Goodwin Sands is a sandbank at the southern end of the North Sea lying off the Deal coast in Kent, England. The area consists of a layer of approximately depth of fine sand resting on an Upper Chalk platform belonging to the same geological feature that incorporates the White Cliffs of Dover. The banks lie between above the low water mark to around below low water, except for one channel that drops to around below.Imray Laurie Norie & Wilson, North Foreland to Dover & Calais, chart number 2100.6, published January 2015 as updated to 13 April 2017. Tides and currents are constantly shifting the shoals.
More than 2,000 ships are believed to have been wrecked upon the Goodwin Sands because they lie close to the major shipping lanes through the Straits of Dover. The few miles between the sands and the coast is also a safe anchorage, known as The Downs, used as a refuge from foul weather. Due to the dangers, the area—which also includes Brake BankR. L. Cloet, "Hydrographic Analysis of the Goodwin Sands and the Brake Bank", The Geographical Journal, 120.2 (June 1954:203–215). Cloet demolished the story that the Goodwin Sands had been a low-lying island, identifying its hydrofoil shape formed by currents, and charting its anti-clockwise drift.—is marked by numerous lightvessels and buoys.
Notable shipwrecks include in 1703, in 1740, the in 1914, and the South Goodwin Lightship, which broke free from its anchor moorings during a storm in 1954. Several naval battles have been fought nearby, including the Battles of the Goodwin Sands (Battle of the Narrow Seas) in 1602 and the Battle of Dover in 1652, and the Battle of Dover Strait in 1917.
When hovercraft ran from Pegwell Bay, Ramsgate, they made occasional voyages over the Sands, where boats could not go safely.
Southeast from Goodwin Sands lies the Sandettie Bank.
Navigational aids
History
A simple fire beacon was first recorded at North Foreland in 1499, with the Sands first known depiction on a navigational chart by Lucas Janszoon Wagenaer in 1583. By 1634, two lighthouses at South Foreland provided a transit to enable crews to ensure they were a safe distance from the Sands. In 1795, the first lightship was positioned on the eastern edge of the Sands, and has been maintained ever since (despite short-lived experiments with fixed light beacons in 1840).
Modern day
The East Goodwin lightship guards the end of the Sands on the farthest part out, to warn ships. It is the only remaining lightship of the five which once guarded the sands. The sands were once covered by three lighthouses on the Kent mainland with only North Foreland lighthouse still in operation. South Foreland lighthouse, once known as South Foreland Upper lighthouse is now owned by the National Trust. This once worked with the nearby South Foreland Low lighthouse, also known as Old St Margaret's Lighthouse. When the two South Foreland lights were in alignment ships’ crews would know that they had reached the South-most extent of the sandbank. When the Goodwin sands shifted, South Foreland Low was decommissioned and replaced by the South Goodwin Lightvessel. The first of these ships was bombed by the Germans and sank on 25 October 1940. The replacement vessel, LV90 sank on 27 November 1954, when cables to her two anchors broke in a hurricane-force storm. All seven crew were lost, with only one survivor - a visitor from the Ministry of Agriculture recording bird migration - rescued. The wreck of the lightship can still be seen at low tide. The next replacement South Goodwin Lightvessel was decommissioned and was towed away on 26 July 2006, replaced with a newer light vessel by Trinity House.
Island of Lomea In 1817, borings in connection with a plan by Trinity Board to erect a lighthouse on the Sands revealed, beneath fifteen feet of sand, a stratum identified by Charles Lyell as London clay lying upon a chalk basement. Based on this, Lyell proposed that the Sands were the eroded remains of a clay island similar to Isle of Sheppey, rather than a mere shifting of the sea bottom shaped by currents and tides.Principles of geology Vol. 1, pp. 408–409, Charles LyellLyell, Principles of Geology, (London, I830), vol. I, ch. xx "Encroachments of the Sea" p 276.
Lyell's assessment was accepted uncritically until the mid-20th century, and enlarged upon by G. B. GattieGattie, Memorials of the Goodwin Sands (London, 1904) noted by Cloet 1954:204 and note 1 who asserted, based on unsourced legends, that the sands were once the fertile low-lying island of Lomea, which he equated with an island said to be known to the Romans as Infera Insula ("Low Island")."Gattie, quoting some 'early writers', suggests that the Goodwins are the 'Infera Insula' they mention". (Cloet 1954). This, Gattie said, was owned during the first half of the 11th century by Godwin, Earl of Wessex, after whom the Sands are named. When he lost favour, the land was supposedly given to St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, whose abbot failed to maintain the sea walls, resulting in the island's destruction, some say, due to the storm of 1099 mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, the island is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, suggesting that if it existed it may have been inundated before the Domesday Book was compiled during 1085–86. The earliest written record of the name "Lomea" seems to be in the De Rebus Albionicis (published 1590) by John Twyne, but no authority for the island's existence is given.Charles G. Harper, The Kentish Coast 1914:231. There is a brief mention of a sea-tide inundation in 1092 creating the Godwin sands in a 19th-century book of agricultural records, reissued in 1969.
The modern geological opinion is that the island of Lomea probably never existed.Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea, p. 27, Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, 2004 Although the area now covered by sands and sea was once dry land, the Strait of Dover opened in the Weald-Artois chalk range in prehistory – between about 7600 BC and 5000 BCClimate, history and the modern world, p. 116, H. H. Lamb, 1996 – not within historical time.
Another theory about the origin of the name is that the sands' name came from Anglo-Saxon gōd wine = "good friend", an ironic name given by sailors, or because ships can shelter from storms in the deep water known as The Roads between the Goodwin Sands and the British coast.
Notable events
17th century John, the son of Phineas Pett of Chatham, was involved with an ordeal in the beginning of October 1624, when occurred: Phineas Pett received news of the shipwreck at Deal, and was dispatched by the Lord Admiral to attend to the ship and use his best means to save her. He used chain pumps, replaced the rudder, and fitted jury masts, by which effort she was brought safely to Deptford Dock. In October 1630, the Stella was driven onto Goodwin Sands in a storm. The ship was carrying nearly 300 Scottish and English soldiers from the Dutch Republic to the Republic of Venice for use in the War of the Mantuan Succession. All of the soldiers, including their commander, Colonel Sir John Swinton, drowned. In 1690 HMS Vanguard, a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line, struck the Sands before being unmoored by the boatmen of Deal.
18th and 19th centuries Great storm of 1703
During the great storm of 1703 at least 13 men-of-war and 40 merchant vessels were wrecked in The Downs, with the loss of 2,168 lives and 708 guns. Yet, to their credit, the Deal boatmen were able to rescue 200 men from this ordeal.
Naval vessels lost to the sands included: , Deptford built, and from there manned locally, lost with all hands , Deptford built, and from there manned locally, lost with all hands , a 70-gun third-rate built at Deptford in 1679 The Woolwich fourth-rate , totally overwhelmed with the loss of 343 men The boom ship HMS Mortar, lost with all 65 of her crew.
1740 The Dutch merchant ship "Rooswijk", on her way to Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies, became a victim to the Goodwin Sands during a storm on 8 January 1740. It sank with the loss of everyone aboard, almost 250 sailors, soldiers and passengers. The silty environment has preserved the wreck for so long, however, shifting tidal flows started to expose the timbers and goods and thus resulted in its salvage in 2017 by Historic England and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.Treasure and intrigue: scientists unravel story of 1740 Kent shipwreck, Maev Kennedy, The Guardian 18 August 2017
1748 According to legend the Lady Lovibond was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands on 13 February 1748, amidst alleged controversy concerning the cause of her sinking in which all persons aboard were lost. She is said to reappear every fifty years as a ghost ship.Randall Floyd, E (2002) In the Realm of Ghosts and Hauntings, Harbor House, Augusta, Georgia, 'Lady Lovibond: Ghost schooner still sails the English coast', P103-05 No references to the shipwreck are known to exist in contemporary records or sources, including newspapers, Lloyd's List or Lloyd's Register.
1809 was wrecked in January 1809, with her cargo, a large number of East India Company X and XX copper cash coins, belonging to Matthew Boulton. The wreck was found in 1984 and some coins were salvaged in 1985 during a licensed dive.
1851 The brig was wrecked on the Sands in a storm in 1851; the lifeboat from Broadstairs rescued seven men of her crew.
1857 The mail paddle steamer SS The Violet was driven onto the sands during a storm on 5 January 1857 with the loss of seventeen crew, a mail guard, and one passenger.
20th century The Belgian cargo ship was wrecked on the sands in 1907.
HMT Etoile Polaire, a naval trawler, was sunk by a mine laid by on the sands on 3 December 1915, during the First World War. On 16 January 1916, Admiralty Tug HM Tug Char sank after a collision with the Steamship Frivan in the area around South Goodwin Light Vessel.
Two ships named ran aground on the Sands, one in 1909 and the other in 1939.
The US cargo steamer (and former Liberty Ship) , battered by a gale, ran aground on Goodwin Sands on 12 September 1946. The ship broke her back on or about 21 September 1946, and was soon in two pieces. During 1947, both pieces were subsequently refloated and towed to port for scrapping.
The Liberian tanker Panther was grounded on the Sands on 30 March 1971. Over the next week attempts were made to pull the ship free, with five tugs managing to dislodge it on the 4 April. The ship was then beached on the Dutch coast, to be broken up. The accident caused the spill of several hundred tonnes of oil into the English Channel.
The passenger ship collided with the freighter Prospector near the Sands in June 1953, severely damaging and nearly sinking her.
The Radio Caroline vessel drifted onto the Sands in November 1991, effectively ending the era of offshore illicit radio in Britain.
21st century On 10 June 2013, a Dornier Do 17 Z2 was raised from Goodwin Sands. The German bomber had made an emergency landing in the sea over the Sands on 26 August 1940 after a bombing raid. Two of the four-man crew were killed on impact, the remaining crew becoming POWs. The Dornier was located on the Sands in September 2008 and plans were made to recover it, as it is one of two surviving aircraft of this type.
The salvage started on 3 May 2013 with the plane destined eventually for RAF Hendon in 2015, though poor weather and the position of the plane on chalk rather than the silt expected caused the plan to be amended to attaching ropes to three points on the fuselage. The plane was finally lifted on 10 June 2013.