Dover has regained in the last few years all its ancient importance—and more, and has in four or five respects bulked largely in public affairs. The completion of the great National Harbour stands easily foremost; and next in importance comes the story of the proposed Channel Tunnel; followed by the long-drawn search for coal that is still being prosecuted; by the many attempts to swim the Channel; and the several successful flights across it, to and from this point.
The first attempt to make a national harbour at Dover may be traced to the reign of Henry the Eighth, when a long pier formed of timber piles and heavy stones was built out to sea on the site of the modern arm known until recently as the “Admiralty Pier.” It cost some £80,000, but seems never to have been quite completed, and was, like the Admiralty Pier itself, until the completion of the great harbour in 1910, merely a breakwater, not a harbour. It broke to some extent the force of the strong set of the currents that sweep towards the east through the narrow Straits, but was washed away at last. The loss of Calais, the last relic of the English possessions in France, during the reign of Mary, led to renewed activities here, for in the words of Raleigh, “no promontory, town, or harbour in Europe is so well situated for annoying the enemy, protecting commerce, or sending and receiving despatches from the Continent”; but the English seamen of that great age dealt roundly with the enemy on the high seas, outside harbours, and, although other works were casually undertaken, the making of Dover a great war-harbour and place of assemblage was not yet.
The great works now happily completed originate in the foresight displayed by the Duke of Wellington, who, convinced of the strategical value of Dover, strongly urged the construction of a harbour here, where the Navy could rendezvous at the threat of war. In 1840, and again in 1844, a Royal Commission sat upon the subject, took evidence, and issued a report; but the estimated cost of such an undertaking, then placed at two millions sterling, appeared to be too great, and only a portion of it was built. This, the Admiralty Pier, was begun in 1847. It occupied twenty years, and was built largely by convict labour. In its well-remembered original form it extended a distance of 2,000 feet, and was finished off at the seaward end with a fort mounting two big guns, which were but rarely fired, because the concussion generally smashed all the windows along the front.
THE NATIONAL HARBOUR, DOVER.
It was not until 1894 that the old question, then mellowed by half a century, of providing a National Harbour was revived. The Admiralty were urged to consider it anew, in view of the altered conditions of naval warfare brought about by the gradual perfecting of that new engine of destruction, the torpedo, which had rendered the Downs, that old rendezvous of the fleet, no longer safe from attack. The result of these new deliberations was the letting of a contract in November 1897 to Messrs. Pearson & Sons, by which enormous works, costing considerably over £3,500,000, and taking twelve years to complete, were embarked upon.
To construct a deep-sea harbour at Dover, open at all states of the tide, was an anxious work. Nature has appeared to sternly deny to any of the South Coast towns between Ramsgate and Portsmouth anything of the kind, and such small havens as existed have been mostly silted up. That is the familiar tale of Hythe, of Winchelsea, and of many another. Ramsgate harbour has been kept open only by dint of constant and costly dredging, which has made its harbour-dues almost prohibitively heavy. The natural haven of Dover, in the hollow of the hills, long ages ago became a portion of the town; and the inset of the coast is so insignificant that it is fighting elemental forces in the open to build strong granite piers and breakwaters in deep water, ranging to a depth of forty feet at low tides, which rise eighteen feet nine inches and through which runs a five-knot current. But the contest is ended, and the eye now ranges from the heights of Shakespeare’s Cliff or those of the Castle upon such a harbour as Raleigh never dreamed. The length of the old Admiralty Pier has been doubled; an eastern arm stretches out from under the Castle to a length of 2,942 feet, and between their seaward extremities stretches, parallel with the shore, a breakwater 4,212 feet long, enclosing, together with the Commercial Harbour, the vast area of 685 acres. The eastern and the western entrances, at either end of the breakwater, are respectively 650 feet and 740 feet wide. The entire Navy can assemble comfortably in Dover Harbour, without fear of torpedo or submarine attacks, and guarded by the frowning forts of the Castle and the Western Heights while other forts and searchlight stations are placed on the piers and breakwaters. In addition, there are torpedo and submarine stations here for attacking any foe.
The proverbial luck of England is very marked here. When the great harbour was decided upon, the menace of a German Navy and of the remarkable German war preparations at Emden had not arisen. The Germans themselves were still enjoying the fun of calling the German Emperor “gondola Willy,” in ridicule of his desire to create a fleet. No one laughs now at the spectacle of a German Navy, which is emphatically “a fleet in being”; and the strategy of the Board of Admiralty is now directed, in consequence of that new factor, rather to guarding the North Sea than the seas patrolled by the old Channel Fleet. Bismarck once rightly described the Baltic Sea as “a hole,” in which a German fleet could be easily shut up. The Baltic Canal was cut by the Germans as a way, and a short way, out of that hole; but the new British strategic base at Dover, closing the English Channel to the passage either way of a hostile fleet, has, together with other naval bases, constructed, or constructing, along the East Coast and up to the extreme north of Scotland, and in the Orkneys, rendered the North Sea itself something of a “hole,” on a larger scale. If we take a map and look at the relative positions of Great Britain and Germany, we shall clearly see that Britain, with the will to do it, can stop the way, and in the event of war close both the Channel and the way round by the North; thus preventing an attack upon the British possessions over-seas, even though we bear the shock of war along our whole eastern face. But Harwich, Grimsby, and the Tyne; Rosyth, Dundee, Wick, and Scapa Flow, will in due course be able to stiffen the new front of our position. That the rise of the German Navy has made the North Sea our front is seen in the new dispositions, by which the Channel and the Mediterranean have lost their relative importance, while the North Sea is now the cruising-ground of some thirty of the foremost ships of the Navy.
The last word, the final appeal, is with the land and sea forces of the nation. Orators in Parliament, or stumping the country, may thrill audiences with enthusiasm or indignation, but there is no thrill to equal that which comes of conscious power. Such a thrill the Englishman may experience here. Let us hope politicians, in their party juggling, may not starve our defences too often, so that they be found wanting in our hour of need.
We have beheaded a King, with some justice, we have shot an Admiral, without justice or sense in the doing of it, and we have from time to time degraded Generals; but, strange to say, we have never yet hanged a statesman, although the occasion has warranted, often enough. It seems a strange immunity! Yet in the coming great struggle, if we be unprepared, it may well be that this immunity will no longer hold. Tennyson, many years ago, contemplating some such national disaster, had a vision of the mob’s way with recreant ministers: