The Reason Of The Dangers Of This Particular Coast Are Found In The
Situation Of The County And In The
Course of ships sailing this
way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:- The shore from
the
Mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roads lies in a
straight line from SSE. to NNW., the land being on the W. or
larboard side.
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.
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