nt to account for the formation of the
mighty sandbank, for the water is laden with the detritus of cliff and
beach which it has taken up in its course round England, and, just as
if you give a circular motion to a basin of muddy water, you will soon
find the earthy deposit centralised at the bottom of the basin, so the
great Goodwins are the result of the daily deposit of revolving tides.

That the tides literally 'revolve' round the Goodwins is well known to
the Deal men and to sailors in general, and this revolution is
described in most of the tide tables and nautical almanacks used by
mariners, _e.g._ 'The Gull Stream about one hour and ten minutes before
high water runs N.E. 3/4 N., but the last hour changes to E.N.E. and
even to E.S.E., and the last hour of the southern stream changes from
S.W. 1/2 S. to W.S.W. and even to W.N.W[2].' Here the reader will
distinctly see recorded the great causes in operation which are
sufficient in the lapse of centuries to produce and maintain the
Goodwin Sands. But how they came to be called the Goodwin Sands we
know not, and can only conjecture. Those were the days of Siward and
Duncan and Macbeth, and, like them, the imposing form of the great Earl
of Kent is shrouded in the mists and the myths of eight centuries.

He was evidently placed, in the first instance by royal authority or
that of the Saxon Witan, in some such position as Captain of the Naval
forces of all Southern England, and it is certain that he gathered
round himself the affections of the sailors of Sandwich, Hythe, Romney,
Hastings, and Dover.

When he sailed from Bruges against Edward, 'the fort of Hastings opened
to his coming with a shout from its armed men. All the boatmen, all
the mariners far and near, thronged to him, with sail and shield, with
sword and with oar.' And on his way to Pevensey and Hastings from
Flanders he would seem to have run outside, and at the back of the
Goodwins, while the admirals of Edward the Confessor, Rodolph and Odda,
lay fast in the Downs.

He appears, by virtue of his semi-regal position--for Kent with Wessex
and Sussex were under his government--to have been the Commander of a
Naval agglomeration of those southern ports which was the germ, very
probably, of the subsequent 'Cinque Ports' confederation, with their
'Warden' at their head; but at any rate he swept with him in this
expedition against Edward all the 'Buscarles' (boat-carles or seamen)
of those southern po