Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England.
The Downs served in the age of sail as a permanent base for warships patrolling the North Sea and a gathering point for refitted or newly-built ships coming out of Chatham Dockyard, such as HMS Bellerophon, and formed a safe anchorage during heavy weather, protected on the east by the Goodwin Sands and on the north and west by the coast. They also lie between the Strait of Dover and the Thames Estuary, so both merchant ships awaiting an easterly wind to take them into the English Channel and those going up to London gathered there, often for quite long periods. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet having sought refuge in neutral English waters.
It has depths down to 12 fathoms (22 m). Even during southerly gales some shelter was afforded, though under this condition wrecks were not infrequent. Storms from any direction could also drive ships onto the shore or onto the sands, which - in spite of providing the sheltered water - were constantly shifting, and not always adequately marked.
In the present day, with the English Channel still the busiest shipping lane in the world, cross-channel ferries and other ships still seek shelter here.
The Downs
An area of sea lying between the Thames Estuary and the Straits of Dover, protected by the Goodwin Sands from easterlies and by the land mass of Kent from westerlies. Hence a favoured (and often very crowded) holding point for merchant, and other, shipping that was awaiting a favourable wind for an outward voyage. (annot. 3 April 1660)
The Downs.
For map of waters including the Goodwin Sands see…
http://www.whitecliffscountry.org.uk/seabritain/goodwins.asp
Map of The Downes by Captain Grenville Colins around 1693.
The Downs.
Neither of the two above links now work.
The importance of The Downs.
From Command of the Oceans by NAM Rodger…
The Downs is a broad anchorage which lies off Deal, enclosed by the Kentish coast to the west, and the Goodwin Sands to the east. At its northern end it can be entered from the North Sea or the Thames Estuary through the Gulf Stream, and its southern end from the Channel round the South Foreland. In the age of sail this anchorage was one of the crossroads of the world: during the prevailing south-westerlies ships from London and ports throughout the southern North Sea and the Baltic lay here waiting for a fair wind down the Channel, while ships that had come up the Channel for London waited their chance to get up the Thames. From the strategic point of view the Downs is the perfect position for warships to watch the upper Channel and the southern North Sea. From a tactical point of view it is a trap in the prevailing wind, for the Gulf Stream was too narrow for a large force to get through in a hurry. A fleet lying in the Downs might be caught like a lobster in a pot by an enemy entering by the southern entrance with the wind behind him.
(Tromp for the Dutch had won his great victory against the Spanish in 1639 in this way)
The map of the Downs.
http://www.whitecliffscountry.org.uk/heritage/graphics/goodwins.gif
The map of the Downs.
http://www.whitecliffscountry.org.uk/heritage/graphics/goodwins.gif
On the 30th August 1661…
Allin nears the Goodwin after his voyage from Constantinople…
“The wind was WSW. A stiff gale, and in the narrow we sunk our longboat and overwelmed before we could get our topsails down and broke both her fasts and one poor man in her, and by great chance the boatswain’s yawl was made fast astern the longboat with one in her, so the man got into the yawl and our ketch took her up with the two men in her, but lost our longboat, grap-iron and hawser and all her oars, windlass and davit. Before we brought St. Peter’s Church upon Broadstairs, which is the mark that you are clear of the north head of the Goodwin, the wind was WNW, and stood a mile further and wended.”
“The marks to come through the Gulls between the Goodwin and Brake is the lighthouse upon South Foreland upon a broad valley and a church upon the third valley and you have St. Peter’s steeple or Church upon Ramsgate, then you are clear of the north head of the Brake, and St. Peter’s church upon Broadstairs, then you are clear of the north end of the Goodwin and may run to sea what you please…”
(The Journals of Sir Thomas Allin edited by RC Anderson)
See sight above for map of the Goodwin.
