THE PITILESS GOODWINS 291 



Deal boatmen, who should know the' Goodwins as 

 the London cabman knows his streets, have gone to the 

 shoal and have never returned. Perhaps : their boats 

 have struck on these fatal fangs of wrecks, perhaps they 

 have been engulfed by quicksands ; at any rate, they 

 have disappeared and the Goodwins keep their secrets 

 well. The Downs themselves, despite the shelter they 

 offer to vessels during bad weather, are not perfectly 

 secure, and frequently sailing ships drag their anchors 

 and are lost. 



In that memorable gale of 1703, when Winstanley, 

 who had built the Eddystone Lighthouse, perished with 

 it, no fewer than 40 ships were lost in the Downs, in- 

 cluding 30 men-of-war. That was a November gale, 

 and one of the most disastrous recorded in history. It 

 is calculated that no fewer than 8000 souls perished. 



Another storm in February 1807 added to the 

 number of ships and men who have found a last home 

 on the Goodwins. A score of ships were lost in the 

 Downs and on the Sands. The whole of the coast was 

 strewn with wreckage, and the event was remarkable 

 largely because of the universal thieving that attended 

 it, all classes looting anything on which they could lay 

 hands. Again, in a great storm in November 1836, 

 when 400 vessels were sheltering in the Downs, many 

 foundered with all hands. 



The origin of the Goodwins is a mystery ; but they 

 have been known and spoken of for more than eight 

 hundred years. Ancient chronicles state that at the 

 close of the eleventh century an appalling flood visited 

 the south coast of England and buried an entire 

 kingdom which existed between the Scilly Islands and 



