198 THE SEA. 



as 1697, a population of only 5,000 ; 30 small vessels then belonged to the port. In this 

 year of grace, Liverpool, with her virtual suburbs, Birkenhead and West Derby, has a. 

 population considerably over 700,000. In 1872, Liverpool exported, in British and Irish 

 productions, a total value of 100,066,410, which meant little short of forty per cent, of 

 the total exports, of the same kind, from the United Kingdom, while its imports of many 

 staples exceeded those of London. Liverpool has nearly sixty docks and basins, extending 

 along the Mersey for five miles. She possesses nineteen miles of quays, nearly the whole of 

 which have been built since 1812, and warehouses on a scale of magnificence unknown elsewhere. 



But such a commerce means much more. Hundreds of thousands of hardy men risk 

 their lives that we may have bread and butter, sugar with our tea, and all the necessaries 

 and luxuries of modern civilised life. England has not forgotten them, and for their use 

 has built the lighthouse, the breakwater, and the harbour of refuge. But there are sources 

 of danger which nearly defy human power. Take, among all dangerous shoals and sands,, 

 the Goodwin Sands as a prominent example ; they are replete with danger to all sailing 

 vessels at least, resorting to the Thames or to the North Sea, while even steamships have 

 been lost on their treacherous banks. 



These Sands, so well known to, and feared by, the mariner, are ten miles in length,, 

 running in a north-east and south-west direction off the east coast of Kent. They are 

 divided into two portions by a narrow channel, and parts are uncovered at low water. 

 When the tide recedes, the sand is firm and safe, but when the sea permeates it, the mass 

 becomes pulpy, treacherous, and constantly shifting. Three light-vessels (one seven miles 

 from Ramsgate) mark the most dangerous points, and these are themselves exposed to a 

 considerable amount of danger. The only advantage derived from the existence of the 

 Sands is that they form a kind of breakwater, securing a safe anchorage in the roadsteads 

 of the Downs. But if the wind blows strongly off shore, let the mariner beware ! 



The ancients thought that Britain was distinguished from all the world by unpassable 

 seas and northern winds. The shores of Albion were dreadful to sailors, and our island 

 was for a time regarded as the utmost bounds of the northern known land, beyond which, 

 none had ever sailed. 



These dangerous Goodwin Sands, if we may believe the chronicles, and there seems no> 

 reason why we should not, consisted at one time of about 4,000 acres of low coast land, 

 fenced from the sea by a wall. One tradition, not usually credited, ascribes their present 

 state to the erection of the Tenterden Steeple, by which the funds which should have main- 

 tained the sea-wall were diverted. An old authority, Lambard, says, "Whatsoever old 

 wives tell of Goodwyne, Earle of Kent, in tyme of Edward the Confessour, and his sandes,, 

 it appeareth by Hector Boetius, the Brittish chronicler, that theise sandes weare mayne 

 land, and some tyme of the possession of Earl Goodwyne, and by a great inundation of 

 the sea, they weare taken therefroe, at which tyme also much harme was done in Scotland 

 and Flanders, by the same rage of the water/' At the period of the Conquest, these lands 

 were taken from Earl Goodwin and bestowed on the abbey of St. Augustine, Canterbury, 

 and some accounts say that the Abbot allowed the sea-wall to become dilapidated, and 

 that in the year 1100 the waves rushed in and overwhelmed the whole. The inroads of 

 the sea in many parts of the world would account for anything of the kind. 



