MARITIME HISTORY 



IN considering accessibility to invasion the development of shipbuilding 

 in relation to harbours must, as well as other facts, be borne in mind. 

 In early centuries the minor Dorset ports and river mouths admitted 

 the vessels of small tonnage then in use, or in some places they could 

 be beached ; from the sixteenth century onwards a whole stretch of coast 

 such as the West Bay, extending from Portland to the border of Devon, 

 passed out of the sphere of possible operations because to be caught there in 

 a gale from the westward was certain destruction as the larger ships then 

 built could find no shelter except, in limited number, at Lyme. The eastern 

 half of the county offered, in recent centuries, equally few advantages to an 

 invader, Poole, at high tide, looks a capacious harbour, but its waterways 

 are narrow and its anchorage limited, while the contracted entrance is further 

 obstructed by a shifting bar which has not more than 14 ft. of water on 

 it at high water spring tides. Studland and Swanage bays are sheltered from 

 the westward ; but the former will not admit anything drawing more than 

 12 ft., and the latter gives but a shallow and indifferent anchorage. From 

 Durlstone Head to Weymouth Roads runs a line of lofty cliffs broken by a 

 few coves and landing-places which may have received the vessels of Saxon 

 and Danish marauders, and later coasters, but are of no avail for modern 

 shipping. As in the case of the West Bay it would be the object of an 

 invader to keep clear of this coast rather than to approach it. Thus of the 

 75 miles of Dorset coast at least three-fourths became a negligible quantity as 

 facilities of transport increased and the national risk of invasion grew greater 

 generally. 



From the point of view of naval war, therefore, the interest strategically 

 is confined to the projecting point of Portland, with its accessories Portland 

 Roads and Weymouth Roads. The modern naval base is seldom a great com- 

 mercial port ; the mediaeval base, unless far outside the radius of action and 

 merely a feeder to supply the fleets, was invariably a place of commerce 

 because its offensive capacity in war grew out of its success in the paths of 

 peace. Thus Sandwich, Rye, Winchelsea, Weymouth, and Plymouth became 

 bases for offence as they increased in maritime strength, as commerce caused 

 the accumulation of ships, men, and materiel, all interchangeable for trade or 

 war, and as the area of maritime action widened. Melcombe, when ruined 

 by the French in the fourteenth century, was becoming an important naval 

 centre ; its harbour, suitable for the vessels of that age and probably deeper 

 than it is now, held the position relative to Cherbourg and St. Malo that 

 Plymouth, later, stood in towards Brest ; and Weymouth Roads, like Portland 

 Roads covered from all winds except those from east to south, was of equal 



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