sels at anchor in the Downs, reaching away to the north and
south for nearly eight miles.

Their appearance is most imposing, as may be judged from the engraving
on page 95, in which, however, only twenty-five ships are visible in
the moonlight. Almost all the ships in the engraving are outward
bound, and some, it may be, are on their last voyage.

Outside, and to the cast of this great fleet of vessels, lies the great
'shippe-swallower,' the Goodwin Sands. The sands are very irregular in
shape, and are not unlike a great lobster, with his back to the cast,
and with his claws, legs, and feelers extended westwards towards Deal
and the shipping in the Downs. Far from the main body of the sands run
all manner of spits and promontories and jaws of sand, and through and
across the Goodwins in several directions are numbers of 'swatches,' or
passages of water varying in depth from feet to fathoms.

No one knows, or can know, all the swatches, which vary very much month
by month according to the prevalence of gales or fair weather. I shall
never forget the sensation of striking bottom in one of those swatches
where I expected to find, and had found recently before in the same
state of the tide, a depth of six feet. The noise of broken water on
each side of us, and the ominous grating thump of our boat's keel
against the Goodwins, while the stumps of lost vessels grinned close
by, gave us a keen sense of the nearness of real peril. We were bound
to the East Goodwin lightship, and in the path of duty, but we were
glad to feel the roll of deep water under our boat's keel outside the
Goodwins.

No one therefore knows, or can know, by reason of the perpetual
shifting of the sands, all the passages or swatches, either as to
direction or depth, of the Goodwins; but two or three main swatches are
tolerably well known to the Deal and Ramsgate lifeboatmen.

There is a broad bay called Trinity Bay in the heart of the Goodwins,
out of which leads due north-east the chief swatch or passage through
the Sands. It is four or five fathoms deep at low water, and from
about three-quarters to a quarter of a mile wide, and it is called the
Ramsgate Man's Bight. Close to the outer entrance of this great
passage rides, about twelve feet out of water, the huge north-east
Whistle buoy of the Goodwins, which ever moans forth in calmest weather
its most mournful note.

Sometimes when outside the Goodwins on my way from the North Goodwin to