Goodwin Sands is a sandbank at the southern end of the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

lying off the

Deal A deal, or deals may refer to: Places United States * Deal, New Jersey, a borough * Deal, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * Deal Lake, New Jersey Elsewhere * Deal Island (Tasmania), Australia * Deal, Kent, a town in England * Deal, a ...

coast in Kent, England. The area consists of a layer of approximately depth of fine

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class ...

resting on an

Upper Chalk The Chalk Group (often just called the Chalk) is the lithostratigraphic unit (a certain number of rock strata) which contains the Upper Cretaceous limestone succession in southern and eastern England. The same or similar rock sequences occur a ...

platform belonging to the same geological feature that incorporates the

White Cliffs of Dover The White Cliffs of Dover is the region of English coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliff face, which reaches a height of , owes its striking appearance to its composition of chalk accented by streaks of black flint, depos ...

. The banks lie between above the low water mark to around below low water, except for one channel that drops to around below. Tides and currents are constantly shifting the

shoal In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material and rises from the bed of a body of water to near the surface. It ...

s. 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 Strait of Dover or Dover Strait (french: Pas de Calais - ''Strait of Calais''), is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel, marking the boundary between the Channel and the North Sea, separating Great Britain from continen ...

. 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 Bank – is marked by numerous

lightvessel A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship that acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction. Although some records exist of fire beacons being placed on ships in Roman times, t ...

s and

buoy A buoy () is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with ocean currents. Types Navigational buoys * Race course marker buoys are used for buoy racing, the most prevalent form of y ...

s. Notable

shipwreck A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. Angela Croome reported in January 1999 that there were approximately ...

s 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 battle Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace involving a major body of water such as a large lake or wide river. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years. Even in the interior of large la ...

s have been fought nearby, including the Battles of the Goodwin Sands in 1602 and in 1652, and the Battle of Dover Strait in 1917. When

hovercraft A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull, or air cushion, ...

ran from

Pegwell Bay Pegwell Bay is a shallow inlet in the English Channel coast astride the estuary of the River Stour north of Sandwich Bay, between Ramsgate and Sandwich in Kent. Part of the bay is a nature reserve, with seashore habitats including mudflats and ...

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to the Census, there was a populati ...

, they used to make occasional trips over the Sands, where boats could not safely go. Southeast from Goodwin Sands lies the

Sandettie Bank The Sandettie Bank (French: Banc de Sandettié) is an elongated sandbank in the southern North Sea, more specifically about in the middle of the northeastern entrance to the Strait of Dover. North-west of it are the hazardous Goodwin Sands, sout ...

Navigational aids

FC position and Old Lighthouse, St Margaret's

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

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses m ...

s on the Kent mainland with only

North Foreland lighthouse North Foreland is a chalk headland on the Kent coast of southeast England, specifically in Broadstairs. With the rest of Broadstairs and part of Ramsgate it is the eastern side of Kent's largest peninsula, the Isle of Thanet. It presents a bo ...

still in operation.

South Foreland lighthouse South Foreland Lighthouses are a pair of Victorian lighthouses on the South Foreland in St. Margaret's Bay, Dover, Kent, England, used to warn ships approaching the nearby Goodwin Sands. There has been a pair of lighthouses at South Forelan ...

, once known as South Foreland Upper lighthouse is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

. 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 sea anchors broke in a hurricane-force storm. 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.

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 Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known as the author of ''Principles of Geolo ...

London clay The London Clay Formation is a marine geological formation of Ypresian (early Eocene Epoch, c. 56–49 million years ago) age which crops out in the southeast of England. The London Clay is well known for its fossil content. The fossils from ...

lying upon a chalk basement. Based on this, Lyell proposed that the Sands were the eroded remains of a clay island similar to Sheppey, rather than a mere shifting of the sea bottom shaped by currents and tides. Lyell's assessment was uncritically followed until the mid-20th century, and enlarged upon by G. B. Gattie 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"). This, Gattie said, was owned in the first half of the 11th century by

Godwin, Earl of Wessex Godwin of Wessex ( ang, Godwine; – 15 April 1053) was an English nobleman who became one of the most powerful earls in England under the Danish king Cnut the Great (King of England from 1016 to 1035) and his successors. Cnut made Godwin the ...

, after whom the Sands are named. When he fell from favour, the land was supposedly given to St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, whose

abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. Th ...

failed to maintain the

sea wall A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation ...

s, leading to the island's destruction, some say, in the storm of 1099 mentioned in the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of A ...

''. However, the island is not mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

, suggesting that if it existed it may have been inundated before the Domesday Book was compiled in 1085–86. The earliest written record of the name "Lomea" seems to be in the ''De Rebus Albionicis'' (published 1590) by

John Twyne John Twyne (c.1505–1581) was an English schoolmaster, scholar and author, and also Member of Parliament for Canterbury. Life He was born about 1501 at Bullington, Hampshire, the son of William Twyne. He was educated, according to Anthony Wo ...

, but no authority for the island's existence is given. 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 view is that the island of Lomea probably never existed. Although the area now covered by sands and sea was once dry land, the

Strait of Dover The Strait of Dover or Dover Strait (french: Pas de Calais - ''Strait of Calais''), is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel, marking the boundary between the Channel and the North Sea, separating Great Britain from continent ...

opened in the Weald-Artois chalk range in prehistory – between around 7600 BC and 5000 BC – not within historical time. Another theory about the origin of the name is that the sands' name came from

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

''gōd wine'' = "good friend", an ironic name given by sailors, or because ships can shelter from storms in deep water called The Roads between the Goodwin Sands and the coast.

Notable events

17th century

* John, the son of Phineas Pett of Chatham, was involved in an ordeal in the beginning of October 1624, when occurred: Phineas Pett received news of the shipwreck at

, and was dispatched by the Lord Admiral to attend to the ship and use his best means to save her. He used

chain pump The chain pump is type of a water pump in which several circular discs are positioned on an endless chain. One part of the chain dips into the water, and the chain runs through a tube, slightly bigger than the diameter of the discs. As the chain i ...

s, replaced the rudder, and fitted jury masts, by which effort she was safely brought to Deptford Dock. * In October 1630, the ''Stella'' was sunk in a storm off Goodwin Sands. The ship was carrying nearly 300 Scottish and English soldiers from the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands ( Dutch: ''Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden''), and commonly referred to in historiograph ...

to the

Republic of Venice The Republic of Venice ( vec, Repùblega de Venèsia) or Venetian Republic ( vec, Repùblega Vèneta, links=no), traditionally known as La Serenissima ( en, Most Serene Republic of Venice, italics=yes; vec, Serenìsima Repùblega de Venèsia ...

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 In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a second-rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer gun ...

ship of the line A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which depended on the two colu ...

, struck the Sands, but was fortunate enough to be got off by the boatmen of

18th and 19th centuries

Great storm of 1703 In the great storm of 1703 at least 13

men-of-war The man-of-war (also man-o'-war, or simply man) was a Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship or frigate from the 16th to the 19th century. Although the term never acquired a specific meaning, it was usually reserved for a ship armed wi ...

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 locally manned, lost with all hands * , Deptford built, and from there locally manned, lost with all hands * , a 70-gun

third-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Years of experience proved that the thi ...

built at Deptford in 1679 * The Woolwich

fourth-rate In 1603 all English warships with a compliment of fewer than 160 men were known as 'small ships'. In 1625/26 to establish pay rates for officers a six tier naval ship rating system was introduced.Winfield 2009 These small ships were divided i ...

, 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 The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around ...

, fell victim on the Goodwin Sands to a storm on the 8th of January 1740. It sank with the loss of everyone on board, 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 spurred its salvage in 2017 by Historic England and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. 1748 According to legend the ''

Lady Lovibond The ''Lady Lovibond'' (sometimes spelled ''Luvibond'') is the name given to a legendary schooner that is alleged to have been wrecked on the Goodwin Sands, off the Kent coast of south-east England, on 13 February 1748, and is said to reappear the ...

'' was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands on 13 February 1748, amidst alleged controversy over the cause of her sinking in which all hands were lost. She is said to reappear every fifty years as a ghost ship. No references to the shipwreck are known to exist in contemporary records or sources, including newspapers,

Lloyd's List ''Lloyd's List'' is one of the world's oldest continuously running journals, having provided weekly shipping news in London as early as 1734. It was published daily until 2013 (when the final print issue, number 60,850, was published), and is ...

Lloyd's Register Lloyd's Register Group Limited (LR) is a technical and professional services organisation and a maritime classification society, wholly owned by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to research and education in science and ...

. 1809 was wrecked in January 1809, with her cargo, a large number of

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sou ...

X and XX copper cash coins, belonging to

Matthew Boulton Matthew Boulton (; 3 September 172817 August 1809) was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engin ...

. The wreck was found in 1984 and some coins were salvaged in 1985 during a licensed dive. 1851 The

brig A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the latter part ...

was wrecked on the Sands in a storm in 1851; the lifeboat from

Broadstairs Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St Peter's, and had a population in 2011 o ...

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 Naval trawlers are vessels built along the lines of a fishing trawler but fitted out for naval purposes; they were widely used during the First and Second World Wars. Some—known in the Royal Navy as "Admiralty trawlers"— were purpose-built ...

, was sunk by a mine laid by SM UC-1 on the sands on 3 December 1915, at the height of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. On the 16th January 1916, Admiralty Tug HM Tug Char sank after a collision with the Steamship ''Frivan'' in the area around South Goodwin Light Vessel. S S Mahratta Showing Break 1

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 passenger ship collided with the freighter ''Prospector'' near the Sands in June 1953, severely damaging and nearly sinking her. The

Radio Caroline Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. ...

vessel drifted onto the Sands in November 1991, effectively ending the era of offshore pirate 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. It is believed to be from 7 Staffel, III Gruppe/ KG3 (7th Sqn of 3rd Group of Bomber Wing 3) operating from Sint-Truiden aerodrome 60 km east of

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, shot down on 26 August 1940 by a

Boulton Paul Defiant The Boulton Paul Defiant is a British interceptor aircraft that served with the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II. The Defiant was designed and built by Boulton Paul Aircraft as a "turret fighter", without any fixed forward-firing guns ...

No. 264 Squadron RAF No. 264 Squadron RAF, also known as No. 264 (Madras Presidency) Squadron, was a squadron of the Royal Air Force. World War I The squadron was first formed during the First World War, from two former Royal Naval Air Service flights, No. 439 ...

, based in Hornchurch, either one crewed by Desmond Hughes and Fred Gash or one of the three 264 Squadron aircraft shot down soon after in a battle with

Bf 109 The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft that was, along with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force. The Bf 109 first saw operational service in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War an ...

E fighter escorts of the German fighter wing JG 3.

Potential port or airport site

The August 1969 issue of ''Dock and Harbour Authority'' magazine carried an article 'A National Roadstead' which reported on a 1968 proposal to the Ministry of Transport for reclaiming the Goodwin Sands and constructing a deep water port on them. In 1985, consultants Sir Bruce White Wolfe Barry and Partners promoted a proposal for developing an International Freeport combined with a two-runway airport located on three reclaimed islands on the sands. In 2003, the idea was still under consideration. Being far from residential areas it has the advantage of 24-hour-a-day take-offs and landings without causing disturbance. In December 2012, the Goodwin Sands were once again promoted as a potential site for a £39 billion 24-hour airport to become the UK's hub airport. Engineering firm Beckett Rankine believes their proposals for up to five offshore runways at Goodwin Airport are the 'most sustainable solution' with the 'least adverse impact' when compared to other options that have been proposed for the expansion of runway capacity in the southeast. They claim that this is due to the absence of statutory environmental protection on the Goodwin Sands and the alignment of the runways which avoids any overflying of the coast.

Cricket

In the summer of 1824, Captain K. Martin, then the Harbourmaster at Ramsgate, instituted the proceedings of the first known cricket match on the Goodwin Sands at low water. An annual

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

match was played on the sands until 2003, and a crew filming a reconstruction of this for the BBC television series ''

Coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

'' had to be rescued by the

lifeboat when they got into difficulty in 2006. When the Royal Marines School of Music was based at

, it played a game of cricket on a suitable day each summer.

Athletics

On 23 June 1994, Deal Striders hosted a 1-mile race on the Goodwin Sands in memory of the late

Cliff Temple Clifford Geoffrey Temple (29 January 1947 – 8 January 1994) was a leading British athletics journalist, author, commentator and coach. For many years he was the athletics correspondent of ''The Sunday Times''. He committed suicide after being ...

. Around 100 athletes and spectators set off from Dover on a cross channel hovercraft and landed on the sands at low water. A one-mile circuit was setup on the sands and the race started. In a punishing wind, the event was won by Matt de Freitas, with London Marathon winner

Mike Gratton Michael ("Mike") Colin Gratton (born 28 November 1954) is a male former elite long distance runner from Canterbury, Kent, England. Athletics career A member of the Kent athletics club Invicta AC, Gratton is a past winner of the London Marathon. ...

2nd, and Olympic Steeplechaster Tom Buckner 3rd Cliff Temple Goodwin Sands Memorial Award 1994 1st Place

Controversial dredging

Following a two-year public consultation the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) granted Dover Harbour Board a licence to dredge 3 million tonnes of aggregate from the Goodwin Sands on 26 July 2018.

Literary references

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

mentions the Sands in ''

The Merchant of Venice ''The Merchant of Venice'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. Although classified as ...

'', Act 3 Scene 1: :Why, yet it lives there uncheck'd that

Antonio Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular ma ...

hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the Goodwins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.

mentions Goodwin Sands in '' King John'', Act 5 Scene 5: : Messenger:The Count Melun is slain; the English Lords\ By his persuasion are again fall'n off,\ And your supply, which you have wish'd so long,\ Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands. Mary Wroth refers to Goodwin Sands as a place of shipwreck in her sonnet sequence ''Pamphilia to Amphilanthus'' (1621): :Like to a Ship on Goodwins cast by winde, / The more shee strive, more deepe in Sand is prest... (Sonnet 6, 5-6).

Herman Melville Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are '' Moby-Dick'' (1851); '' Typee'' (1846), a ...

mentions them in ''

Moby-Dick ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod'', for revenge against Moby Dick, the giant whi ...

'', Chapter VII, "The Chapel": :In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands... R. M. Ballantyne, the Scottish writer of adventure stories, published ''The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands'' in 1870. W. H. Auden quotes the phrase "to set up shop on Goodwin Sands" in his poem ''In Sickness and in Health.'' This is a proverbial expression meaning to be shipwrecked. G. K. Chesterton's poem ''

The Rolling English Road "The Rolling English Road" is one of the best-known poems by G. K. Chesterton. It was first published under the title "A Song of Temperance Reform" in the ''New Witness'' in 1913. It was also included in the novel by Chesterton, ''The Flying Inn' ...

'' refers to "the night we went to

Glastonbury Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbur ...

by way of Goodwin Sands."

Charles Spurgeon Charles Haddon Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, among whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers". He wa ...

mentions them in ''The Soul Winner'', chapter 15 "Encouragement to Soul-Winners." :Their theology shifts like the Goodwin Sands, and they regard all firmness as so much bigotry.

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., an ...

refers to the Goodwin Sands in '' Moonraker'' (1955), one of the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...

novels, as well as making them a major plot point in his children's story '' Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang'' (1964–65). The sands are depicted in the 1929 film '' The Lady from the Sea'', which is sometimes known by the title of ''Goodwin Sands''. In the 2014 biographical film ''

Mr. Turner ''Mr. Turner'' is a 2014 biographical drama film based on the last 25 years of the life of artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). Written and directed by Mike Leigh, the film stars Timothy Spall in the title role, with Dorothy Atkinson, Paul J ...

'', the first husband of the housekeeper Mrs. Booth is mentioned as having died in a boating accident at Goodwin Sands. "Old Goodman's Farm", appearing in the

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)'' The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

poem
Brookland Road
' refers to the Goodwin Sands and the legend of their origin as an island belonging to Earl Godwin. In the novel ''The Shivering Sands'' by

Victoria Holt Eleanor Alice Hibbert (Maiden and married names, née Burford; 1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was an English writer of Romance novel#Historical romance, historical romances. She was a prolific writer who published several books a year in ...

the Goodwin sands play a major plot point and the masts from wrecked ships are often sighted from the shore. In

Patrick O'Brian Patrick O'Brian, CBE (12 December 1914 – 2 January 2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of sea novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and cent ...

's ''

Post Captain Post-captain is an obsolete alternative form of the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. The term served to distinguish those who were captains by rank from: * Officers in command of a naval vessel, who were (and still are) addressed as captain ...

'',

Stephen Maturin Stephen Maturin () is a fictional character in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. The series portrays his career as a physician, naturalist and spy in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and the long pursuit of h ...

explores the sands and must dive for his boots as the tide floods. In the short story "Flood on the Goodwins" (1933) by Arthur Durham Divine, on a foggy night during the First World War, a German saboteur orders a British mariner at gunpoint to take him to the coast of Belgium. Instead, the mariner circles for hours and then, telling the saboteur they have reached Belgium, strands the German at low tide on the Goodwins, six miles from shore, knowing that the tide will drown the villain. In

Julian Stockwin Julian Stockwin MBE (born 1944 in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England) is an author of historical action-adventure fiction. As well as the Kydd Series he has written two standalone novels ''The Silk Tree'' and ''The Powder of Death''. Biography B ...

's ''Invasion'' the Sands are both a hindrance and protection for the British fleet assembled for the rapid deployment against

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...

's invasion armada. The protagonist Kydd even takes part in the rescue of a merchantman vessel being gale forced onto the Sands. In

Henry Williamson Henry William Williamson (1 December 1895 – 13 August 1977) was an English writer who wrote novels concerned with wildlife, English social history and ruralism. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 for his book ''Tarka ...

's The Dark Lantern, Richard Maddison's landlady lost her husband on the 'Benvenue' at The Goodwins during 'the great March gale of eighteen seventy one'.

References

External links

Ross Revenge Plans -Live TV Broadcast of the Ross Revenge stranded on the Goodwin Sands

goodwin-sands 2009 survey
from

United Kingdom Hydrographic Office The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is the UK's agency for providing hydrographic and marine geospatial data to mariners and maritime organisations across the world. The UKHO is a trading fund of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and is ...

(''at Yumpu.com'') PDF-File, 52 pages
An historical sketch, including a map of the sands and their environs

Historic Deal information on the Goodwin Sands

Additional information on Goodwin Sands etymology
Deal, Kent English Channel Landforms of Kent Lighthouses of the English Channel Sandbanks of England Ship graveyards Thanet