292 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



Land's End. That destructive and phenomenal tide 

 roared up the Channel and overwhelmed the banks of 

 the Thames and many other rivers, sweeping away 

 towns and people and innumerable animals. It is 

 recorded that "the lands in Kent, that sometime 

 belonged to Duke Godwyne, Earl of Kent, were 

 covered with sandes and drowned, which are to this 

 day called Godwyne Sandes." The story is, at any rate, 

 a romantic one. 



Another version of the origin of the sandbank is 

 that, in the century named, the Goodwins consisted of 

 land which belonged to the Church, but the Abbot of 

 Canterbury neglected to keep in repair the walls pro- 

 tecting the estate from the sea, which accordingly 

 flooded and covered it, ultimately leaving the Sands. 

 If legend is to be credited, the Sands in those far-off 

 days were rich meadow-lands, and had their own quiet 

 burial-grounds and churches. Since those crude times 

 the Goodwins have become a graveyard for all races of 

 the earth. 



The Goodwins to-day are what they have been for 

 centuries unconquered, treacherous, ravenous. All 

 attempts to overcome them, to the extent of putting up 

 a permanent beacon or lighthouse, have failed. Long 

 ago an effort was made to erect a lighthouse in which 

 men could live, but the structure was never finished. 



In 1841 the Trinity Corporation scuttled an old 

 ship on the Sands and put more than sixty tons of 

 ballast into her, making her a heavy-weight indeed. 

 A mast rose from the hulk to bear a beacon, and for a 

 time the vessel, filled to the beams, held her own ; but 

 the Goodwins would have none of her, for even she 



