Like various other places on the Estuary and the lower reaches of the River, Canvey Island has on occasions been proposed as a place for deep-sea wharves, so that unloading might be carried out without the journey up river, but so far nothing definite has come of these suggestions. CHAPTER THREE _The Medway and its Towns_ From its position right at the entrance to the River the Medway tributary has always offered a considerable contribution to the defence of London. Going off as it does laterally from the main stream, the Medway estuary has acted the part of a remarkably fine flank retreat. Our forces, driven back at any time to the refuge of the River, could always split up—part proceeding up the main stream towards London, and part taking refuge in the protected network of waterways behind Sheppey and the Isle of Grain. So that the indiscreet enemy, chasing the main portion of the fleet up the estuary of the River, would always be in danger of being caught between two fires. Which fact probably accounts for the tremendous importance with which the Medway has always been regarded in naval and military circles. Passing between the Isle of Grain and Sheppey, and leaving on our left hand the Swale, in which, so tradition says, St. Augustine baptized King Ethelbert at Whitsun, 596, and on the other bank Port Victoria, the packet-station, we find nothing very striking till we catch sight of Upnor Castle, on the western bank of the river, facing the Chatham Dockyard Extension. This queer old, grey-walled fortress with its cylindrical towers, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, is not a very impressive place. It does not flaunt its strength from any impregnable cliff, or even fling defiance from the top of a little hill. Instead, it lies quite low on the river bank. Yet it has had one spell of real life as a fortress, a few days of activity in that inglorious time with which the tributary will ever be associated—the days of “the Dutch in the Medway,” when de Ruyter and van Ghent came with some sixty vessels to the Nore and in about two hours laid level with the ground the magnificent and recently-erected fortifications of Sheerness. This and the happenings of the next few weeks formed, as old John Evelyn says in his “Diary,” “a dreadfull spectacle as ever Englishman saw, and a dishonour never to be wiped off!”