads of kitti-
wakes, and their shrill cries accord with the wild
sea-roar; waves tumble and bellow from the
Atlantic on the west or North Sea on the east, like

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194 ^^^ British Seas.

sea-monsters with their manes streaming in the
wind, till in the blindness of their rage they dash
with great crashes against the trembling rocks, and
send their foam-fringed sheets of water so far inland
as to keep the country moist and render the springs
brackish. The unlimited power of the sea is
witnessed at Grind of the Navir, where enormous
boulders are tossed ashore, and at Fitful Head
(scene of the " Pirate ")i where the constant surge
escarps the rocks into fantastic cliffs pierced by
long twilight caves ; and at Muckle Flugga, where
the northernmost lighthouse on our seas is, and
where the keepers are often imprisoned by stress of
weather. Go to Lerwick, with its bay for a natural
harbour, and during the fishing season there are
boats from all nations and a babel of tongues —
Dutch booms and luggers, Swedish boats standing
high and well out of the sea, Manx deep-sea boats,
Belfast smack-Hke boats, not to speak of their
English and Scottish rivals — all fishing the great
northern waters. See the boats leaving Bressay
Sound for the sea with an east wind — it is a pretty
sight — each boat with its crew puUing out from its
fish-curing quarters till they catch the breeze, then
up go their fore-sails as they dip and bend to
the breeze, up go the jigger-sail and jibs, and away
they career like greyhounds round the Sound head ;
now you see the sails, then the tops, and at last
they race out of sight. Here the summer days are
nightless. The witching hour of night is replaced
in early winter by the brilliancy of the " Merry

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The Northern Shores. 195

Dancers " which spread out in every direction like
the evolutions of a great army, whose cohorts are
gleaming in more than purple and gold, dispersing
now and now combining, and now waning and
disappearing, and again rushing into sight with the
sound as of hurtling arrows, till at last they slip
with mysterious evanescence from the grasp of both
eyesight and imagination, and leave behind a sky
of brassy yellow and green, into which the sun
gradually creeps as an alien presence.

Returning south, passing Fair Isle, looming in
the dark between Orkney and Shetland, we sight
on the mainland Noss Head, a corner by itself,
with its striking blue mass of terribly rugged rocks
rising perpendicular out of the sea, tenanted by
birds and the lighthouse-keeper guarding the
approach. Noss guards the entrance to noble
Sinclair's Bay, where bright shining sands are a
striking feature. Rocks rise unbroken for miles.
A few miles to the north, and off Canisbay, the
formidable Merry Men of Mey — so called from the
continual exultation of the dancing, leaping waves :
though mirth and dancing, says an old author, be
far from the minds of the sea when any sea is going.
About Duncansbay Head the rock scenery is grand :
the brown towering cliffs, some rugged like uncut
leaves of a book, others etched in alternate lines of
cornice and frieze ; and narrow caves, with pillars,
aisles, and groined roofs, and wash of sea, making
music for ever. Nowhere around the coast do the
rocks spring from the sea with such majesty, or so

o 2

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196 The British Seas.

impressive with strength and splendour. Between
Noss and Wick you observe the action of the sea
on the cliffs ; the wild waves, it is true, make no
apparent impression on the solid blue sandstone of
Noss, but the little creeks, so numerous along this
coast, are gradually widening, and there are every-
where evidences of that gradual encroachment of
the sea which time records. One other geological
phenomenon : these cliffs, with thousands of ledges,
and of isolated stacks with bridge-like connexions —
how do you account for their marvellous formation,
the beauty of their lines, or for the presence of so
many shelves which the Solan goose inhabits ?
Ailsa Craig and the Bass Rock, the Haddington and
Berwick coasts, are other equally fine examples of
the action of the vast universal force of marine
denudation.

In the deep seas here you may pretty suddenly fall
upon the finest sea-sight at night — that is, a great
fleet of fishing-boats riding at their nets, with their
globe-shaped lights, mast-high, breaking the dark-
ness at curiously regular intervals. Herring-boats
are the swallows of the deep, proclaiming summer is
at hand, and they speed like the birds over the waves.
You pass them as you approach the great fishing
coast of Caithness and the harbour of Wick, with its
forest of masts, its ancient and fish-like smells, its
sea-wealth in the large curing stations*. The traffic
of the sea from Shetland to here, and for hundreds of
miles down the coast, is maintained almost entirely
by these homely, smart herring-boats; the clean

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The Northern Shores. 1 99

sailing-boats keep continually crossing — you cannot
get out of their sight — and their brown sails and
homely rigging and modest decks become likeable,
associated as they are with great labouring lives,
bold enterprise, sudden risks of rise and fall in
markets, hopes and fears of wives and little ones on
land, losses from calms and from storms, from
failures of fishing and from failures arising from
excessive productive fishing. It is spirit-stirring to
see the streaming flow of herring-boats, sail after
sail in long continuous lines, approaching the har-
bour from the sea ; fresh sails spring up by magic
long after you think all have arrived. What a game
of pitch-and-toss it is ! Some boats you see labour-
ing hard, overladen to danger from a great catch ;
their neighbours got but little ; and on the braes
overlooking the harbour the wives stand up against
the sky-line, gesticulating and speculating over the
boats and catches, and a long way off identifying
them by their rigging as they return homewards
with their ** shots."

The steamer sails from Wick to Aberdeen in the
open sea, out of sight of the long stretch of rocky
coast to Lybster, where, and at Sarclet and
Whaligoe the natural creeks among the giddy height
of rocks are utilized as harbours ; and these romantic
shelters, which served as lurking-places for piratical
Vikings and smuggling Norsemen, are now usefully
employed by the sturdy crofter fishermen, and in
season are alive with the stir of coasting ships, coal-
sloops, and herring-fishing boats. The eyes leap

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200 The British Seas.

with delight on the waving trees that spring into
sight at ducal Dunrobin ; faint and dim in the dis-
tance is old Tain and the sandy mouth of the
Dornoch Firth — unsafe and shallow haven, abhorred
by cods and seamen.

Morayshire is like a blur on the vista and streaks
of light at night; the bold Souters of Cromarty
guide us into the leg-like Bay of Cromarty, about
the finest roadstead in the world, where the whole
fleet might safely ride, and Balnagown Castle gleams
from sheltering woods. All the way up to Ding-
wall the eye rests on a varied and rich tapestry,
changeful and exceedingly beautiful, which, after
the bolder scenery, approaches the idyllic. One
with a mania for firth and sea scenery will be here
satiated by seas and shores; the stretching blue
hills, never free of clouds, seascape at every turn of
shore, the quiet life of the Ferries — so full of sunlight
and shadows, like Celtic natures — still villages, and
overhanging woods. The long recesses, the well-
tilled fields, keep smiling on the sailor with joy
about the Moray Firth, with Beauly's sheltered bay
of little interest, clean Nairn, Burgh Head, putres-
cent of fish, like all fishing tow^ns, and supposed to
be the Ultimatttm Ptororton of the Romans. The
trip by rail looking seawards brings out the bril-
liancy of the Firth's panoramic windings probably
better than from the ship, and if you have a love
for the picturesque in land or sea you will at once
resolve to spend a holiday here before you die.
One's heart warms on returning from the grey

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The Northern Shores. 203

serrated coast and dark skerries of the northern
shores to the fertile fields aglow in summer with
ripening grain, the grateful fringe of swishing trees,
the deep colour of the soil, the cosy towns along
the Morayshire coast. The fishing towns between
here and Peterhead are numerous and enterprising
— Buckie, Portsoy, CuUen, Banff, Macduff, Rose-
hearty, Fraserburgh — whose reliance is placed on
the stormy seas, and not the barren earth, for sub-
sistence. They are fishing towns and nothing more
— grimy, fishy, picturesque, though dirty, with odd,
quaint figures lounging about odd, quaint boats at
odd, quaint harbours, where the boats' brown hulls
and spars send ruddy reflections on the lapping
waters, which are green under the boats' shadows.
There one may observe the vast influence the cap-
ture of fish has on communities ; all the towns
thrive or starve by the herring fishing; all the
natives, from the Provosts downwards, hold shares
in the fishing-boats ; and from the very aspect of
the streets you can judge the success or failure of
the great seas' harvest. No British seas are so
inseparably associated with the toilers of the deep
as are the great Northern seas, where fishing-boats
are ever to be seen tossing about.

Southward we pass in rapid rotation Peterhead,
with its red granite houses, its boats of steel, and
its men with heads of iron, with its Hell's Lum
ever at hand ; small fishing ports, where from the
road you can gaze down the fishermen's cottage
chimneys and peep into their kail-pots ; little fish -

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204 The British Seas.

ing hamlets, boldly perched on the top of rocks
almost all the way southwards ; the weird BuUers
of Buchan, which keep their weirdness in sunshine
as in gloom, and make you agree with Dr. Johnson
that you would sooner send your greatest enemy to
reside in the Red Sea than in this unearthly caldron ;
and from the sea are seen the shining spires, and
towers, and crowns of grey Aberdeen, and in the
distance its isolated Black Dog. Next comes pic-
turesque Stonehaven (Steenhive of its native doric)
with part of its folk huddled close on the sea-rim,
and the modern villa offshoots perched on the braes ;
and the crumbling Castle of Dunnottar, whose
hoary antiquity seems an infant's breath compared
with the illimitable past recorded in its wonderful
cliffs, built up of the stones that rolled themselves
smooth in the wash of primeval seas ; then little
Bervie, rendered historical by its dearth of guid ale
when its Provost drank water ; the peaceful pastoral
hill of Garvock, where in days of yore the diabolical
lairds of the neighbourhood tasted the " broo " of
the Laird of Gardenstone boiled to death in a
caldron in too literal fulfilment of their royal
master's wrathful wish.

Montrose lies flat as a platter, with the sea like a
smiling canal lapping at its garden walls — this when
no storm is on ; for then the marshalled waves no-
where show grander front of battle than as they
advance on the downs of Montrose ; next we have
Arbroath, with its red sandstone in cathedral and
cottage — quaint, full of odd ways and character

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The Northern Shores. 205

study ; straggling, interesting Carnoustie rejoicing
in its excellent golfing links and great sandy beach,
where ladies innumerable bathe, unblessed and un-
hampered by bathing-coaches ; and then we pass
the mouth of the Tay (where we hear what sailors
call the Roaring Lion), smiling and laughing under
its halo of smoke from " Bonnie Dundee," as if it
had not forgotten the joy of its earlier existence
amid the most charming landscapes that Scotland
can show. The hills lie silent in the distance, big
steamers throb their way with labouring pulsations,
and with gay sheets hauled close, and gunwales
heeled over and touching the hissing foam, boats
skim merrily all day long. Brilliant St. Andrews,
sparkling as with jewels in sunshine, where John
Knox toiled in a French galley ; the Bell Rock
Lighthouse, recalling the story of the malignant
and well-rewarded pirate, and the serrated coast of
the East Neuk of Fife, alive with memories of many
a fatal shipwreck and many a deed of lifeboat
daring ; and now before us lies the mouth of the
Firth of Forth, with the Isle of May sending by
night its glow of orange fire into the heart of the
darkness of vast wild waves, and slashing rain, and
driving hurricane of east wind. Once, with several
bottles of rum, we came to the isle to spend two or
three days, to make acquaintance with the Forth
pilots who perch here, but no pilots appeared.
Here let us cast anchor, and visit a fisherman's
cottage.

The interior of a fisherman's house is worth see-
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2o6 The British Seas.

ing. You find crockery, wall-ornaments, and bits of
pictures that are nowhere else to be seen ; they re-
flect the simple taste and peculiar idiosyncrasies of
the fisher folk. The huge well-filled bed, with heavy
curtains, though stuffy, looks decidedly inviting, and
made to remain in, as it is difficult to get in or out of ;
you often surprise a fisherman resting there during
the day, and as he rises on his elbow reproduces the
picture of the poor wayfarer, and his wife that of the
good Samaritan. In front of the bed, as a seat, is
the husband's chest, holding his Sunday clothes.
Above the dresser or kitchen table and on the plate-
rack are ranged in rows dinner plates of various
makes and colours, and hung round the beams on
nails are milk jugs, all in pairs : I have counted in
one house as many as a dozen different patterns.
These plates and jugs are not for ordinary daily use,
but for the picturesque ornamentation of their walls.
On the mantelpiece and on shelves are many stone-
ware figures, brilliantly coloured, generally Portobello
ware, representing shepherds and shepherdesses in
Arcadian guise, sailors and their sweethearts in
everlasting embrace. Burns and Highland Mary, the
Babes in the Wood, and Napoleon and the Prince
Consort, with underneath appropriate snatches of
poetry, and Delf dogs in the very picture of health
and gorgeous hues look contentedly down. There are
pictures, such as Raising the Widow of Nain's son,
a shipwreck and the rescuing lifeboat, and a cheap
print of the Queen — and in a window corner the

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The Northern Shores. 207

family are photographed, the men in working garb,
the women carrying creels on their backs, all justly
proud of their calling. In the corner stands the
antique well-filled corner cupboard, containing their
best tea set, used on high days and family gather-
ings. Stout antique brass candlesticks set off the
ends of the mantelpiece. Each house has its
framed memoriam cards of those who have been
drowned. Sometimes they possess an inner apart-
ment — "the room " — with another huge bed, and a
substantial chest of drawers with spiral pillars. A
large family Bible is placed on the table, covered
with a crimson cloth ; and on the hearthstone is a
home-made many-coloured rug. In the garret and
about the kitchen are stowed away nets and fish-
ing gpar. Round fish creels, and long shallow
creels with coils of lines resting on beds of fresh-
cut grass, each line with a hundred or so of hooks
baited with bits of bright-coloured sand-worm or
glistening clam, lie about the house or the door
ready for the goodman (as the husband is called)
going to the sea.

All along this eastern coast you must bluflSy face
the blast that comes raw as whiskey and keen as a
razor. The assertive east wind braces one up if it
does not make the blood thin ; you must stand up
to it, and learn to brag of the rasping wind that
keeps the eastern shores cool, that endows you with
ruddy health, and makes the natives as boisterous
as the breeze. In these fishing towns you should

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2o8 The British Seas.

hear it in spring, singing its own praises to many a I

pretty tune, which it does in no pickthank manner, i

but with a right hearty goodwill and merry gusto. f

This whistling, piercing wind is the making of the k|

east-coast fishermen, aye, and of more than them. |

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CHAPTER IX

THE FIRTH OF FORTH.

Great thoroughfare — The Fife coast — The Haddington coast —
Bait-gatherers— Oyster-dredging song — Fishermen's love
for sea*— Tragedies— Berwickshire coast — Northumberland
coast.

The Firth of Forth (of old called the Scots'
Sea) is the greatest sea thoroughfare and has prob-
ably the most beautiful panorama of sea-scenery
in Scotland. On both sides the Firth is made
majestic with the presence of great hills. All
sorts and conditions of vessels ply on the pic-
turesque waters : brown-sailed fishing-boats up the
Firth dredging for clams or fishing for crabs and
haddocks, tacking and dodging about all day long ;
the deep-sea boats, in their season, speeding out in
leaps and bounds, as if aware of the distance to
the sea and eager to reach their destination, their
brown sails, wind-taut, bending to the breeze with
easy, sweeping grace ; see how they race in friendly
emulation, and are now lost to view behind the
green islands. The hulking steamers plough the
sea by sheer strength, leaving behind dense circular
volumes of smoke, which, revolving into curls and

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210 The British Seas.

then into streaks, dissipate in specks into thin air.
When an east wind blows sharp, and breaks the
deep blue Firth into white-ridged waves, you find
amusement in forecasting home-coming steamers by
the smoke blown ahead of them on the horizon : —
you speculate from which port they have come,
whether from Iceland or Shetland or Norway ; from
Danish ports, Hamburgh or Rotterdam ; from Hull
or from London. I have heard old wives from
inland farms wondering what sort of folk are on
board, where they came from, where and what they
are going to do — questions that come naturally to
the Scots. Handsome schooners resplendent in the
glory of sails full set, move eloquently up the Firth.
Jersey smacks (all smacks are called Jersey smacks,
wherever they sail from, as the first smacks came
here from Jersey) and brigs sail in old-fashioned
leisure style, with old-fashioned airs, and one would
think for the observer's pleasure, so stately do they
look in last-century make and rigging. The Pride
has regularly run with potatoes from Dunbar to
London for thirty years — isn't that something for a
boat to be proud of?

This sea thoroughfare has, like any street
thoroughfare, its prowlers, its loafers, and its leisure
class. The former you have in the pert steam
trawlers, the bugbears of fishermen, which keep
rushing out and in, to and from the three-mile limit,
with their catches. The leisure class you have in
yachts with clean sails, to distinguish them un-
necessarily from fishing-boats, careering about in an

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The Firth of Forth. 2 1 1

aimless, amateurish way. Pilot-boats cruise about,
and on signal from a schooner race and chase for
their prize like greyhounds from the slips. To these
ships, to the sailors, to fishermen wayfarers, to all
ahke, the sea or the Firth has no favourite, makes
no difference ; but at times one might think, as he
looks with one eye on the harbours and the other
eye on the sea, that the refulgent splendour of the sun,
and the charms of the wind and weather, love to dwell
with the fisherman's modest boat, his simple dress,
his patched sails, and that the ardour of the breeze
loves to blow and whistle and grow merry among
these sails and puff them out, and send them home
dancing over the waves with gladness, and leave the
statelier and heavier ships groaning and creaking far
behind. This great thoroughfare, this sea scene, is
never vacant : like the sea it is never at rest ; there is
a continual traffic on this highway of life and com-
merce. The inner Firth and the stretch of sea is
never dull ; if there is not a coming and going of
boats and vessels — and their absence presages great
storms — there is the majesty of the mighty waters,
the play of clouds and sunshine on the sea, making
them everlastingly interesting in changing hues and
tones and forms : the mind of man seeing in them
whatever the imagination suggests ; and there is the
company of sea birds on the shore or on the sea,
darting about in their white feathers like specks of
sunshine, with their sad monotonous calls, like echoes
and cries from the crested sea-waves. This
thoroughfare is set in a striking frame. The king-

p 2

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2 1 2 The British Seas.

dom of Fife looks southwards on the hazy seaboard
hills and Laws and rich fields of the Lothians, and
they smile on the clearer northern shores of Fife, the
nestling fishing towns like red dots on grey shores ;
and the shores keep smiling on each other. The
rocky shores, the Gothic and Norman church spires
peeping above cosy villages with warm, red-tiled
roofs, the ancient castles standing on prominences,
the undulating golf links ; the bold presences of the
green islands breaking the view and sheltering the
ships, the Bass Rock, bolt upright with white sides
smiling to the sun and the sea, the Isle of May, a
sentinel by day and a lighthouse by night, the Laws
or conical hills on both sides, the Paps of the
Lomonds towering high in Fife, the shoulders of the
Lammermuirs rounding off" the Haddington coast,
the Pentlands up the firth like clouds, and wrought
as into this scroll-work Arthur's Seat amid the smoke
from Auld Reekie and the Port o' Leith. At night
the lighthouses proclaim the unwearied care for this
highway; the villages shed sparkling lights sea-
wards ; and the steamers, with blazes of light, keep
up the ceaseless traffic that makes eloquent our
British seas.

From the Isle of May up the Forth, on both sides,
are upwards of forty piers and tidal harbours, road-
steads, and sheltered anchorages. Looking up the
Forth from the May is one of the finest seascapes ;
and should the eastern harr blot out the sights, you
have always trawlers, which shelter and prowl about,
and the ways of birds here to study. Along the Fife

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The Firth of Forth. 2 1 3

coast you notice the happy device of man in having
built the parish churches on heights and added
Dutch-Hke spires, so that they stand out as guides
to the mariners, and thus their influence is not con-
fined to their parish. All that mariners know of
these towns is that good water and moderate
supplies can be obtained, and fishing-boats ride
jauntily all day long. All the towns have good
harbours, some the oldest to be seen ; and, strange
to say, beacons lit at night are in some cases shown
from the brae-heads above the harbour, and not
from the harbours. These towns are the places one
can spend a week to profit in studying the ways of
fisher-folk, their superstitions, their nick-names, and
how, to be identified, some have to adopt their wives'
names ; the characteristic interiors of their houses,
which they effectively decorate with Delf dogs, and
jugs,and crockery; the rise and fall of fishing, the effect
of trawlers and trawling. At Anstruther for three con-
tinuous days hawkers wath their vans from far inland
hung on at the harbour in the bare hope of some
native boats having to run home with a catch from
the herring-fishing at Aberdeen by stress of weather,
but their prayers for a north-east storm were un-
answered. The towns and villages all run in narrow
lines, with steep and narrow streets, reel-rail, ram-
stam houses, built in a Fifish, independent, queer, odd
manner, with tortuous bends and turns, displaying
the character of the folk, with foot-roads where
none could be expected, gardens in front of their
houses to the sea-shore, and open to the public*

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2 14 The British Seas.

What strange oddities of houses ! what character
in buildings and through-otherness ! Where no
links are to dry nets on, the witted natives have
erected posts on the beach, and at East Wemyss you
see clothes drying from clothes-posts in the sea, which
runs right up to the houses, and at West Wemyss
a coalpit-mouth opens into the harbour. Out of
this coalpit-mouth you see at night appearing, as if
by magic, scores of tidy, clean factory girls busy
knitting — the result of a cunning old footpath
alongside the beach and cutting along the pit-mouth.
These tumble-towns, with odd designs and
life, remind you of Devonshire. Crail at the one
end, Kinghorn at the other, and the intervening
towns on the sea — Anstruther, Cellardyke, Pitten-
weem, St. Monance, Elie, Largo, the Wemyss,
Buckhaven, Dysart, and Kirkcaldy — all are choke-
full of the picturesque, old-world feeling, old-world
folk, and old-world buildings, where evening shades
clothe the seascapes with poetry, and make poor
odd buildings poetical in the moonlight, and the
huddled, projecting, receding, falling and rising
house-tops and gable-ends like the homes of fancy,
and the salmon stake-nets like huge spider-webs,
the boats drawn up on the links like monsters of
the deep, and the fishermen about the harbours like
heroes in romance — whereas they are heroes in fact.
As you sail along you come upon one red-tiled fish-
ing town the moment you leave the other, so close
are they together ; and this you will the more
readily notice as the sun shines on the red tiles and
white gables, and a cloud travels and wipes out the

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Village near Frazerburgh. Drawn by J. Pennell.

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The Firth of Forth. 217

warm light and leaves in succession all the villages
in sombre grey. Sunshine and shade make fine
studies ; the sun shines on houses or sea, and they
return the greeting; in shade they have the sym-
pathy of the folk who look on them always in shade.
A quiet, tender, grey beauty, with brilliant glimpses,
hangs on the Fife coast, and the wanderer along
the variegated scenery of bluff coasts, glass caves,
curious rocks, fine bays and towns, listening to the
voice of the sea made manifest in the harbours,
soon becomes in sympathy with the " racy " folk
from whom the prototype of Robinson Crusoe
sprang, and where many an autotype lies dormant.
It is no stretch on one's imagination to see. Largo's
ancient harbour formed by a pier of rough stones on
the east, and rocks marked by warping posts on the
west, and think of Selkirk's twice sudden departure
from his home ; its smell would put to flight many
a good man with not too fastidious olfactory organs.
How like a man, a Fife fisherman, was Selkirk, who
alone is honoured by a public monument on this
seaboard — the first time he left Largo was to run off
to sea, the last was with a native girl. The observer
along this seaboard will never question the actuality
of Robinson Crusoe; he would be quite prepared
to hear that every town laid claim to being his
nativity, romance and daring run so strong in the
Fifeshire fishermen's veins.

Along the Haddington coast you observe for the
first time in these northern shores that the wealth
of the folks is drawn from generous soil, and that

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2 18 The British Seas.

the harbours are neither nurnerous nor good. The
glow of the sea is over the red soil, the red sand-
stone houses, and the red roof-tiles. The atmo-
sphere is clarified, wide awake, and the keen breeze
keeps one's thoughts revolving. The fields are
ploughed, and the teams come to the footpath which
follows the edge of the coast, and thus those who
plough the sea, and those who plough the land, look
upon each other. The one sees the vessel change
her tack, the other sees the plough turning at the
end of the furrow. On the grass-covered rocky
ridges at bright Canty Bay (so inseparably asso-
ciated with Sam Bough, R.S.A.) the sheep browse
and skip like goats. Between the Bass and the
May a sea-fight, five centuries ago, took place be-
tween the Scotch and English, when an English
admiral and three ships were captured.

" The battle fiercely it was fought
Near to the craig of Bass ;
When we next fight the English loons,
May nae waur come to pass."

Probably Dunbar, with its harbour — which
tradition says was built by Cromwell— is the most
picturesque in the Firth, with ruins of its once-
important castle for a figure-head at its entrance,
where Paul Jones and Captain Fall, the sea adven-
turers, made their presence felt ; and the old sur-
rounding buildings make one feel that something
should happen. So do the fishermen who ** loaf"
about the shadow of the boats, cluster on winter
nights in a coalshed, and crowd under high stone

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The Firth of Forth. 2 2 1

walls, and put off going to sea. To them the deep
sea has little interest 5 it has lost its romance.
Time was when shoals of herring-boats (as many as
five hundred) were to be found here ; now they are
content with small boats and small ambition, and
happy with having an easy time. So strong is the
fishermen's dislike against the trawlers, that they do
not themselves trawl or dredge, but fish with hook
and line. Dunbar fishermen, like others, are
terribly disinclined to venture into the open sea.
If it is a stormy day, it is too strong for their boats ;
if it is a good day, they will go out for crabs and
haddocks. Yet fishermen further up the Firth come
racing past, and take from their mouths the bread
those Dunbar fishermen should be earning. Some
philosophers find an explanation in the rocky-
mouthed harbour, a regular boat- trap — the jaws of
death on a stormy day — and so will reason that men
of enterprise will seek safer harbour,, and thus it is
left for degenerate fishermen to remain ; but these
men are, after all, brave sailors. Dunbar once
owed much of its prosperity to the perilous industry
of its fishermen, who have a society of their own
dating back to 1706. It was once the centre of
successful herring-fishing, but the old places that in
days of yore were burghers' residences, and banks,
and shipping offices, are now fishermen's dwellings,
militia stores, and public-houses. Looking down
old closes on a sunny day, with whitewashed walls,
bright red tiles, and the deep blue ocean beyond, is
as looking upon a Union Jack. High stands the

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parish church, catching the fisherman's eye far at
sea. The fishermen at one general election were
told by pot-house politicians that if they voted for
one candidate, who would disestablish the Church,
when they were drowned at sea and their bodies
brought on shore, they would not receive decent
Christian burial ; that the church would be pulled
down, the ancient landmark would be gone, and
they would have no guide for the harbour. This
fallacy was exposed by opposing politicians, but the
simple-minded fishermen shook their heads and said,
" We ken fine what ye want." Further east is the
Cove, where sea and mountains meet in enduring
embrace in a rock-bound coast. The harbour,
almost concealed, has been tunnelled out of a cliff"
with its entrance to the sea on the east. This little
community has gone into mourning since the sad
storm in October, 1881, which overwhelmed a
number of its boats and the flower of its fishermen ;
so great was the loss and terrible the shock, that not
till this day have the survivors recovered the strength
of courage to venture into the deep-sea fishing.

Graceful, handsome, beautiful North Berwick,
with its tidy harbour and handful of fishing people,
gives one the impression that, whatever it might
have been in the past, the harbour is now mainly a
thing of beauty and a picturesque adjunct to amuse
the summer visitors, and that the fishermen stand
in the same position, and are stowed away into an
old granary, whither they are driven by the inun-
dations of visitors from the city. It is odd to see

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The Firth of Forth. 225

broad fishermen, with blue jerseys and red cravats,
with braces where no braces should be seen, carry-
ing golf-clubs on the links, their only plea being that
the fishing is " done," thanks to the trawlers.
They live in hopes of better times, and by amusing
the summer visitors. Here the colours and beauty
of nature fascinate - the splendid sanded beach and
grassy links, with their winding undulations, the
blue sea broken by the eye-filling Bass and the
smaller islands, grim and grey Tantallon Castle
towering on the high cliffs, and the bright northern
air making warm the red sandstone houses and you
ruddy with healthy glow. The Bass Rock with its
solan geese, its ruinous prison, is well worth visit-
ing, as its history of the lives and deaths of Scot's
politicians and Scot's preachers is a miniature his-
tory of Scotland. Next are Port Seton and Cock-
enzie, excellent types of fishing villages — the fisher-
men's houses, which are modern and belong to
themselves, are of small villa style, with con-
veniences. Here the men are steady and enter-
prising and proud of their calling, which they prose-
cute with success in their deep-sea boats. In the
beginning of June you will find them in the south of
Ireland. They return home in July, and go to the
west or north of Scotland, and north of England,
where they remain till September. They next go
south to Lowestoft in October, arid are only back
again to hold their New Year. They take to the
sea as they take to their religion, with keen gusto ;
religious views are their hobby, and all the sects in

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226 The British Seas.

the world are to be found preached with zeal by the
Cockenzie fishermen. It is a treat to come across a
fisherman here who is not a preacher, and who will
not tell you your destiny in five or ten minutes. He
is an ideal modern democrat, with little or no
superstition, little or no picturesqueness in life, but
an excellent fisherman. Then there is Prestonpans,
one of the oldest Scottish fishing villages, half
asleep, harb'ourless, almost deserted by its fishermen.
The sea has made such inroads that it beats now
against the backs of houses. The quaint houses,
with stone outside stair-steps terribly worn, and
low-roofed rooms, are characteristic of the place.
In front of the fishermen's pew in the church hangs
an oil painting representing boats at sea, with ap-
propriate quotation from the Psalms around the
frame — the only painting that hangs in any Presby-
terian church in Scotland.

The most picturesque figures all along the coast
are the bait-gatherers. In the early morning still-
ness, when one, after bathing, is resting behind the
shadow of a rock, the air is broken by distant voices,
sounding like sea-birds ; the sounds come nearer —
you make them out to be human voices by the
peculiar sharp click ; afar off are troops of figures
rapidly approaching on the sands, the sounds
articulate into words, and the baiters pass with
steady swinging pace that would do any man
credit. They are going for ** lugworm " bait for
white fishing, which lasts till September (clam bait
is only got in May) ; it is the sweetest and best

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The Firth of Forth. 227

bait, and is generally got in greatest number
where sand and mud mix, as at Musselburgh or on
the great stretches of sand at Aberlady, or at the
mouth of the rivers. The spade the bait-gatherers
use is small, and the fishing girls ply it deftly with
their hands ; a push of the spade, a grip of the
hand, and the worm slips into the pitcher. Much
skill and quickness are necessary, otherwise the
worm would swiftly elude the gatherer. Only those
trained from their childhood can ever hope to earn
a living by the work, or to bring home a sufficient
supply in their pitchers. The troops of women in
early morning, or late at evening, on the wide sands
against the expanse of sky and sea are a sight not
readily forgotten. To one on the links the bait-
gatherers afar off on the sands seem in their delving
with their spades as if engaged in a sand-field.
They are suitably attired in unison with their
open-air surroundings — sometimes bareheaded, and
invariably barefooted ; the married women may be
known from the unmarried by wearing footless
stockings, the unmarried girls not being ashamed to
show their bright bare legs ; their hair is often con-
cealed by coloured kerchiefs tied under their chins
and falling over their shoulders; their faces have
the healthy hue bred of the sun and the sea-breeze,
and sometimes their cheeks and hands are as brown
as berries ; they wear gowns of print drawn up,
ample and many-tucked dark-blue petticoats.
Often they relieve their long walks to and from the
sand-beds by snatches of song, which coming from

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228 Tlie British Seas.

stout lungs may offend the fastidious. The tide
waits not for them, and so they have to be at their
task at irregular hours in the summer months. In
early morning the village streets are awakened to the
patter of their bare feet and to their merry laughter,
and the vigorous sound of their singing. If the men
are proverbially poor walkers, these bait-gatherers,
sometimes old women (who have to eke out a sub-
sistence by selling to the fishermen the " lugworm ''
at one shilling a pitcherful), strike out with a free
pace. With fisherwomen, as with all labouring
classes, youth and strength have the best of it. For
the woman there is never at any time leisure for
folding of the hands, nor any passive grief; she
must ever be up and doing. Women have ample
work in a fishing community. Getting bait, redding
the nets, mending them, baiting the lines, attaching
carefully bits of lug^\'orm, clam, or mussel to hooks
on long cords of strong brown Hnes (" baiting the
wands " is a phrase they use for sorting the deep-sea
lines) provide constant occupation, and young girls
soon earn enough to make them independent. The
woman is, indeed, absolutely necessary as a help-
mate, a partner to a fisherman, and, without her,
he would have to pay other women for the work, so
few fishermen are unmarried. At Dunbar it is said
that the fisherman deteriorates from the day of his
marriage.

Prestonpans was once famous for its oysters,
which bore the mouth-filling name of the " Pan-
dore." It is some thirty years ago since an un-

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The Firth of Forth. 229

touched bed of oysters was discovered. With the
disappearance of the oysters the glory of Prestonpans
seems to have set. Old men, when the oyster beds
were, as they say, properly clad with oysters, have
got twenty thousand in a day, and now they could,
with a struggle, get one thousand in a week.
Oysters, as might be imagined, bearing such a
beautiful name as the " Pandore," were excellent,
and famous beyond Scotland. Associated with the
oysters is preserved what is probably the oldest
surviving bit of lore connected with fishing folk
along the Scottish coast. The oysters were dredged,
as they still are, a few miles from the shore by two
men and two boys — as well as clams, so valuable
for bait. It was a belief, probably well founded,
that oysters would rise the better from their beds to
the music of a song. So, as the ancient fishermen
and boys dredged they would raise at the pitch of
their voices the dredger's song —

*' Dreg an oyster, dreg a clam,

Dreg an auld wife, or dreg an auld man/'

How old these words are, and what their origin
was, none can tell : these lines alone survive of the
original ditty. Old fishermen, as their fancy
prompted, added line upon line ; they are the same
ancient grandfathers who declare that the metre is
Burns', who wag their heads at the song, and find
pleasure in recalling the parcels of nonsense their
rhymes were. Some lines are preserved by word of
mouth as a specimen of the extempore addition,

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230 The British Seas.

and they have the fisherman's home-made fla-
vour :—

"It's my sang an' your tale —
Brandy's guid 'mong het ale/'

And another, —

*• An' as ye work, it shall be seen,
It shall be seen upon the green."

It is the firm belief of the natives that the oyster
beds were robbed to supply English fisheries some
thirty years ago, when they were thoroughly cleaned
out.

On both sides of the Forth the fishermen in every
place impress themselves strongly. A fisherman is
never found on tramp ; seldom does he become a
hind. He may toil on the land for some months ;
but summer winds blow and the sea asserts itself:
he bids good-bye to the land and its labour. With
what irresistible might does the sea enforce its claim
to its children ! and sometimes death only makes
the insatiable mother more tenacious. Among
fisherfolk, the descendants of fisherfolk who are
riveted to the sea, there is a glamour in the sea, and
from generations born to generations to be born
this undying fatalism prevails. It seems to be out
of the power of men to throw off this mighty law
of nature. Like kings and queens, fisherfolk marry
among themselves. This omnipresence of the sea
for the fishers of the sea binds them by the oxy of
the waves, and the saline savour of the ocean un-
ceasingly imparts to them the fixedness of their
destiny, and proclaims the law of their nature.

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The Firth of Forth. 233

which spells out the message : ** Remain ; be con-
tent ; be happy ; go round and round in the one
narrow rut ; make a little, a very little, money ;
scrape enough of food and sleep ; the sea will feed
thee with ancient fables, and will claim thee for her
own if old age and poverty escape thee." Some
who are not born with fishermen's blood are drawn
into this vortex-like influence. On a fishing-boat
you soon feel the illimitable depth and wonder of
the unknown surging around the boundless sky and
sea, from which flight seems hopeless and escape
impossible. To the simple-minded fishers, how un-
speakable the delight of drawing with their nets
money out of the sea in silvern fish, and reaping
where they have not sown. Deep into their hearts
has sunk the wild romance of the sea, and their
stout hearts throb the more for joy of the large Hfe
of the ocean.

What a godsend it is that fishermen inherit
nautical instincts, so sharpened by exercise as to
make them lion-hearted ! No man need venture to
sea in a fishing-boat unless he has daring and skill.
Fishermen have the blessed belief that they are
safer in their own easily managed crafts, in which
they ride through storms like sea-gulls, than they
would be in larger vessels. The deep-sea boats ride
through almost any sea. When a storm springs up,
they prefer to keep the open sea rather than enter
the Firth, and encounter the tides, the rocky coasts,
in dark nights when the wind whistles and cries
funereally in their ears, the masts croak, and the

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234 The British Seas.

boat labours frightfully, as if for its existence, and
the great waters tear over its bows and rush along-
side as if the monster Death were chasing the boat
for a victim ; while the start of a nail, the leakage
of a plank, the rent of a sheet, or crack of a mast
might give him entrance, and in a jiffy they would
all be swept to Davy Jones's locker. The story of
storms, the battle of the waves, and the artillery of
the tempest carry sad, sad tales to the mean
cottages in these fishing towns and villages, par-
ticularly Eyemouth in recent years, of the death of
fishermen ; how some are knocked overboard by
loosened sails, some killed by falling masts, some
found entangled in nets, and others gone amissing
at sea and never more heard, tell of — all drowned,
and so write sorrow on the bosom of the mighty
deep. Let's talk of the tragedies of this coast (to
paraphrase Richard II.) and of comfort let no man
speak. In great storms near Dunbar — and as many
as eight w-recks in that rock-bound district have
been counted in one day — it is not uncommon to see
vessels and men go down wathin sight and reach of
the harbour, beyond human aid. At Eyemouth,
one sad day in October, 1881, one hundred and
thirty of the fishermen were drowned. When death
strikes at one, it strikes at every other fisherman's
door, so closely related are they by blood or mar-
riage.

In the rural churchyard around Whitekirk (so
often painted by Alexander Frazer, R.S.A.), the
parish kirk of the scenes of many shipwrecks at

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The Firth of Forth, 235

Scoughall, Seacliff, and Auldhame rocks — where un-
known and unclaimed men from the seas lie at rest
(the only sounds that break the inland quiet being
the voices of ruddy hinds' children at the school
playground, or of young labourers making music on
concertinas in the churchyard in the evenings, as
they wait for farm lasses practising in the kirk
psalm-tunes for Sunday's choir) : there, in this
churchyard, sways with every breeze that blows
a modest tin-plate " headstone," quaintly com-
memorating the tragedies of this coast in these
suggestive lines : —

" I went to sea ! Death came to me !
And took me hence away !
The ship was wrecked, and all was lost

Upon that Fatal day.
Death comes to all, both great and small,
And it shall come to you."

And yet, to the hinds and cottager shipwreck are
not unmixed calamities ; as their experience proves,
they are special dispensations of providence in their
favour. For instance, some hinds were sent as
usual at spring to cart seaware from the beach, and
one was seen suspiciously to pick up something
and secretly put it in his pocket. It was only some
brass buttons from a shipwreck, he said, not worth
an auld sang ; but a remarkably sudden transforma-
tion came over the fortune of that man's family.
It must, in justice, be said that the labourers at
Seacliff, and the hinds at Auldhame, under the
charge of the farmer, gallantly and successfully work

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236 The British Seas.

the life-saving apparatus there both by day and by
night.

You notice that each prominence of this rocky,
bluff seaboard is possessed by magnificent castles
beetling on the ocean — Tantallon, Dunbar, Fast
(scene of the *' Bride of Lammermuir ''), Berwick,
and Bamborough, all bearing the golden stains of
time, to quote Mr. Ruskin, the great glory of stern
watching, of mysterious sympathy, which we feel in
walls that have long been washed by the passing
waves of humanity, and, let me add, by the sound-
ing waves of the sea. No man can look unmoved
on the seascapes here — those modern sea-knights,
the fishermen of Grace Darling's country, cradled
in surge and storm — the old castles, the older
villages, overlooking the wide swell of the German
Ocean, within reach of its hoarse, resounding waves,
where nature becomes rich in tints and colours, and
where the atmosphere is aglow with lambent light
which artists make manifest ; the generous sea-
board soil ; the warmer colour and greater wealth
of land and sea; the great Border country — so
associated with burly borderers' bloody struggles and
international conflicts — that greets so kindly the
all-night traveller from London in the morning, and
leaps straight into a warm corner of his heart. The
coast's high cliffs are haunted by geologists, botan-
ists, naturalists, and sea-birds, where the sea's
sombrous sound is symbohc of the monotonous
melancholy main. Picturesque Berwick ! (where,
by the way, a distance seaward of five miles is

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The Firth of Forth. 237

claimed for trawlers) with laws and speech of its
own — Scottish in blood and in Scottish soil, yet of
English fashion, with its old gates and high walls —
and Holy Island across the wide, wet sands, with
its tiny castle and two soldiers in charge, where you
will get your heart's content of fishermen's yarns of
smuggling, shipwrecks, and catches, are worth visit-
ing by any child of romance. The Fame Isles dot
the sea ; down the straight, dangerous Northumber-
land coast peaceful, pretty hamlets succeed each
other, and you reach bright, breezy Tynemouth,
jutting out to sea and nestling under Prince's Haven,
where we are at rest.

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CHAPTER X

THE NORTH SEA.

The Port of Newcastle — The River Tyne— View from the high
level bridge— Story of the Tyne — Types of Tynebuilt ships
— The old collier — The Tyne in mid-winter — Armstronjj,
Mitchell, and Co.— Robert Stephenson & Co. — Ordnance
and locomotives — Tyncmoiith and Cullercoats — The story
of the lifeboat — Henry Taylor and the lightship — Grace
Darling — CoUingwood's crew at Trafalgar — Sunderland :
its narrowness, its industries— Seaham harbour and Lord
Byron — The Hartlepools — A pretty winter picture — The
well-deck steamer — Middlesborough and the Tees — The
story of the Tees— Mr. John Vaughan and the Cleveland
Hills.

The port of Newcastle is twenty miles long. Such
prodigious dimensions I was unable to understand
until it was explained to me that the port begins at
the mouth of the river down at Tynemouth and
South Shields, though how high up it extends I am
unable to say, unless the district called ** Scotswood '*
be its limit. The Tyne is not a river that one would
call noble. It lacks the majesty that one finds in
the Thames below bridges, despite the disgusting
colour of the water till one falls in with the blue of
the Channel tide, streaming in to clarify London's
rolling volume of pease-soup ; nor has it the dignity
of the Mersey, nor the beauty of the Clyde ; but in

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The North Sea. 239

my humble judgment the Tyne is a more remarkable
stream than all the other rivers put together.

It was but the other day, so to speak — ^well, within
living memory, at all events — that the bar at the
mouth of the Tyne obstructed the entrance of any
sort of vessel that was at all bigger than Fielding's
famous cod-smack. At low water, as it is called,
people pulled off their shoes and stockings and waded
across, whilst there were parts where the bed of the
river dried into hard mud. The transformation that
has been wrought makes this river the wonder that
everybody finds it. Steamers whose tonnage runs
into thousands come and go, and they come and go
with as much facility in the River Tyne as in the
River Thames. The Docks are such receptacles as
to fully justify the pride — I may say, the enthusiasm
— with which the people of the district speak about
them. The great High Level Bridge, which connects
Gateshead and Newcastle for the railway and the
pedestrian, is a miracle of skill, of strength, of
beauty ; an object that when I was living in
Newcastle I was never weary of admiring. Robert
Stephenson could not have desired to leave a nobler
memorial of ^his genius behind him. I have leaned
over the bridge and for long spells at a time have
forgotten myself in contemplation of the picture of
the river far down beneath me, with its shore of wild
and grimy Gateshead on the right, and the busy
Quayside and its lengths of palatial oflFices on the
left.

Byron's love of rocks whereon to muse is very well

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240 The British Seas.

for the poet who is on the look-out for hints from
nature — for a revelation from the stars — for a
whisper from the ocean — for some deep secret of
the earth, half muttered in the moan of a passage of
night wind. But he, as Dr, Samuel Johnson would
say, who labours after a just comprehension of the
vicissitudes of human life, its vanities, its toils, its
achievements, and, let me add (with a side glance at
the Quayside), its defeats, its failures, and its humi-
liations, must take his stand upon the High Level
Bridge. It was but the other day, as I have said,
that yonder river, flowing darkly many feet below,
was an insignificant, fordable stream. How long
ago ? Well, I believe the year was about 1850, at
which date the Tyne came into the hands of its
present Conservators. In those days the old town
of Sunderland was having it all her own way. The
Wear could not be called a rival, for practically
there was no Tyne. But some forty years ago, the
Tynesiders, with Joseph Cowen at their head — Sir
Joseph, who had for a son one of the most eloquent
men this nation of eloquent men has ever produced
— went to work with a will. There was a Tyne
Improvement Bill ; and when that was passed the
dredger was set to work. The dredger is a species
of barge that scoops out mud ; how many of these
fabrics were employed I do not know. But day after
day, for months and months, the monotonously
revolving scoops were slowly and obstinately deepen-
ing the channel. Then piers were built at the
mouth of the river — piers and some docks. Yet I

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The North Sea, 241

believe that down to the year 1861 the progress by
no means corresponded with the outlay, and with
the general Tyneside resolution to reduce the River
Wear to a second-hand accomplishment. Ships
light of draught, comparatively speaking, took the
mud when their hatches were flush, and remained
immovable at the top of high water despite the sea-
blessings profusely showered upon the Conservators
by rough ocean skippers and owners whose " little
all " was to be expressed in the words *' prompt
dispatch." An immense effort was then made,
inspired by Mr. Ure, whose name, though a house-
hold word at Newcastle, may possibly be unfamiliar
to many of the readers of this volume. Mr. Ure
came forward with a vast and masterly plan of
dredging, and to him — at all events to a very great
extent — the Tynesider owes a river he dearly loves
and justly boasts of, no matter in what part of the
world he may be encountered.

This little piece of local history should be known
to the man who pauses upon the High Level Bridge
for the purpose of looking about him, and musing
upon the varied and wonderful scene that is spread,
as on canvas, below. A very forest of chimneys
point their sooty apertures skywards, and from every
one of them pours the black smoke of the coal-fed
furnace, or the white vapour of the chemical works.
The atmospheric effects are wonderful and beautiful.
The river rolls in a surface of sullen darkling steel
betwixt the giant supporters of the great bridge, and
the magic of the atmosphere, wrought by the blend-

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ing of the lights and shades of the smoke-tinctured
district, makes the stream look as wide again as it
is.

Twenty types of vessels fix the attention. There is
the huge, hideous slate-coloured, camel-backed tank,
waiting for her engines. She is the latest horror of
one of the ship-building yards betwixt the High Level
Bridge and Tynemouth, and a startling example of
the ability of the modern shipwright to combine the
amplest possibility of insurance with the smallest
possible expenditure in the direction of safety. How
that deadly structure will show a Httle later on — that
death-dealing structure, whose rivets are no better
than sticking-plaster; whose plates provide the
same security against the perils of the sea that one
would look for in a fabric fashioned out of the lids of
bandboxes ; whose engines will barely have power to
drive her head to wind against a topgallant breeze
— how she will presently show, you may gather by
observing that steamer at the Quayside, newly
arrived, waiting to be discharged ; a small ship
whose decks, as you look down upon them, are full
of motion, of little wriggling, running figures, of
revolving steam machinery, and the like. She lies
upon the water as a board would ; her height of side
almost wholly consists of bulwarks. Level those
bulwarks — reduce her to the line of her main deck
by removing that extraordinary deformity fon\'ard,
styled a topgallant forecastle, and then, were you to
cross to the Gateshead side and survey her from the
height of your own stature, you would see nothing

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The North Sea. 243

of her hull — nothing of the ship saving the funnel
that leans over her stern, and the pole mast in the
bow, whose purpose as a derrick is not to be dis-
sembled by its two square yards.

How can captains find men to ship in such vessels ?
How can owners find captains to take charge of
them? It cannot be because sailors "must live,"
since, to use a Paddyism, sailors can only get their
living aboard such craft by perishing. But to the
musing, poetic eye, looking down from over the
parapet of the High Level Bridge, these man-killing
monstrosities serve their turn very well as bits
of colour. Their slates and reds, their gleam of
glass and sparkle of brass, blend into a sort of beauty
with the other richly-hued details. They suggest
life^ menacing as they are with death ! They express
commerce, and they also indicate that paralyzing
stress of competition which is crowding the ports,
the docks, and the rivers of this country with lines
upon lines of what the old naval Jacks called
" Rotten Rows."

The business of the Tyne is more concentrated
than that of the Thames, and one seems, therefore,
to find more movement here than in the southern
stream. The tug snorts, and splashes, and drives ;
the old collier, too, that seems a hundred years old,
is not wanting : see her, lean, gaunt, and hungry,
ill-conditioned and beggared by the " strumpet
winds," which she has wrestled with for one knows
not how long. A little imagination will find some-
thing dim and bleared in her aspect, and she seems

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to lean upon, rather than to strain at her old
chain-cable, as though it were a crutch. The fancy
goes to Whitby at sight of her — to Whitby or Blyth,
and to Captain Cook. You are witnessing our iron
naval story in the making when you look down upon
the metal steamer — at the metal sailing ship ; but
yonder old collier is like the word finis at the end of
a volume : the story she illustrates is ended ; all the
old romance, the old life of the sea, its pigtails, its
cocked hats, its line-of-battle ships, its press-gangs,
are contained in the chapters of which that old
Geordie over there might well be the last recorded
syllable.

Most of the rivers that I am acquainted with show
best on a fine summer's day ; but to my mind all
that is impressive in the scenery of the Tyne is best
accentuated by midwinter, when the sky is dark
with bodies of flying vapour whose shoulders are
whitened by the rushing snow-squall, when the shrill
gale is whipping the water into ripples which foam
as they run, when the white of the snow gives a
ghastly staring face to the country by contrast with
the black and grimy chimneys and coaly structures
which crowd the river's banks. When Nature is
in these midwinter humours old Father Tyne is
entirely in sympathy with her. There seems to be
nothing fit in sunshine and blue heavens for this
wonderful northern river of labour, smoke, and
machinery. Butterflies and flowers, the emerald-
bright lawns of the Thames, the stooping and
sipping willow, the swan, the little flowery island —

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these are things not to be reconciled with one's
memory of the winding mills of Tyne, with its
railways and its factories, its ironworks and ship-
building yards, its collieries, its bleak huddles of
artisans' homes.

The two distinctive features of Newcastle every-
body must own, I think, to be the ordnance works
of Armstrong and Co. and the locomotive works
of Robert Stephenson and Co. I remember some
years ago spending a day in these wonderful factories,
and I behold again with the eye of memory the
great scene of locomotive shops and sheds, the teem-
ing life, the blazing furnaces, the thunderstorms of
smoke and sparks, the gigantic sheaves of metal, the
boilers, the rooms thrilling with whirring machinery,
the sudden volcanic emissions of blinding brilliance,
under the action of the fan-blasts, whose pulse
trembles through one's bones into the very inner-
most being of the inner man. I carry with me, too,
a lifelong impression of gigantic ordnance — monster
pieces finished and unfinished ; and I also remember
wondering, as I applied my eye to the mouth of
some colossal engine of war, whose power was to
be expressed in I know not how many tons, whether,
all things being equal, these enormous guns were
going to do the execution we read of as the result of
a broadside in the days of thirty-six and forty-two
pounders. Oppose the metal of the armour-clad to
these eighty and a hundred tonners, and oppose the
timber sides of an old liner to such guns as Howe
won the victory of the ist of June with — what of

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the destruction to follow ? When Collingwood, who
was born in Newcastle, carried the Royal Sovereign
into battle he blew out the stern of the Santa Ana,
and killed and wounded four hundred of her crew.
There are a good many problems for the next naval
war to solve ; but that the science of slaughter in
these days is going to prove superior to the art of
murder in times which we now pronounce ex-
ceedingly primitive, I am never more inclined to
doubt than when I think of the yardarm to yard-
arm engagement, the withering swiftness of the
British fire, the voUeyings from sharp-shooters in the
tops into the crowded, unsheltered decks, wdth the
powder-magazine by no means inaccessible to a
round-shot, and a company of nine hundred and
perhaps a thousand souls in a ship of about eighteen
hundred tons to massacre — when I think, I say, of
these things, and then take a view of the weapon
that is to throw a projectile seven or eight miles,
and reflect upon twelve-inch plates and fabrics sunk
almost to the wash of the water.

The mouth of the Tyne offers a picturesque
scene as you pass it. On the north shore is Tyne-
mouth, which is to Newcastle and its district as
Margate and Ramsgate are to London. The sands
of Cullercoats stretch away in gold, and they give a
wonderful depth and richness of colour to the
chocolate-tinctured line of coast. But though the
spirit of griminess holds aloof from Tynemouth,
where all is clean and bright and cheerful, full of
the suggestions of seaside summer holiday-making.

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it lurks very adjacent in North Shields and over the
way in South Shields, in defiance of the garden-like
effects the people of that famous old coastal town
have been importing of late months — with an eye,
no doubt, to their rival opposite. Of the two
Shields it would be very hard to say which is the
grimier. On the whole I think that to South
Shields must be conceded all the merit that superior
sootiness can claim. But then it is the home, the
birthplace, of the Lifeboat ! an historic detail of its
centuries-old story which must entitle it to the
respect and veneration of all seafarers.

For many years Tynemouth obtained the credit
of the introduction of the lifeboat. But the matter
has been set at rest by the erection at South Shields
of a memorial to the two claimants to the inven-
tion — Greathead and Wouldhave. It is unfortu-
nate that the respective pretensions of these men
cannot be determined. Wouldhave is said to have
invented the lifeboat, and Greathead to have im-
proved it ; but their contemporaries assumed Great-
head as the sole inventor, and in 1802 the House of
Commons granted him a sum of 1200/. as compen-
sation for his losses over the idea. The story of the
first lifeboat was told by Sir Cuthbert Heron, Bart.,
of South Shields. During a heavy gale of wind a
vessel named the Adventure stranded on the Herd
Sands ; Sir Cuthbert was amongst the crowd who
viewed the dreadful sight, and he offered a reward
to any seaman who should put off to rescue the
perishing crew. No man responded. The sea ran

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furiously and dangerously high, and there was no
boat fit to encounter it. The whole of the crew of
the Adventure perished within three hundred yards
of the shore. The effect of this dismal ocean spec-
tacle upon the public of South Shields was such
that a number of persons immediately met, and
agreed to offer a reward to any one who should
submit a plan of a boat of an approvable sort for the
preservation of human life. Greathead's plan or
model was thought well of; a committee was
formed, and a sum of money raised by subscription
for the building of the boat.

Such, in a few words, was the origin of thelifeboat.
The boatmen hung in the wind at first ; but they
were coaxed by offers of reward to man Greathead's
fabric, and the experiment once made established
her, against their prejudices, as a safe boat. The
example of South Shields was followed in course of
time by North Shields, Lowestoft, Ramsgate, Mon-
trose, and other places. But how primitive those
early boats were, one may judge by the prices
charged for building them. A ten-oared boat of the
largest size cost a hundred and sixty-five pounds ;
in these times the charge would be from seven
hundred to one thousand pounds. There is no
nobler service the wide world over, and South
Shields merits all possible applause for honouring
the memory of Greathead and Wouldhave.

North Shields should follow the example of her
sister over the way by honouring the memory of a
man whose work was certainly not less valuable than

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that of the inventor of the lifeboat. I refer to Henry
Taylor. ** Who was he ? " inquires the reader.
Henry Taylor was an old master-mariner, to whose
judgment and indomitable pluck and perseverance
the seafaring world owes the Lightship. Until
Henry Taylor bestirred himself, that deadly stretch
of Channel shoal, called the " Goodwin Sands," was
lampless — a vast, black grave on a dark night
for the entombing of ships and their crews, and
year after year scores were perishing there, and
cargoes of value running into hundreds and thou-
sands sinking to the bottom. Observe those sands
now : small, but immensely strong, red-hulled
vessels ride north and south and east and west of
them ; their lanterns sparkle brilliantly by night ;
there are guns and rockets on board to instantly
communicate the news of a disaster to the shore ;
by day they are like finger-posts, pointing out the
right road to the puzzled mariner. Is not the
memory of the man who first caused the floating
light to be moored in useful adjacency to the deadly
shoal worth honouring? Is Henry Taylor less a
benefactor to his species than Greathead? Let
North Shields see to it. The whole district should
subscribe to a memorial, and not the poorest Jack,
I believe, on the North-east coast but would be
ready with the value of even half an ounceof tobacco
as a contribution.

Grace Darling is another dominant name here-
abouts. The scene of her famous exploit — the
Fame Islands — is at some distance from the Tyne,

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yet not so much out of hail but that the story may
be incorporated with Tyneside localisms. A diver
once told me that, being at the Fame Islands, he
was induced by curiosity to sink in his dress to the
bottom, to have a look at the wreck of the Forfar-
shire, as she lay, and as she had been lying for years,
in the glass-clear water.

** She went down to leeward of the island, sir,"
said he to me.

" And what of that ? " said I, perceiving his drift
nevertheless.

** Why," he answered, *' as she was to leeward,
the job of reaching her must have been trifling ;
consequently too much has been made of the yarn."

I looked the man over, as the Americans say, and
wondered how he would have acted had he been
in Grace Darling's place. There never can be
any virtue in the discovery of a diver to diminish
the glory of this maid's achievement. Grace
Darling's deed is one of those few heroical acts
about which too much has not been said because
too much can never be said. The coble in which
she rescued the unhappy people is yet, I believe, to
be seen ; and one needs to view it to fully appre-
ciate Grace's story. Observe the dimensions of
the little ark, and then realize the sea that was
running that night, the foam of broken waters, the
recoiling hurl of the boiling billows furiously charg-
ing the iron rocks of the islands ! Surely England
has never produced a daughter in whose memory
she has reason to feel greater pride.

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All this part of the coast has long enjoyed re-
nown for its breed of sailors. I fancy that the
Tyne hit the hardest blow of all England's deliveries
in that way in our naval war. The coasting trade
was the famous nursery of the British mariner, and
there was always an eager seeking after the " coal-
man " by the press-gang. No race of Johnnies, as
they were called, were ever their equal for alertness,
for forecastle seamanship, and for fighting. It is
said that the majority of Collingwood's crew at
Trafalgar were Tynesiders. No naval seaman
better appreciated the marine products of the
Shields, and it is more than probable that he
was always on the look-out for all gentlemen of the
jacket who knew the meaning of the word
** hinney," and who pronounced Newcastle, " New-
cassel."

Sunderland is not very far south of Newcastle,
and until one comes to the mouth of the River
Wear there is not much coastal scenery to talk
about. The impression I preserve of Sunderland is
that of narrowness. Its river is wide and good, but
one might suppose that land was enormously costly
when they first began to build here, and that the
issue of the general architectural plan was a hard
squeeze. I recollect the principal street on a
Saturday night. You would have thought that all
Durham had turned out to take an airing in this
narrow thoroughfare. The elbows were much more
needed than the legs. Locomotion was extravagantly
slow. The dreadful disaster that happened some

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years ago, when scores of poor little children were
crushed to death, seemed to be largely owing to
Sunderland's singular taste for tight fits. I do not
know whether the railway station has been enlarged
since I was at Sunderland, but I have a clear re-
collection of the narrowness of its platforms, of the
narrowness of its exits and entrances, of the
narrowness of its lobby and of its waiting-rooms.
The original motive for all this slenderness of
dimensions might probably be in a desire to stimu-
late progress by inducing a haunting sense of stress ;
just as at Bath, they made the pavements extra-
ordinarily wide that society there, which lounges and
never works, might have plenty of room for cutting
one another in the public streets.

But though Sunderland's commercial prosperity
may not be of the Tyneside character, there is
everywhere a wonderful suggestion of growth, of
trade, of activity in a hundred directions. One
must go to the river to compass the character of
the industries. The docks are spacious and crowded
with shipping; here are works for testing anchors
and chain cables, and I was told, when I inspected
them, that they were the finest in the kingdom.
Here are huge granaries, engineering works, boiler
works, saw-mills, creosote works, shipbuilding yards
in plenty, lines of staiths for ever feeding the
voracious maws of steamers or sinking colliers to
their wash-streaks. But the noise ! The distract-
ing commingling of volcanic sounds ! Locomotives
shrieking, strings of loaded waggons thundering

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past, a countless beating of iron plates, an endless
harsh clanging of machines and hammers ! Is there
any part of Sunderland to which the uproar of
the river does not penetrate ? That people should
go on living and hearing — existing and yet preserving
their auricular organs — is a triumphant illustration
of the power of habit to dominate all physical
conditions.

One hauls out from the land after the ship's nose
is clear of the South Outlet, and but very little
of the coast is held in sight. What you notice you
will find of the familiar type hereabouts — a character
of iron ruggedness — a dark, low, forbidding terrace
of cliff, with a menace of its own in the scowl of
it in places, as though it were very well acquainted
with the quality and temper of the ocean foe, the
wild North Sea, that washes the length of it. It is
this part of the coast that suggests to memory the
fine old lines : —

** When the fierce North wind with his airy forces
Rears up the North Sea to a foaming fury,
And the red lightning, with a storm of hail, comes

Rushing amain down,
How the poor sailors stand amaz'd and tremble,
Whilst the hoarse thunder, like a bloody trumpet,
Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters.

Quick to devour them ! "

Seaham Harbour is hard by ; but what is one to
say of it ? It is safe, perhaps, to speak of it as
" quaint." Lord Byron's association with Seaham
renders it memorable. They show you his "Walk,"
as they call it, in the grounds of the seat of the
Milbankes — Lord Londonderry's house, where the

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poet was wont to aim at a mark with pistols; and
they also show you the book signed by him after his
marriage, with " Isabella Milbanke " written in
clean, neat characters under " Byron." But Sea-
ham is a terribly dull place, and what annals it has
are not very much enlivened by the record of the
hideous colliery accident that occurred close to it —
how many years ago I cannot tell.

Nor, supposing us to sail away from Seaham with
spirits depressed by the melancholy of the little
town, shall we find very much to cheer us at the
next place we look into — and that must be Hartle-
pool, or ** the Hartleypools," as it is locally pro-
nounced. Nevertheless, I preserve the memory of
a pretty bit of colour. The day was of a steel-grey
hue, and of an ice-coldness, insomuch that the at-
mosphere pressed upon the face as though the cheek
were laid against an iron plate. A gale of wind had
been blowing, but it was now a dead calm, and the
sea came swinging along in oil-smooth grey folds
which rushed soundlessly to the beach, where they
arched in giant combers and thundered into foam
with a note of hurricane in the roar of their fall.
I took notice of a stretch of cliff rounding to the
westward from the Heugh lights. The picture was
one of wintry beauty, dim, grey, of proportions
somewhat swollen. There were the yellow sands,
the breakwater, the old pier, the harbour extending
from the jetty on the Middleton sidfe to the ship-
yard ; and down upon the beach, lying on her beam
ends, was the wreck of a schooner. What magic

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was there in these plain details to impress one ?
Yet I can recall that picture when memory goes
to work in vain to submit brighter and nobler
scenes.

The Hartlepools are notorious for the " well-
deck " steamer. I do not say that this type of ship
is wholly peculiar to the port, but she is very much
built there, and very much believed in there, and I
have been led into more than one squabble by de-
nouncing her in the public press as perhaps the
most dangerous example of the shipwright's theory
of ocean-going fabrics to be anywhere met with.
The pages of an illustrated volume are no proper
place for the discussion of such a subject as this, yet
I think it would not be in seafaring human nature to
pronounce the name of Hartlepool without mutter-
ing a forecastle blessing upon the steamers which
she builds, engines, overloads, mans, and dis-
patches.

After Newcastle and Sunderland the several in-
dustries which flourish at the Hartlepools do not
greatly astonish. Yet in writing of this port some
years ago I said that, taking into consideration the
dock accommodation, the situation of the towns, and
the powerful railway interest that backs them, it
would be impossible not to agree with those who
regard the Hartlepools as the north-eastern port of
the future. Let us hope they may become so. Un-
happily there is always a rival, and Middlesborough
is just round the corner, with a river scarcely less
wonderful in its history than the Tyne.

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You must put into the mouth of the Tees to wit-
ness the scenery here, for the land hollows into a
very yawn to the river itself, and the deck of a ship
standing north or south is not very likely to give
you a view of this coast. Middlesborough grew in
silence, and in silence has taken her place as a port
that is rapidly increasing in greatness and hnport-
ance. There is nothing so modest as the history of
Middlesborough. A vast work was being done, yet
nobody outside the district knew of it. Never shall
I forget my astonishment when I visited the Tees
for the first time, and, in company with the late Mr.
John Fowler, the engineer, made the voyage from
Middlesborough to the river's mouth. I had always
imagined the Tees an insignificant, fordable stream,
and I found it a wide, rolling river, the creation,
comparatively speaking, of a few years of obscure
but giant labour. On both sides rose mountains of
clay, the refuse of the smelted ironstone. It formed
embankments, it ran in lines of cliflf, wild and pic-
turesque, with ravines and gorges ; all about were
acres upon acres of land reclaimed from the sea,
and built on, and cultivated ; again and again, as
we passed along, my eye was taken by some great
spread of buildings — steel-works, rolling-mills, lofty
structures of brick and iron, eighty feet high, called
blast-furnaces, full of fire, with gas in wide sheets
hissing from their summits.

And, indeed, one cannot get a better view of
Middlesborough than from the top of one of these
same fire-loaded structures, from whose base the

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liquid metal runs in the colour of blood into the
shapes of sand or soil, where it cools, and solidifies
into "pigs." I took my first bird's-eye view of
Middlesborough from the head of a blast-furnace
belonging to Messrs. Bell Brothers at Port Clarence.
Below me the river ran, coiling seawards ; on the
banks of it were shipyards stocked with fabrics
illustrating every degree of construction. Where
Bolckow's works stand the sky looked thunderous
with smoke, and its tempestuous aspect was not a
little heightened by the scarlet flashes of the
furiously blown furnaces. The town seemed on fire.
In all directions flames broke from towering aper-
tures, and the forest aspect of the lofty chimneys
was thickened and darkened .by the complexities of
the masts, and yards, and rigging of ships in the
dock.

The romantic story goes that the late Mr. John
Vaughan, one of the founders of the famous firm of
Bolckow, stumbled into his immense fortune whilst
rabbit-shooting on the Cleveland Hills, by kicking
some piece of stuff, which he picked up, examined,
and found to be ironstone. The tale is not quite
true. The Cleveland Hills were coaxed into deliver-
ing their secret not by a trifling accident befalling
a middle-aged gentleman on a rabbit-shooting ex-
pedition, but by a deliberate process of boring.
When the quality and extent of the ironstone was
determined, Mr. Vaughan went hastily to work to
obtain leases for the working of large royalties at
Eston. It was said that he took care, during his

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negotiations, to leave the owners of the land in
ignorance of his discovery, so that their royalty
payment did not exceed fourpence per ton, though
it afterwards rose to sixpence and ninepence. Pro-
bably the owners of the land were amongst the first
to applaud in Mr. John Vaughan the business-like
spirit of reticence he exhibited in approaching them.
At all events his memory is entitled to this honour,
that if he were not instrumental in creating Middles-
borough, its rapid growth is very largely owing
to his discovery and to his energetic application of
it.

Mr. Fowler told me that less than thirty years
ago — as time now stands — the depth of water at
Middlesborough at low water on ordinary spring
tides was three feet, and a trifle over sixteen feet at
high water, and I remember that he added : " The
course over the bar is fixed, and the depth, which
twenty years ago was three feet, is now thirty feet
at ordinary spring tides." In districts of this sort
we find the face of nature to a large extent manu-
factured. Little is submitted that is proper for
poetic interpretation. How can the muse sing of
breakwaters of slag, of rubble mounds, and trans-
verse jetties, of bleak stretches of reclaimed soil, of
hoppers, and steam-tugs, and dredges ? But if
poetry can do little or nothing with such matters,
commerce, and especially the commerce of a port,
can do little or nothing without them. Viewed by
daylight, I fear this part of the kingdom submits
little more than a surface of highly valuable, but

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exceedingly prosaic details ; but the hand of Night
waves the wand of the magician over the scene, and
the picture is startling and magnificent as a vision
of fire. The sky is scarlet, there is a perpetual play
as of crimson lightning-flashes ; in fact, the earliest
impression one gets on visiting these flaming parts
is that innumerable houses in the towns are being
rapidly consumed, that the efforts of the firemen are
paralyzed, and that the streets must be filled with
crowds who stand contemplating with silent horror
the destruction of all they own in the world.

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CHAPTER XL

THE NORTH SEA {continued).

Whitby— Joshua Coxon, poet — Walter Besant on Whitby — The
whaler's yarn— In the North Sea in a smack — A gale of
wind — An old Danish frigate— Scarborough— Steamboat
excursions — The Thames.

Redcar, Saltburn, and then Whitby. Roaring, fire-
consuming, blast-furnacing Middlesborough might
be on the other side of England — on the other side
of the world, indeed — so astonishing is the difference.
On Whitby seems to rest the ancestral hush of the
coast. It is one of those dim old 'longshore places
which seem to demand a special Act of Parliament
for their preservation. Mastiffs should be employed
to keep the jerry-builder at bay, and other secret
deadly engines placed in all parts which the im-
prover considers " eligible." Whitby does not in
the least degree resemble Sandwich, yet one thinks
of Sandwich when one explores the old parts of
Whitby. But then the maritime traditions of
Whitby are out and away more interesting, more
briny, more charged with the spirit of old ocean
than those of Sandwich, or indeed of any other port,
whether stranded or not, that I can call to mind.

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The North Sea. 0.6^

For when you are at Whitby you think of the old
Baltic trade, the motherly old whaler, all beam and
boats and davits ; and of fishing in many directions,
all of an antique sort. Whitby was the birthplace of
a poet but little known to fame ; his name was Joshua
Coxon, and to him, and to nobody else, posterity
owes these verses : —

** Navigation is that noble art
That guides a ship when far from land,
And to any distant part
When practised by a skilful hand.

*' To guide a ship along the shore
You must have compass, line, and lead,
Likewise a good look-out afore
If any danger be ahead.

" When to a harbour you do go,
Or place of safety for to ride,
You must calculate also
What time will serve you for the tide."

There are two more verses, but as a sample of the
poetic genius of seafaring Whitby, the above will be
considered sufficient as well as conclusive.

In his interesting narrative of the life and death
of Captain Cook, Mr. Walter Besant has given us a
very pretty sketch of old Whitby : —

** Under the east cliff there is nestled the oldest part of
Whitby town. Here is the old Town Hall, built upon a great
central pillar, thicker than those of Durham Cathedral, with a
pillar of more slender diameter for each of the corners. Here
are two narrow streets running parallel with the cliff, and half-
a-dozen courts running up the lower slope before the cliff
begins. Under the town hall is the market ; as you see it to-

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The British Seas.

day so James Cook saw it that day when he walked in from
Staithes : pigs and sheep, poultry, fruit and vegetables are sold
in this market. For fish you can go to the quay on the other
side. Many of the houses in this part of the town have got the
date of their erection over the doors ; one is dated 1704, another
1688, and so on ; by far the greater part of them are more than
a hundred years old. In the lower of the two streets, courts,

Yarmouth. By J. M. W. Turner.

nearly as narrow as the Yarmouth passages, run down to the
water's edge, or to houses built overhanging the water."

There is never any lack of public-houses where
longshore Jack is, and Whitby is by no means
illiberally stocked in this way. Mr. Besant mentions
the ** Raffled Anchor,*' and says, " When the sailor
is not afloat he loves to sit where he can gaze upon

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The North Sea. 269

a harbour, and ships, and the blue water outside."
True for you, Mr. Besant. The sailor is a web-
footed creature ; he must be able to dabble, or he
will mope, and sicken, and perish. Here at Whitby
are public-houses which the imagination easily
repeoples with marine types and forms long since
vanished : mariners in red waistcoats, incredible as
such scarecrows must seem to us in this age ;
mariners with long tails tied down their backs ; stiff
and thick in fearnought, in wool stocking§, in frieze
jackets ; their noses are of a jolly red with rum and
storm, and their merry, groggy little eyes, deep sunk
as though from the pressure of the heavy gales of
wind into which they have been staring, on and off,
ever since they first went to sea, and long before
they were strong enough to ship a handspike.

It amuses the fancy to figure an assemblage of
such Jacks as these. The whaler's yarn would be
excellently in keeping with the weather-worn old
room in which the sailors sit, and with the sulky
voice of the sea tumbling upon the beach. " There
she blows!" I seem to hear him say, '"There
she blows ! " I sung out from the foretopmast head.
** Where away ? " they bawls from the deck. " On the
weather quarter," says I. " There she blows ! "
Up comes the cap'n. " Down helhum ! " he says,
says he. " Luflf the ship to the wind. Round in
on them lee braces, and aft with your mainsheet,
Mr. Deadeye," he says to the mate. " Get them jib-
sheets flattened in, and make her all snug for going
about. Shake a reef out of the foretopsail, and loose
the fore-topgarns'l. This 'ere bucket's got to laugh to-
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270 The British Seas.

day ! " ' And thus the yarn proceeds, as one dreams,
thinking of the " Raffled Anchor " and old Whitby.
All away down this coast, past the Humber and
on to Yarmouth, the fishing smack is probably the
most abundant of all craft. I have never sailed in a
trawler hailing from the north and eastern seaboard,
but I have spent a night in the North Sea in a Rams-
gate smack, and may venture, therefore, to claim a
small acquaintance with the work that is done, the
hardships suffered, the perils encountered by the
stalwart and gallant bands of men who are year
after year breasting the surge of the German Ocean
that our tables may be supplied and our appetites
coaxed. There is no prettier sight than a fleet of
smacks leading out for the fishing ground, and few
pictures, I believe, could dwell more fixedly on the
memory than these same smacks outweathering a
heavy gale of wind, with their trawls aboard, and
lying-to under a fragment of canvas. There is an
old saying, " A fisherman's walk — three steps and
overboard." If I had felt the truth of this before it
came on to blow, my realization of its significance
grew poignant afterwards. There were thirty or
forty smacks in sight, some of them Ramsgate
boats, but from what ports the others hailed I could
not tell. It had blown a pleasant breeze of wind
all day, but the sky had thickened in the north some
hour or two before sundown, and then the breeze
freshened in a squall, with a sudden edge of true
wintry spite and frost in it. Our nets were dragged
in, and all made snug, and by no means too soon,

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The North Sea. 273

for, even whilst this was doing, the sky blackened
with an ugly smear of rusty red, like an old blood-
stain, low down over the hard green tumble of sea
in the west. By seven o'clock it was blowing half a
gale of wind, the evening black as tfiunder, a high
sea running, with such breaks of froth bursting and
blowing from the heads of the dark liquid heaps that
a wild stormy light as of phosphorus, but not to
be expressed in words nor to be dealt with by the
brush, came and went in the sweeping ice-cold wind
dyeing the heavens as black again for it. Truly
might I say with Tom Hood that I had often met a
gale before, but never such a blow. The smack was
of some thirty tons burden, with a fine spring for-
ward, and she took the seas with the buoyancy of
an egg-shell; but it was just this "taking" that
rendered the tempestuous reel, the midnight North
Sea hornpipe insufferable to me, who was used to
nothing under a thousand tons, and who had never
gone a trawling before. The master of the smack
invited me below to take some rest in one of the
dark and airless pigeon-holes in which the worthy
fellows turned in, " all standing." But if the motion
was desperate on deck, it was unendurable in the
small well which formed the smacksmen's sea-
parlour, and I chose to sit in the companion-way,
where at all events I was sheltered, and where I was
able to keep a dull and sickly look-out for anything
that might happen.

Never did I feel less a sailor than on that night.
My thoughts were beaten down by the howling wind

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and the rocket-like careering of the little fabric into
some sort of stupid emotion of wonder that men
could be found willing to pursue this sort of life after
a single experience of hard weather. Is there
anything severer in the way of seafaring ? When I
think of a winter's night and a smack in the heart of
the North Sea in half a hurricane of wind, I am
satisfied to believe that the vocation of the jacket
provides no walk comparable with the smacksman's
in risks, perils, and general misery. With excellent
irony doth some marine bard of the pigtail period
pipe up as follows : —

" Then push round the can : oh ! you have not a notion
Of sailors, their grog, and the sweethearts and wives ;
Ah ! give me, my soul, the tight lads of the ocean,

Who, though they're so wretched, lead such happy lives."

In the middle of the night, whilst it was yet
blowing a storm of wind, the clouds broke, and the
moon looked down — a dull, wet eye of silver ; the
sheets of froth flashed out to the touch of her beam,
and as I directed my sight at the wild sea rolling in
hills under her, a ship shaped herself out of the pale
gloom and passed us. She was a huge lump of a
wooden vessel, some remnant of the old Danish or
Swedish navy, a frigate, with a row of ports, and she
was looking up to the weather under three bands of
close-reefed topsails and a reefed forecourse ; heeling
away from us, and tow^ering over us, too, as she
plunged foaming by with snowstorms of foam burst-
ing from her sides, and the noise of the gale in her
rigging as loud in the ear of the night as the rattle of

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The North Sea. 277

heavy artillery swept along a street. Then the moon
was eclipsed, the blackness fell again as a curtain, but
the swiftness of her revelation and her evanishment
made one think of the vision of that old-world ship of
war as of something storm-born. Whenever I hear of
Vanderdecken, my mind goes to the full-rigged appa-
rition I viewed from the little companion-way of a
smack during a certain cold and howling midnight
that I spent in the North Sea.

But the space at my disposal obliges me to see all
ready for bringing up ; otherwise it would be
pleasant to heave-to abreast of Scarborough, whilst
we gaze at the prettiest, if not the most picturesque,
town on the east coast, and deplore its distance
from London. Scarborough would be the most
popular seaside haunt in England were it within a
comfortable riding distance of the metropolis. How
noble is the coast scenery here ! How grand is
Flamborough Head ! But a proper course from this
point must put that huge round of shore, which,
starting from Thornham, does not cease its curve
till Lowestoft is reached, well on the starboard bow.
Until the cliffs of Norfolk and Suffolk heave into
view all must be German Ocean.

There are many who could not conceive of a higher
degree of felicity than a coasting cruise in a steamer.
Opportunities for these excursions perhaps are not
very numerous. A pity : for there is no lack of idle
steamboats ; the scenery lover is plentiful, and our
methods of spending our few holidays are not so
numerous as to prohibit the admission of an original

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278 The British Seas.

idea now and again. A sailing vessel might not
provide a satisfactory ark for a tour of this sort ;
the calm, the tide, the inshore and offshore wind —
these, and the like of these, are inevitable conditions
for the interruption of happiness. But steam is at
the will of pleasure ; it will pause, it will move, it
will approach and withdraw, it will act without
consciousness of tidal influence, it cares not in what
quarter the wind sits, and therefore a steamboat is
the proper vehicle for a coastal voyage of inspection,
in which you may halt before beauties to survey
them, penetrate bays and harbours, explore rivers,
and so return home with a satisfied spirit and a
mind enlarged. From the Tyne to the Thames, or
from the Thames to the Tyne, and back again !
This should prove a tempting advertisement, always
providing that the caterer supplies one with the
right kind of little ship. These amblings, moreover,
are invaluable as aids to local patriotism. They
may not render a man more loyal to the country at
large, but they invariably deepen his attachment to
his own district. With what joy does the Cockney
receive the embrace of his River Thames as he pene-
trates the noble stream after trips up the H umber, and
the Tees, and the Tyne ! The creosote works, the acres
of inky chimneys, the building-yards, the dominions
of the steam-fiend, where he forges the propeller
that drives and the anchor that holds ; how light
will be the magic of the memory these things may-
create in the mind of the Cockney who, yet fresh
from them, but now steaming up the Thames,

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The North Sea. 279

surveys the shores of Gravesend and of Tilbury, the
engaging scenery of the Isle of Dogs, and the
wonders of the waterside regions of the great city
looming in massive proportions amidst a brown fog
more sombre than anything that can be produced by
the smokestacks of steel and chemical works !

THE END

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Full text of "The British Seas: Picturesque Notes"

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