Between the Catwater and the Hamoaze, the great naval anchorage which extends from the Sound to Saltash Bridge, are the "Three Towns," Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport, now joined into one by continuous buildings, forming the busiest and most populous part of the county, and constituting, with their dockyards, barracks, gun-wharves, and victualling yards, one of the most important stations of the Royal Navy.
[10. Coastal Gains and Losses. Sandbanks. Lighthouses.]
There are parts of our island where, even within historic times, the coast-line has been greatly changed by the encroachment of the sea, usually through the wearing away of the cliffs along the shore. This is especially the case on the eastern coast of England, where, in the lapse of ages, villages, towns, and whole manors have been completely swept away. The old town of Ravenspur, for example, a place that in its time rivalled Hull as a sea-port, is to-day a mere sandbank far out from shore; and the sea runs twenty feet deep over the once great shipping town of Dunwich, whose site is now two miles from the land.
On the other hand, there are places where the reverse has happened; where the shore has gained upon the sea. The town of Yarmouth, for instance, stands on ground that first became firm enough to build upon nine hundred years ago. A large tract of land on the coast of Carnarvonshire has, in times much more recent, been reclaimed from the sea; and the day cannot be far distant when the mud-flats of the Wash will be under the plough.
Similar changes—changes resulting both from gain and loss—have happened and are still happening in Devonshire. Braunton Great Field, a rich tract of land some 300 acres in extent, cut up into hundreds of small freeholds, was, it is believed, reclaimed from the estuary of the Taw. On the other hand, the Pebble Ridge on the shore of Barnstaple Bay has been slowly driven inland by the force of the sea, and is said to have advanced 200 yards in the last fifty years, thus covering a long stretch of pasture-land under heaps of stones. Attempts have been lately made, by means of piles and groynes of timber, to stop its further movement.
Much more remarkable, however, and much more widely distributed, are the alterations that have taken place on the south coast of Devonshire, owing mainly to erosion of the cliffs and consequent landslips, and to the washing up, by strong currents, of vast quantities of sand and shingle. From the Dorset border westwards, especially between Pinhay Bay and Culverhole Point, in the White Cliff near Seaton, and at Beer Head, long stretches of cliff, undermined probably by streams and heavy rains, have fallen, sometimes in masses half a mile long. The old town of Sidmouth is now buried under the shingle, the cliffs that protected the harbour having been entirely washed away. At Dawlish, again, rather more than fifty years since, a mass estimated at 4000 tons fell bodily into the sea. Nor is the erosion the work of natural forces alone. In 1897 immense quantities of fine shingle were taken from the beach at Hallsands, to make concrete for Keyham dockyard, with the result that the beach there has sunk twelve feet, that high-water mark is now much farther in-shore, and that many houses in the village have been swept away by the sea, whose further inroads have at last been checked by means of massive walls of concrete.
A Rough Sea at Ilfracombe