Cross the two bridges over the lateral canal, then the railway and maritime lock; take the first street on the left, which passes over the Ghent-Ostend canal and the sluice-gates. Take Chaussée du Phare, on the left, then the first street on the left, opposite Rue Mansveld, to the Oyster-Beds.
Ostend. The Monumental Bridge. Exit for Zeebrugge.
Panorama of Ostend seen from the old lighthouse.
Ostend oysters, of world-wide repute among gourmets, are not natives of these shores. Gathered from the rocks on the English and Brittany coasts by the Ostend fishing-boats, they are fattened by a special process in the Ostend oyster-beds. The latter, situated in the lighthouse quarter communicate with the outer-harbour. They consist of reservoirs divided into compartments with planks, in which the sea-water, renewed every day, deposes its slimy sediment. During the War, the oyster-beds were closed.
Taking Chaussée du Phare again on the left (see plan, p. [60]), the tourist reaches the site on which the lighthouse used to stand, now a heap of ruins.
Built in 1859, its round tower, 175 feet high, showed a fixed white light. Behind is the old Napoleon Fort. Facing the lighthouse, at the end of the sluice dock, stands the Powder Magazine, a kind of fort where the Germans had two batteries.
Tourists may go round the powder magazine by following the dike which is terminated by the Eastern Wooden Pier. It was at the end of the latter that the British sank the "Vindictive" on May 11, 1918.