Brixham
Beyond Berry Head, which forms the end of a broad promontory, worn at its base into many caves, and noted for its quarries, there extends for many miles—all the way, in fact, to the mouth of the Dart—a stretch of very beautiful coast-line, with low but finely-coloured cliffs of sandstone and limestone and slate, varying in tint from red to purple, and from brown to grey, with a series of sandy bays and fringed by outlying rocks, two of which are called Mewstones. One of these, standing just where the coast sweeps round to the estuary of the Dart, is a lofty pinnacle of stone more than 100 feet high. Well inside the mouth of the Dart, on the steep slope of its left or eastern entrance, is the quaint little town of Kingswear; and opposite to it, on the western shore, lies Dartmouth, once a noted port, but now only a favourite yachting station. The old man-of-war, the Britannia, anchored here close to land and long used as a training-ship, has been superseded by a naval college on shore, and is now used only as a store. Dartmouth is a place of much historic interest. It was from here that part of Richard Cœur de Lion's crusading fleet sailed for Palestine. The port furnished thirty-one ships towards Edward III's attack on Calais. Twice, in the half century that followed, it was plundered by the French. It played a prominent part in the Civil War, and was taken first by Prince Maurice, and afterwards by Fairfax.
The “Britannia” and “Hindostan” in Dartmouth Harbour
Between the mouth of the Dart and Start Point, nine miles as the crow flies, is Start Bay, walled for about half its length with low and quiet-coloured cliffs of slate, and fringed in great part with sand and shingle. At Blackpool, a picturesque little cove near the northern end of the bay, du Chastel the Breton landed, in 1404, on a pillaging expedition, for the plundering was not all on the side of the English. But the Frenchman was killed, with 400 of his men, and 200 more were taken prisoners. Half-way along the shore of Start Bay are Slapton Sands, where a beach of small and brightly-coloured pebbles and a bank of shingle separate the long and narrow lake called Slapton Ley from the waters of the Channel. Off this spot, marked by two beacons on the shore, is the spot, "measured mile" for testing the speed of steamships. Not far from Slapton the coast rises again, and above the fishing villages of Hallsands and Beesands, which stand at the water's edge, reaches a height of some hundreds of feet. The people of these two little hamlets train powerful dogs, which, in rough weather, swim out through the surf, catch the painters thrown to them and thus enable the fishing-boats to be dragged ashore.
Start Point, or, as it is perhaps more often called, the Start, is one of the famous capes of Britain, a bold headland sloping steeply both ways, like the roof of a house; whose iron base, fringed with white quartz pebbles; has been the scene of many shipwrecks, and whose dark cliffs and rugged crags are haunted by multitudes of sea-birds. The cliffs of this part of Devon, from the Start round Prawle Point and Bolt Head to Bolt Tail—cliffs whose grey rock, relieved by bands of white quartz, has been bent and twisted by volcanic upheaval, and weathered by rain and frost, by wind and sea, into the wildest and most fantastic shapes—are as remarkable for picturesqueness of form as other parts are for richness of colouring. Three miles beyond the Start is Prawle Point, a magnificent mass of jagged rock, the most southerly point in the county, and a well-known steering-mark for ships in the Channel. It was off this shore, in 1793, that the English ship Nymphe captured the French man-of-war Cléopatre; the first naval battle in the struggle between England and the French Republic. Between Prawle Point and Bolt Head is Salcombe Mouth, a creek rather than an estuary; a long, winding, and picturesque inlet, whose entrance is obstructed by a bank of sand. Trunks of oak and other trees, from a submerged forest not far from land, are sometimes thrown ashore here after rough weather. To the west of Salcombe stands Bolt Head, of no great height, but a noble mass of rugged and weather-worn rock. Beyond the Head the coast rises into steep and lofty cliffs, culminating in Bolt Tail, close under whose eastern face, in 1760, the 74-gun ship Ramillies was lost, with more than 700 of her crew. A gun recovered from the wreck lies by the Hope signal-station, on the height above. These cliffs have been much broken away by landslips; and a series of fissures called the Pits suggest that much more ground is still to fall.
Round Bigbury Bay, of which Bolt Tail is the eastern limit, is some of the most beautiful scenery of this beautiful coast. A striking feature of the bay is a great rock called the Thurlestone, an outlying mass of red sandstone, conspicuous against the general greyness of the cliffs, and pierced by a lofty archway, worn by wind and sea. Two estuaries, the Avon Mouth and the Erme Mouth, break the coast-line of the bay; and there is a third, called Yealm Mouth, near the entrance of Plymouth Sound, a couple of miles beyond the grand slate headland of Stoke Point. Outside the Avon Mouth is Borough Island, carpeted in spring-time with the beautiful blue of the delicate little vernal squill. The Erme, whose mouth is guarded by rugged cliffs of slate, is strewn with rocks and sandbanks; but the estuary of the Yealm is a fine sheet of deep, navigable water. Standing far out into Wembury Bay, at the mouth of the Yealm, is the third of the Mewstones, a rocky and beautiful little islet, nearly 200 feet high, and frequented, as its name implies, by many sea-gulls.
The Mewstone may be said to mark the eastern side of the entrance of Plymouth Sound, one of the best known, most important, and most beautiful bays in the kingdom. It is by nature fully exposed to southerly winds, and it has, in the past, been the scene of many shipwrecks. But the breakwater, which was built in the early half of the nineteenth century right across it, two miles south of Plymouth Hoe, with the special object of sheltering ships of the Royal Navy, now affords a safe and excellent anchorage. Nearer the shore is Drake's Island, now strongly fortified, but in Stuart times a State prison, where Lambert, one of the most distinguished of Parliamentary generals, spent the last eighteen years of his life.
At the head of the Sound, on its eastern side, is the inlet called the Catwater, the estuary of the river Plym, an important mercantile anchorage, protected by Batten breakwater. It was here that the English Fleet waited until the Spanish Armada, on its way up the Channel, had passed the entrance of the Sound.