ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA, 229 



The eastern coast of England has been greatly changed by the 

 action of the waves, the ancient sites of towns and villages, being 

 now sand banks in the sea. The whole coast of Yorkshire, from 

 the month of the Tees to that of the Humber, is in a state of 

 comparatively rapid decay ; the inroads of the sea at different 

 points being limited by the nature of the soil, or the hardness of 

 the rocks. Pennant, after speaking of the silting up, or filling 

 up with water transported sand, clay, gravel, &c., of some an- 

 cient posts in the estuary of the Humber, observes, " But in re- 

 turn, the sea has made most ample reprisals, the site, and even 

 the very names of several places, once towns of note on the 

 H umber, are now only recorded in history; Ravensper was at 

 onetime a rival to Hull, and a post so very considerable in 1332, 

 that Edward Baliol, and the confederated English barons, sailed 

 from hence to invade Scotland ; and Henrjr IV. in 1399, made 

 choice of this port to land at, to effect the deposal of Richard II; 

 yet the whole of this has long since been devoured by the merci- 

 less ocean ; extensive sands, dry at low water, are to be seen in 

 its stead." Instances like these are not rare, the towns of Cro- 

 mer, and Dunwich, are both lost, swallowed up by the ocean, 

 which is now encroaching at Owthone at the rate of aboutybw 

 yards a year. At Sherringham, in Norfolkshire, where the pres- 

 ent inn was built in 1805, and the sea was a distance of fifty yards, 

 the mean loss of land boing about one yard annually, it was cal- 

 culated that it would require about seventy years before the sea 

 would reach that spot, but between the years 1824 and 1829 no 

 less than seventeen yards were swept away, and a small garden 

 only, was left between the house and the sea, and when Mr. 

 Lyell in 1829 visited the place, he found a depth of twenty feet, 

 (sufficient to float a frigate), where, only forty-eight years ago, 

 stood a cliff fifty feet high. Mr. Lyell justly remarks, "If once 

 in half a century an equal amount of change were produced sud- 

 denly, by -the momentary shock of an earthquake, history would 

 be filled with records of such wonderful revolutions of the earth's 

 surface; but if the conversion of high land into deep sea be grad- 

 ual it excites only local attention." "The flag-staff of the Preven- 

 tive Service station, on the south side of the harbor, has, within 

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