Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Again, it is incredible that a gale which drove some of Caesar’s eighteen cavalry transports past Hythe or Lympne to a more westerly part of the island should have carried the rest back to the port from which they had started, which Lewin rightly identified with Ambleteuse. If the ships had been approaching Hythe when the storm arose, they would have been obliged, in order to return to Ambleteuse, to steer SE. by E. 9° S.[3086] Now Lewin himself maintains that the gale blew from the north-east.[3087] As a matter of fact, if it had blown from this quarter at Lympne or Hythe, it would have been practically innocuous; for off either of those places vessels would have been sheltered from it by the hills, and the transports which were driven westward would not have been, as they were, swept by the waves: if the gale had blown from the north-east off Walmer, its direction off Hythe would have been about east-north-east.[3088] Still, for the sake of argument, I will accept Lewin’s view. According to it, the ships would have been forced to sail within less than eight points of the wind. But in a heavy gale a ship will make as much as six points and a half of lee-way.[3089] Let us reduce this estimate to four, which is certainly a liberal reduction.[3090] It follows that the hapless transports would have been required, in order to reach their destination, to lie within less than four points of the wind, a feat which, I need hardly say, would have been utterly impossible.[3091] Furthermore, Lewin affirms, in an unguarded moment, that the gale, when a few hours later it wrecked Caesar’s ships as they rode at anchor, was still blowing from the north-east: but he does not explain how a north-easterly gale could have driven ashore, that is to say, driven in a northerly direction, ships anchored off Lympne or Hythe!

Such are a few of the absurdities in which Lewin’s theory plunges him. However, he shall be heard in his own defence.

The argument upon which Lewin lays the most stress has been already refuted.[3092] He maintains that at the time when Caesar, on the day of his first voyage, quitted his anchorage and sailed with the stream to the spot where he was to land, the stream must have been running down the Channel.[3093] Let us assume, in order to allow more than its due weight to his argument, that Caesar must have weighed anchor as early as 3.30 p.m.,[3094] though I shall afterwards prove that the assumption is both unnecessary and false; and let us also suppose that the tide did not actually turn eastward until after 5 p.m. Even then, unless Caesar could have calculated the exact time which it had still to run with more than the certainty of the experts who prepare the Admiralty Tide Tables, he would have had to face the risk that, before he could reach his landing-place, it might turn against him. Even if Heller[3095] is not right in interpreting the words ‘getting wind and tide simultaneously in his favour’ (et ventum et aestum uno tempore nactus secundum) as meaning that Caesar weighed anchor just after the stream had turned, there can be no doubt that this would have been the wisest course to pursue.

1. Having disposed, to his own satisfaction, of the question of the tides, Lewin remarks that ‘Hythe would be much nearer than Deal, and was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’.[3096]

Yes, nearer by a bare two miles, and a few yards nearer than Walmer! But, as Lewin himself insists,[3097] Caesar, when he sailed from Boulogne, did not intend to land either at Hythe or at Deal; and unless he intended to sail direct to one of those places, Lewin’s argument collapses. Moreover, since the greater part of the voyage was made upon the easterly-going stream, it would have taken longer to sail to Hythe than to the coast between Walmer and Deal. And when Lewin affirms that Hythe ‘was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’, he apparently forgets that he has already told us that ‘Folkestone ... would be the natural port for Boulogne’,[3098] that Caesar’s fleet never entered Hythe harbour, and that ‘the mooring of the Roman vessels within it would be certain destruction’.[3099]

2. Lewin attempts to show that the wind which carried Caesar from Boulogne to his anchorage on his first voyage, and which would, if it had continued, have been in his favour if he had intended to sail on towards Deal, veered round before he quitted his anchorage.[3100] His argument runs as follows:—‘Caesar says that he started from his anchorage ... having got the wind in his favour, and the Latin word nactus implies that the wind had undergone a change.... When he embarked at Boulogne he despatched the cavalry to Ambleteuse ... with orders to follow him with all haste; but ... they did not leave that haven for Britain until the fourth day after,[3101] and no plausible reason can be given for this except that, for the whole of this interval, the wind was contrary; that is ... had shifted.’ In a later passage[3102] he maintains that if the wind had not shifted during the voyage, the length of the passage, and especially the tardy arrival of the transports, would be inexplicable. Moreover, he says, the word nactus ‘implies a change either in the wind or the tide: the tide had not changed, and therefore the change alluded to must have been in the wind’.[3103] While, however, he argues that the wind must have shifted, he endeavours to secure his retreat by affirming that, if it had not shifted, Caesar could nevertheless have sailed to Hythe as easily as to Deal. ‘Supposing,’ he says,[3104] ‘the wind to have blown from the south, it would have been favourable to a movement, from a point opposite Dover, either to the east or west.’

I freely admit—indeed I have myself maintained—that the wind had shifted during the voyage. It had shifted to a point unfavourable, or comparatively unfavourable, to ships sailing from North-Eastern Gaul to Britain. I also, like Lewin, maintain that it shifted again before Caesar quitted his anchorage. The fact is obvious. But what then? How can Lewin prove that before Caesar quitted his anchorage the wind did not shift to a quarter which would have been favourable to a run from a point off the cliffs of Dover towards Deal? Moreover, it is not true that if the wind had ‘blown from the south, it would have been favourable to a movement, from a point opposite Dover, either to the east or west’. If the wind had blown exactly from the south, it would certainly not have been called favourable to a movement from a point opposite Dover to Hythe, that is to say, within less than seven points of the wind; and if the wind had blown from any point west of south, the word ‘favourable’ would have been still less appropriate.[3105]

3. Lewin maintains that the wisest course which Caesar could have pursued when he sailed on from his anchorage in 55 B.C. would have been to steer westward. ‘Let us first consider,’ he says,[3106] ‘a priori, what a prudent commander might be expected to do under similar circumstances.... To the right he would see the precipitous chalk cliffs stretching away ... till they terminated at the South Foreland.... The lowlands about Walmer and Deal would not be visible; and it is at least doubtful whether Volusenus had included them in his survey ... tracing the line of cliffs westward, he could not fail to see that they terminated at Sandgate, and that a broad level plain there succeeded.’ At Hythe, he adds, there was a landing-place ‘distinctly visible from his moorings’.[3107]

This argument rests upon the absolutely groundless assumption that Volusenus had not reconnoitred the coast on the north of the South Foreland;[3108] in other words, that Volusenus, whom Caesar specially selected as a thoroughly competent man, had grossly neglected his duty and disobeyed his instructions. Besides, even if the landing-place at Hythe had been ‘distinctly visible’ from Caesar’s moorings,[3109] nothing would have been gained; for Caesar acted, not upon what he could see, but, as he tells us himself,[3110] upon what he had learned from the report of Volusenus. Whether he could or could not see ‘from his moorings’ the place where he was to land, he knew the direction in which he intended to sail. Finally, when Lewin considers ‘a priori’ that ‘a prudent commander might be expected under similar circumstances’ to land at Hythe or Lympne, he only advertises his own ignorance of a commander’s business. As I shall show presently,[3111] no commander who was not hopelessly incompetent would have dreamed, in the circumstances of ancient warfare, of attempting to land either at Hythe or at Lympne.

4. Lewin contends in his text that at Lympne and in his appendix that at Hythe there was a landing-place which exactly corresponded with Caesar’s description; and he denies that any such landing-place exists at Deal. He affirms[3112] that the shore on the western side of ‘the creek of Lympne’ was ‘apertum or open, for the heights to the north were at least a mile distant. The sea-beach was also molle or soft ... in a sailor’s sense, i.e. it consisted of shingle, than which nothing can be more favourable to the security of vessels.... Sand, on the contrary, is, in naval phraseology, of the hardest kind, as it has no “give”, and a ship beating against it would soon be dashed to pieces.’ He says that, according to Lucan,[3113] Plutarch,[3114] and Dion Cassius,[3115] there was ‘marshy ground’ at the place where Caesar landed, and he assures us that marshes were formed by the streams which entered the port of Hythe.[3116] He remarks that, according to Valerius Maximus,[3117] there were two small islands near the landing-place, which were the scene of an exploit performed by one of Caesar’s centurions: ‘on looking,’ he says, ‘at the old maps of this part of the coast, I find ... that the bay of Limne contained ... two islands.’ Like other people who had learned to measure the trustworthiness of Valerius Maximus, Lewin had himself been sceptical about the anecdote of the centurion; but how could he resist the testimony of the ‘old maps’? He admits that he was converted:—‘the circumstance, so apocryphal before, becomes thus no inconsiderable argument for placing the descent in this locality.’[3118] Afterwards he changes his mind, and transfers the islands some distance to the east of Lympne. They actually existed, he tells us, a few years before the publication of his book, ‘either near to or in the ancient port of Hythe’; they also are depicted in various old maps; and they were ‘carted away’ by the late James Elliott, the engineer of Romney Marsh.[3119] Furthermore, he assures us[3120] that the incident described by Valerius Maximus is also noticed by Plutarch,[3121] who ‘lays the scene in sight of Caesar himself, and therefore close to the camp; and in a marsh or swamp, which, with the light afforded by the account of Valerius, must be taken to mean a lagoon subject to the alternations of the high and low tides’.