XII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT RICHBOROUGH OR SANDWICH
The commentators who believe that Caesar landed in the neighbourhood of Sandwich are not agreed among themselves. Napoleon III, who holds that he landed between Walmer and Deal in 55, and at or near Sandwich in 54 B.C., argues that the disaster which befell his ships on the night of the full moon in August, 55 B.C., must have taught him the danger to which they would be exposed on the beach near Deal, and that accordingly he must have selected a better landing-place ‘some kilometres further north’.[3327] Others, like the late George Dowker, maintain that he landed near Sandwich on both occasions.
Dowker assumes that Caesar’s own ship, if not the rest of his fleet, anchored in 55 B.C. off the South Foreland; and he goes on to say that ‘from the South Foreland ... seven miles would bring him near the mouth of Sandwich Haven’. He decides for Sandwich instead of Deal because, in his opinion, the Commentaries show that Caesar landed ‘at or near a point whence he could get his long vessels on the flank of an enemy’, and at Deal ‘no such bay existed’, whereas at Sandwich the very bay which he wanted was formed by the mouth of the Stour.[3328]
That Caesar did ‘get his long vessels on the flank of an enemy’[3329] is unquestionable: but he does not say that he placed them in a bay or in the mouth of the Stour or any other river; nor is it easy to understand why a bay or the mouth of a river should have been necessary for his purpose. The object of placing the ‘long vessels’ on the enemy’s right flank was that the artillerymen, slingers, and archers who manned them might drive away the enemy who were trying to stop the disembarkation; and some of the enemy were standing on the shore, while the rest were wading, or mounted on horseback, or perhaps standing in their cars in the sea close to the water’s edge.[3330] Why should not the ‘long vessels’ have been in the sea too? What was to be gained by sending them into the mouth of a river? When Dowker said that a run of 7 miles would have brought Caesar from the South Foreland nearly to ‘the mouth of Sandwich Haven’, his eagerness to prove his point prevented him from making an accurate measurement. From the South Foreland to the place which was once the mouth of Sandwich Haven, as measured within half a mile from the shore on Sheet 290 of the One Inch Ordnance Map, is just over 11 statute, or 12 Roman miles. Nor does Battely contribute much to the argument when he pleads that VIII milia passuum ‘does not occur invariably in all the editions’, and that Caesar may have made a mistake. We are not concerned with ‘the editions’, but with the MSS.; and VIII milia passuum does not occur in any of them, but VII (or septem) milia passuum in all.[3331] It would be strange if Caesar had not made a slight mistake; but it would be stranger still if he had mistaken twelve miles for seven. Battely[3332] argues that he must have landed at Richborough, (a) because he says that Cantium, where the Gauls generally landed, has an easterly aspect, whereas Dover looks south; (b) because Dion’s description of the landing-place, ‘which, as to the nature of the shore, directly contradicts Caesar’s narrative,’ is applicable to Richborough, where there ‘was a marshy and muddy shore, on which Caesar’s soldiers ... could not keep their footing’;[3333] and (c) because ‘all the time the Romans were masters of our island, Rutupiae ... was the only port where they disembarked’. Now Caesar, who never talks nonsense, does not say that the whole of Cantium, or even that part of it in which the Gauls used to land, faces the east. He merely says that of the side of Britain which faces Gaul ‘one corner, by Kent—the part which almost all ships from Gaul make for—has an easterly ... aspect’ (huius lateris alter angulus, qui est ad Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallia naves adpelluntur, ad orientem solem ... spectat[3334]). Besides, nobody would argue that Caesar landed at Dover; and the coast between Walmer and Deal has an easterly aspect no less than Richborough. Secondly, when Battely says that Dion’s description of the landing-place ‘directly contradicts’ Caesar’s narrative, and then elects to believe the inaccurate and rhetorical Greek, who wrote two hundred years after the event, rather than the eye-witness, he shows that he is incapable of serious criticism. Besides, it is not true that Dion’s description of the landing-place[3335] contradicts Caesar’s narrative either directly or indirectly; and neither of them says that the shore was either ‘marshy’ or ‘muddy’.[3336] Thirdly, Rutupiae was not ‘the only port’ where the Romans disembarked after they had become masters of the island. It is certain that Dover Harbour was in use during the Roman occupation of Britain, for it is mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine;[3337] inscribed tiles found at Dover prove that it was one of the stations of the Classis Britannica,[3338]—the Roman ‘Channel Fleet’; and the mere fact that two disembarkations after the time of Caesar are recorded to have taken place at Rutupiae[3339] does not prove the contrary.
The conclusion is that Caesar, on his first voyage, did not land either in the neighbourhood of Sandwich or at Richborough, and that he did land between Walmer and Deal. The disembarkation must of course have taken place along a front of considerable extent; and the most southerly point at which it would have been easily practicable is quite close to Walmer Castle.
In the following year, however, the fleet must have made the land somewhere between the site of Deal Castle and the latitude of Sandwich. For the Romans, as we have seen, on the morning after their disembarkation, fought a cavalry action on the banks of a river, at a spot about twelve miles from the camp which Caesar had constructed near the place of landing: the river, as we shall afterwards see,[3340] was the Stour; and if the length of the march was estimated with tolerable accuracy, the camp must have been in the neighbourhood of Sandwich.[3341] Besides, Caesar tells us that ‘he felt little anxiety for the ships, as he was leaving them at anchor on a nice open shore’ (eo minus veritus navibus, quod in litore molli atque aperto deligatas ad ancoras relinquebat[3342]). The meaning of the epithet, mollis, has been already explained;[3343] and, moreover, although no commentator has noticed the fact, it does not need much acumen to see that Caesar was here excusing himself for having left his ships at anchor, in spite of the severe lesson which the storm of the previous year had given him, by the plea that he had selected a more favourable anchorage.[3344]
I began this inquiry early in 1900 with a mind absolutely unbiassed, resolved to do one of two things,—either to solve the problem, or, if that could not be done, to show, once for all, that it was insoluble. The reader knows that I have not neglected any means of ascertaining the truth; and I have provided him with the means of controlling every statement which I have made. I have set down fully and fairly the arguments of those from whom I differ; and I have kept back nothing, I have called attention to everything, that might appear to tell against the conclusion to which the evidence inevitably led. I need not say anything by way of recapitulation, for no man who has read this article attentively can be lacking either in patience or in intelligence; and I am sure that the reader is by this time convinced of these things:—that it has been demonstrated that Caesar did not land at Pevensey, or anywhere in Sussex; that it has been demonstrated that he did not land at Hythe, or anywhere in Romney Marsh; and that it has been demonstrated that he did land both in 55 and in 54 B.C. in East Kent,—in the former year between Walmer Castle and Deal Castle, in the latter north of Deal Castle. That some will still for a time dispute these conclusions is likely enough; but not those whose judgements count. For them the problem is solved.
Note.—The following is a transcript of the report of Messrs. Doak, Hudson, and Sprigge, sent to me from the Nautical Almanac Office, and alluded to on page 610, supra:—
‘The calculations have proved somewhat more lengthy and complicated than was at first anticipated, since it was found on examination that no approximate process would give results of a satisfactory degree of accuracy. In consequence the following work has been done:—
1. Twelve complete places of the Moon were determined from Hansen’s “Tables de la Lune”, embodying all the inequalities. Longitude, Latitude, and Parallax were thus obtained.
2. The Sun’s Longitude, the Obliquity of the Ecliptic and the Sidereal Time were then computed from Newcomb’s Tables for seven successive Greenwich Mean Noons. A slight shortening was possible in the case of the Longitude, but the resulting error cannot, in the opinion of Professor Newcomb, exceed ±30 seconds of arc, and is probably about ±12 seconds.
3. The Moon’s position was then converted from Longitude and Latitude to Right Ascension and Declination.
4. The Greenwich Mean Time of Moon’s Transit was computed for twelve transits.
5. The times of High Water at Dover were obtained by applying the proper quantities from the Admiralty Tidal Curve for Dover to the times of Moon’s Transit.
6. From the Longitudes of Moon and Sun the time of Full Moon was determined.
7. The whole of the calculations were then examined and duplicated where desirable.
With the one exception of the Sun’s Longitude the calculations have been rigorous, and, so far as the computing is concerned, are of the same degree of accuracy as those published annually in the Nautical Almanac. A very slight divergence from the truth is, however, possible owing to the fact that the tables of the Moon and Sun are used for an epoch nineteen-and-a-half centuries ago; but it is very unlikely that this is large enough to affect the times of high water or of full moon.
4th October, 1902.’