Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722Defoe, Daniel
History
Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point of land in the
county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyond Yarmouth, the shore falls
off for nearly sixty miles to the west, as far as Lynn and Boston, till
the shore of Lincolnshire tends north again for about sixty miles more as
far as the Humber, whence the coast of Yorkshire, or Holderness, which is
the east riding, shoots out again into the sea, to the Spurn and to
Flamborough Head, as far east, almost, as the shore of Norfolk had given
back at Winterton, making a very deep gulf or bay between those two
points of Winterton and the Spurn Head; so that the ships going north are
obliged to stretch away to sea from Wintertonness, and leaving the sight
of land in that deep bay which I have mentioned, that reaches to Lynn and
the shore of Lincolnshire, they go, I say, N. or still NNW. to meet the
shore of Holderness, which I said runs out into the sea again at the
Spurn; and the first land they make or desire to make, is called as
above, Flamborough Head, so that Wintertonness and Flamborough Head are
the two extremes of this course, there is, as I said, the Spurn Head
indeed between; but as it lies too far in towards the Humber, they keep
out to the north to avoid coming near it.
In like manner the ships which come from the north, leave the shore at
Flamborough Head, and stretch away SSE. for Yarmouth Roads; and they
first land they make is Wintertonness (as above). Now, the danger of the
place is this: if the ships coming from the north are taken with a hard
gale of wind from the SE., or from any point between NE. and SE., so that
they cannot, as the seamen call it, weather Wintertonness, they are
thereby kept within that deep bay; and if the wind blows hard, are often
in danger of running on shore upon the rocks about Cromer, on the north
coast of Norfolk, or stranding upon the flat shore between Cromer and
Wells; all the relief they have, is good ground tackle to ride it out,
which is very hard to do there, the sea coming very high upon them; or if
they cannot ride it out then, to run into the bottom of the great bay I
mentioned, to Lynn or Boston, which is a very difficult and desperate
push: so that sometimes in this distress whole fleets have been lost here
altogether.
The like is the danger to ships going northward, if after passing by
Winterton they are taken short with a north-east wind, and cannot put
back into the Roads, which very often happens, then they are driven upon
the same coast, and embayed just as the latter. The danger on the north
part of this bay is not the same, because if ships going or coming should
be taken short on this side Flamborough, there is the river Humber open
to them, and several good roads to have recourse to, as Burlington Bay,
Grimsby Road, and the Spurn Head, and others, where they ride under
shelter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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