The view of the entrance to Ramsgate harbour, engraved from a painting by E. W. Cooke, is taken from the southward, and its fidelity will immediately be recognised by every one who has seen the place. It is blowing a stiff breeze, which causes a swell; and the fishing smack, seen entering, is lowering her sails, that she may not have too much way when she gets within the harbour. To the left is the lighthouse, which stands near the end of the western pier; and the extremity of the eastern pier is perceived to the right.
The cost of Ramsgate harbour, dock, lighthouse, and other requisite buildings, is said to have amounted to £650,000. The form of the harbour is nearly circular, and its area is about forty-six acres. The length of the eastern pier, following its angles, or "cants" as they are technically termed, is about 2000 feet, and that of the western about 1500. Their general width is about 26 feet, including the thickness of the parapets; and the width of the entrance to the harbour between their heads is 240 feet. The harbour is maintained by a tonnage duty on all ships passing, whether sailing on the east or west of the Goodwin Sands, and by a duty on coals and stones discharged in the harbour.
The light displayed from the lighthouse is stationary, and is only exhibited when there is ten feet water between the pier heads. In the day time a flag is hoisted while there is the same depth of water at the entrance of the harbour. In spring tides, the depth of water increases to sixteen feet in about an hour from the time that the ten-feet signal is displayed; in about two hours to twenty feet; and in three hours, or about high water, to twenty-one feet. In neap-tides the depth of water at those periods respectively is fourteen, seventeen, and eighteen feet between the pier heads.
During the summer, Ramsgate is much frequented by visitors from London, who come by the daily steam-packets to enjoy the benefit of sea-bathing, for which the beach to the southward of the pier affords excellent opportunity. Powerful steam-packets ply every day between London and Ramsgate, and the passage up or down is usually made in seven hours. There are several excellent hotels and many convenient lodging-houses at Ramsgate, and the charges generally are moderate. At the close of the year, when the summer visitants have all retired to their several homes, another description of persons make their appearance at Ramsgate—the Torbay fishermen, who generally establish their rendezvous there from December to June, for the sake of fishing in the North Sea. It seems probable that Ramsgate, as a port, will continue to increase very considerably in importance; and, in the event of a continental war, when steam-vessels are likely to be much employed, its eligibility as a place for the embarkation of troops, and as a packet station, will doubtless not be overlooked. It not unfrequently happens, in stormy weather, that the Dover packets enter Ramsgate with safety, when they cannot approach their own harbour.
The South-Eastern Railway Company have extended their line to Ramsgate, and the route, though rather circuitous, secures a large share of patronage from that portion of the pleasure-seeking visitants of our coasts to whom the stiff breezes and heavy swell, generally found off the North Foreland, are the reverse of gratifying.
George IV., on his departure to visit his Hanoverian dominions in 1821, embarked at Ramsgate; and to commemorate the event, an obelisk was erected by subscription of the inhabitants. The popularity of Ramsgate, as a watering-place, was greatly increased by the partiality evinced for it by her present Majesty, when Princess Victoria, who, with her august mother, the Duchess of Kent, honoured it with several successive visits.
Camden, in his Britannia, gives the people of the Isle of Thanet, and more particularly the inhabitants of Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs, the following character: "They are, as it were, amphibious, seeking their living both by sea and land, and turning to account both elements. They are fishermen and ploughmen, farmers and sailors; and the same man that holds the shafts of a plough, turning up a furrow on land, can also take the helm at sea. According to the season, they make nets, catch cod, herring, mackerel, and other fish; go to sea, and export their own commodities—and those very men also dung the ground, plough, sow, harrow, reap, and house the corn." The inhabitants of Ramsgate, and of the Isle of Thanet generally, no longer retain this amphibious character; the "division of labour," the advantages of which are so strikingly pointed out by political economists in the manufacture of pins, has abridged their multifarious pursuits; the same man does not now till the earth and plough the sea; and few indeed are to be found who can handle an oar as well as a flail: the consequence is, that we have better boatmen and better agriculturists.
