144 



THE OPAL SEA 



Impact 

 of storm 

 waves. 



Destruction 

 of islands. 



enty-two feet in height was rebuilt in 1877 to 

 an altitude of one hundred and thirty-two feet 

 to prevent the waves from riding over the top 

 of the lantern. 



The impact of such waves is estimated at 

 a maximum of about seventeen tons to the 

 square yard. The southern coast of Eng- 

 land can be felt to tremble a mile back 

 from the shore when a great gale is hurling 

 waves against its cliffs; and the direct result 

 of this battering and storming is easily com- 

 puted. Dover Strait widens a yard or more 

 each year, and Shakespeare Cliff has worn away 

 nearly a mile in eighteen centuries. Water deep 

 enough to float a ship is now running over 

 what was once a village on a cliff at Weybourne, 

 Suffolk; and what are now the shifting Good- 

 win Sands were, before the Norman Conquest, 

 the broad acres of Earl Godwin the Saxon. 

 The wear is going on to-day with no whit of 

 energy abated. The island of Heligoland, with 

 its cliffs two hundred feet high, has been bom- 

 barded by storm waves for many years and is 

 doomed to destruction; and many low islands 

 that now lie along our rocky coasts were once 

 portions of the coast itself, but were beaten 

 down, worn away, and finally cut off from the 

 mainland by a flanking movement of the waves. 



