“The Low Lights” is that portion of North Shields which is nearest to the sea. A square white lighthouse stands on a wooden fish-quay, which projects far into the river; another similar lighthouse—“The High Lights”—occupies the top of a neighbouring hill. A ship making the river must have both of these lights in line, as if they were occupying different heights of the same tower. Lighthouses swarm about the mouth of the Tyne. There is a flash-light at the end of “The Groin,” a reef which runs into the river from the South Shields side, thus assisting to make a beautiful sheltering bay between this point and the South Pier. There is a gleaming red light on the promontory at Tynemouth, and a vivid electric light flashes over the sea from Souter Point, two or three miles south of the Tyne. At the Quay by the Low Lights, in the herring season, there is a perfect forest of bare poles, and a great acreage of decks, on which brown fishermen are at work hoisting their catch, or mending their nets, or scouring their boats, as the case may be. The lettering of these craft indicates that they come from Kirkcaldy, from the Berwickshire coast, from Yarmouth, from Lowestoft, and from the Isle of Man. There are from two to three hundred of them in the season, and the river has no finer sight than the departure of these herring boats to sea when the wind is fresh enough to fill their sails. Should the evening be calm, they are towed outward in groups of five or six by a steam tug; and a pleasant voyage it is to the herring grounds; whence, when the sun has not long risen, the boats may be seen racing back again to get the best of the market at the Low Lights Quay. There are steam trawlers also at this busy mart in the early morning. It is all fish that comes to their nets, and some of it very queer fish too. A singularly odd mixture of scaly creatures may be seen lying about in heaps on the Quay—ling, skate, plaice, soles, cuttlefish, cat and dog fish, and cod, the biggest of which find their way to the London market; turbot, suggestive of aldermanic banquets; and a host of small fry too numerous to mention. The burly fishermen stride about in their oilskin coats, plentifully besprinkled with silvery scales, and glittering in the morning sunlight. The fishwives keep up a constant clatter of talk, in voices made shrill by their daily cry of “Fe-esh, caller fe-esh!” The auctioneers are very clamorous over their business, and for three hours all is hurry and shouting, and competition and confused haggling as to prices and sales.
TYNEMOUTH, FROM THE SEA.
On the north side of the Tyne the rocky promontory of Tynemouth shoots out into the sea. It is the termination of a high chain of banks extending from North Shields to the coast. On these stands the brigade house of the first of the volunteer life brigades; by which one is reminded that if South Shields invented the lifeboat, North Shields has a kindred claim to distinction in the origination of those brave bands of volunteers that watch our coasts in seasons of storm. Between the brigade house and Tynemouth Light, overlooking the entrance to the harbour, stands a colossal statue of Lord Collingwood, a Tyne seaman, mounted on a massive stone pedestal, and guarded by four of the guns of Collingwood’s ship, the Royal Sovereign. A little further seaward, “their very ruins ruined,” surrounded by British, by Roman, and by English graves, are the beautiful remains of Tynemouth Priory, which was built so sturdily, despite a certain apparently fragile character of style, that these ancient walls seem likely to bid defiance to storms for almost as many centuries to come as have already passed them by. A small chapel, built of wood, and dedicated to St. Mary, was the primitive and humble beginning from which sprung the great and powerful monastery of Tynemouth. One of the Kings of Northumberland (Edwin) erected this early in the seventh century, at the instigation of his daughter, who took the veil here. Tynemouth soon gained a reputation for sanctity, and grew so much in public favour that the chapel had to be rebuilt of stone ere long. Many were its vicissitudes during the subsequent warlike years. The priory at the mouth of the Tyne suffered even more frequently from fire and foray than the monastery at Jarrow. But the monks, as attached and devoted in the one case as in the other, returned after each fresh assault; until, in the reign of Henry III., they reared a monastic pile fit to be compared with Whitby for beauty and fame. After the dissolution, unfortunately, it became the prey of whosoever chose to make use of it for building materials; and it was not till the present century that the folk at the mouth of the Tyne began to understand that they are responsible for its preservation. In its rich and prosperous days the walls enclosed the whole of the promontory on which the Priory ruins stand; but now there remain only a small lady-chapel, a few scattered walls, a portion of a groined roof, a fine Norman gateway, and a magnificent remnant of the church. In the grounds where the monks formerly took their exercise red-coated soldiers may now be seen at drill. Pyramids of cannon-balls are piled amid the ruins; there is a large powder-magazine beside what may have been the entrance to the church. It is now fortified and garrisoned, in fact, this promontory where the godly men of old looked away over the wild North Sea. The Tynemouth cliffs have thus, it may be presumed, been brought back to their earliest uses, for the Romans had a station here, and before the Romans came the Britons must have had a camp on the spot, since recent excavations have revealed the existence of British graves.
Shooting outward from the Tynemouth shore, the mighty rampart of the North Pier makes division between the river and the sea. Such another pier comes outward from South Shields; and between them these two great works of engineering make a comparatively narrow channel for ships where there was formerly a wide and most dangerous estuary. Terrible indeed are the storms which sometimes rage over them and assail them with the battery of their waves. In a north-east gale the white water leaps above the summit of the Tynemouth cliffs. Outside the piers and beyond the bar the waves seem to be miles long, and when they narrow themselves to enter the river they rise to a height so appalling that the topmasts of a sailing-ship running for shelter may, with every dip the vessel makes, be lost to the view of those on shore. “The next instant,” says Mr. Clark Russell, of a ship which he had been watching from Tynemouth when a storm was raging, “she had disappeared, and before another minute had passed I was straining my eyes against the whirling snow and looking into a blackness as empty as fog, amid which the pouring of the hurricane against the cliffs, and the pounding of the ponderous surges a long distance down, sounded with fearful distinctness. For three-quarters of an hour I lingered, peering to right and left of the beach at my feet, as far as the smother of flying flakes would let me look. But I saw no more of the brig.” Such incidents were mournfully common before the piers were carried out to their present length. The Tyne was notorious for the number of its wrecks. No more than nine or ten years ago, indeed, I saw fourteen ships ashore in or near the mouth of the river, the spoils of a single night of storm. But this was the last occasion of so much calamity. For some years past now the Tyne has, most happily, almost been free from all disaster but collision.
As we round the Tynemouth cliffs the fishing village of Cullercoats comes into sight, rather over a mile away, with the dim, far-projecting Newbiggin Point a few miles beyond. On bright days a flash of light may reveal the white lighthouse at Coquet Island, by Warkworth town. Round the rocky promontory close at hand there is a little bay, a projecting point of rock, and then a long stretch of yellow sand, broken almost at its centre by a brown, weedy reef of rocks, among which the pools linger when the tide goes down. This is “Tynemouth Sands.” Here the pleasure-seekers come in crowds the summer through, rejoicing in the fine weather, and yet desiring a storm, a sight which, once beheld, would leave its memory within them their whole lives through.
“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea,”
runs the touching sailors’ hymn, and to those who live about the mouth of a river like the Tyne it has a deep meaning and thrilling pathos, such as those who have never heard it sung when the tempest was blowing outside cannot fathom or understand. For storms only those who live inland have any longing, for though these have heard of the wildness, they do not know the terror of the sea.
Aaron Watson.