224 Captain Anderson on the peculiarity of the tides 
Dungeness, yet I trust, that they rationally and intelligibly 
account for the peculiar phasnomena of the tides which occur 
there, without attributing them to the meeting of the tides, 
which could never produce these appearances. But if the 
tides do meet at Dungeness, they must meet in a line directly 
across the channel; for it is a fact so well established, that 
no one I believe has ever ventured to contradict it, that the 
western or true flood tide makes high water at Beachy Head, 
Fairleigh, Dungeness, and Deal, at nearly the same time as 
at Dieppe, the Soame, Boulogne, and Calais, the opposite 
points on the French coast, each to each ; and that the east- 
ern or regular ebb tide makes low water, at the same time, 
at the same places. 
But if the tides met in a line across the channel, it must be 
evident to every one who has been at sea, that such a meet- 
ing would occasion so tumultuous a war of elements, between 
two large bodies of water impelled against one another, by 
the current of the tide and force of the winds, at a velocity of 
from four to six miles an hour, according to the age of the 
moon and strength of the wind, as would produce, from their 
furious and violent concussion, so great a sea, that no ship 
could venture to encounter it without the most imminent 
danger. 
That this is not the case, experience daily proves ; and 
therefore the absurdity and fallacy of the doctrine which as- 
serts it, are obvious. But every master of a collier or coasting 
vessel, trading from the northward to any western port, as 
Portsmouth, Plymouth, &c., knows that the flood tide sets 
from the northward and eastward, along the English coast 
until he gets as far as the sand called the Kentish Knock : 
