Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-02-04

Written for The Evening Star by William Thorp.
According to statistics recently COM
piled by the British board of trade, there
are lost annually by shipwreck no fewer
than 1000 vessels. involving the destruc-
ton of about 1900 lives and 500. 900, 900
worth Of property.
AS Kipling truly says in one of the
strongest poems Of THE Seven Seas.
there's never a wave of all the waves but
marks the English dead-and the dead OF
all other seafaring nations too. Wherever
men follow the sea" from Sandy Hook
to Calcutta, from Frisco to Liverpool.
from Baltimore to Adelaide, they en-
counter tempest and wreck. Nobody knows
better than the old salt that there are no
safe seas. The Pacific is grossly mis-
named, for it's typhoons are as destructive
any West Indian hurricane.
But while all the sea is perilous, there
are some parts of 1t more dangerous than
others-some areas which every sailor
holds in special dread and which have an
especially terrible record of storm and
wreck and sudden death.
Few sailors would deny that the worst OF
these places is that chain of shoals and
qutcksands stretching along the southeast
coast of Kent, England, which i'm
perils the many thousands of vessels
which pass annually through the Straits
of Dover. Think of the string of great
ports whose shipping must pass this net
work of characterization Hull, Antwerp,
Bremen, Hamburg and a score of others.
1t is marvel that more ships are not lost
there But for the knowledge and expert
ence of the fine old pilots who go out in
the famous Deal luggers there would be.
These pilots are wonderful men, Many
OF the shoals and sand banks with which
they have to deal are constantly shifting
ground, so that the admiralty charts are
often worse than useless, although the
Trinity Brethren have their surveying
ships taking soundings and shifting buoys
and beacons all the time. But the pilots
are seldom at loss, even when choking
fog rolls up the channel as thick as pea
soup. They seem almost able to smell
shoal when it has got into a place where
it ought not to be, according to the chart.
The Dreaded Goodwin Sands.
Nevertheless, there are great number of
vessels lost annually along this stretch of
coast, usually by shippers who think they
know the waters and have neglected to
take on a pilot at the right time. The
writer spent his boyhood at Ramsgate, a
fishing seaport close to the far-famed
Goodwin Sands. A week seldom passed in
winter without the lifeboat going out to
two or three wrecks on the Goodwins, the
Knock or some other dreaded qucksands
nearby.
The Goodwins We're dry land as late as
Saxon times-a lovely and fertile island
to the famous Earl Goodwin, whose name
looms so large in Saxon history. Accord
Ing to monkish tradition, still preserved in
yellow, musty parchiments, lying in Kentish
imminent rooms, Earl Goodwin held wassail
one night and sacrilegiously drunk a pro-
fame toast out of a golden communion cup,
which he had looted from neghboring abb
hey A great storm arose and his most
priced possesson-the fair Isle of Goodwin
was overwhelmed by the waves and turned
into qucksand, to remain forever dead
ly peril to mariners.
Whatever may be the truth of this tradi
ton, there is no doubt that the Goodwins
have swallowed up the bones of many
noble ship. l knew an old lffeboat coxswain
at Ramsgate who told me that, one stormy
winter, when he was young man, no fewer
than 213 ships were lost on the Sands. That
was before the Trinity Brethren had per-
fected their present system of lightships,
bell buoys and beacons The Goodwins are
now. probably. the best marked danger
spot of the sea; but no system of lights can
render them harmless. When / was a boy
/ saw the sole survivor of an Italian bark
brought into port by a fishing smack. His
vessel had been swallowed up by the Good
wins few minutes after she struck, with
in sight of three lightships, which formed a
triangle round her, none of them being