The Romans called them Lomea and Infera Insula (Low Island), and legend has it that the Earl of Godwin inherited land there until the great sea floods of 1014 or 1099 swept everything away.
Of this legend, only the floods can be verified, possibly caused by a tsunami after an earthquake or a strong tidal surge that was the consequence of a storm in the North Sea. Either way, the Goodwin Sands have not only been a magnet to ships as a ‘shippe swallower’, but also to people who have a strange desire to visit.
The Sands are located off the coast of Ramsgate, Deal and St Margaret’s Bay. The |shallowest part of the ten-mile sandbank has its northernmost point five nautical miles out from Ramsgate, ending a mere three miles from shore off St Margaret’s Bay. Over the realm of time, it has probably accounted for at least 2000 shipwrecks and countless loss of lives.
Ghost stories surround the Sands, with tales of sightings of spectral vessels being seen crashing into the surf and mysteriously disappearing when their rescuers arrive. Regardless of all the myths, the Goodwins are a prominent feature off the Kent coast.
In the past, men have tried to make use of the treacherous sandbank as a safe haven for shipwrecked mariners and also as a warning to vessels that stray too close.
Admiral Bullock erected a safety beacon upon them in 1840, in the form of a 40-foot mast with a platform or gallery construction that would hold 30 to 40 mariners. This ‘refuge beacon’ lasted for four years until a careless Dutch vessel ran it down. Eventually, the lightships that surrounded the Goodwins marked the dangers, and their crews kept an eye out for impending mishaps.
PERILOUS QUICKSAND
On the northern area, the sand lies exposed at low water. All around the sandbank are ‘swillies’ or deep holes that remain filled with seawater. Elsewhere, gullies and mini sand dunes are formed which will start to crumble beneath your feet – when you try to paddle in the ‘fox-holes’ or deep puddles, you feel the suction of quicksand.
This situation gives little fear to the colony of some 350 seals, but in the past it has given cause for much concern and grievance to humans. Even the famed Deal boatmen or ‘hovelers’ have been known to misjudge the conditions on the Goodwins.
The large galley-punt, Wanderer, with its two-man crew, visited the wreck of the sailing ship, Frederick Carl, which had run aground on the sandbank on the last day of October 1885, with the intention of salvaging some of the cargo. With an increasing north-east wind, the Sands started to cover as the ‘young flood tide’ swept over the banks. As the sand shivered beneath their feet, the two boatmen tried in vain to make it back to their own craft. When the sea encroached up to their waists, they realised that luck was against them – and waded back to the abandoned hulk of the Frederick Carl.
When the lifeboat, Mary Somerville, arrived, the crew only managed to save one of the Deal men. The other was found dead the following day, tangled in the wreck’s rigging.
Despite all the disasters, incredulously, in 2003, there was a commissioned report to turn the Sands into a 24-hour passenger and freight airport, along with two runways!
BURIED TREASURE
The desire to do the unusual has always held a fascination for some, and to visit the Goodwin Sands as a fun day out is no exception. They have been visited by thousands of people over the years for various reasons, and still attract the curious. It is also known that they hold vast amounts of treasure, both archaeological and financial. In recent years, the Rooswijk, a ship belonging to the Dutch East India Company, was found by a diver, and a believed million pound cargo of silver coins and bullion has been recovered.
A strange tale was told in the late 1800s that the Deal lugger, Tiger, was chartered for a week by London visitors, financed by a Mr Morgan. Their quest was to dig for buried treasure on the Goodwins. It was said that the Tiger was put ashore on the Sands at low water and, with the aid of a large metal cylinder, the party dug a shaft within it. The men soon encountered a skeleton and then a wreck. Further burrowing in the hulk’s timbers found the holds ‘as dry as an empty bottle’. Nevertheless, at the end of the week, a dozen chests of treasure were loaded onto the lugger and the expedition was hailed as a success.
This is how it was told in Herbert Russell’s novel The Longshoremen, but the only truth from the story is that the Tiger was a real vessel and the largest lugger on Deal beach throughout the 1890s. The reality is that four of her crew, undertaking to do a bit of salvage in a smaller beach boat, lost their lives in an unfortunate accident.
Whilst they were attempting to recover a cargo of coal from a wreck high and dry on the sandbank, they found their own craft ‘swaddled’ on the Sands as the tide made its way in. The weight of the coal had sunk the Deal boat into the sand and she would not lift with the tide. They abandoned her and made for higher ground as the water rose. They were last seen by a passing sailing barge whose skipper thought that the men who were running about and waving their arms were ‘...Deal boatmen, just mucking about’.
HOWZAT!
Annual cricket matches on the Goodwin Sands are also a myth. The first recorded game was in the summer of 1813, and caused criticism from the public as a blasphemy against all those unfortunate victims of the rapacious Sands. Although it has been played periodically ever since and The London Illustrated News of 1854 recorded an event of that year with a fine lithograph, it is not a regular event.
During 1985, this author assisted in ferrying players and spectators from the Kent team for a fundraising match on top of the Goodwins: 13 Deal boats took out around a hundred people on a calm and sunny afternoon. Since that event, cricket, amongst other games, have only been played by a few whilst on the occasional organised trips.
However, in July 2006, a BBC film crew making the television programme, Coast, thought it would be a good idea to feature a cricket match being played upon the Sands. As the tide started to make, the skipper of the craft who had taken them out urged them to evacuate with haste. The crew pleaded for another ten minutes to finish the take.
That was all it took – the tide changed against a north-east wind and the surf built up and swamped the vessel and its outboard engines. Several thousand pounds of film cameras were washing about in the bilge of the disabled boat and the occupants were at risk of being stranded. It took two lifeboats from Walmer and Ramsgate, plus the rescue helicopter, to avert a tragedy.
Coastguard sector manager, Andy Roberts, summed up the situation by stating: “The Sands can appear safe but, if landing, very careful consideration must be given to tides, the weather forecast and the prevailing conditions. The Goodwin Sands should be treated with the utmost respect by visitors.”
This advice, unfortunately, has not always been observed by many – much to their misfortune – and sometimes this endeavour has led to grief.
A previous article by David Chamberlain, Uncovering a Secret Buried in the Sands (March/April 2009), looks in more detail at the fate of the Rooswijk.