Westwards from Yantlet Creek are great flats out of which rise the batteries of Shornemead and Cliffe, considerable forts designed to serve with that of Coalhouse Point, opposite on the Essex shore, as a defence of the River. They were built in no very remote times, but were practically never anything else than useless against modern artillery, and were destined, so later military engineers said, to do more damage to each other than to any invading foes.
On the Essex coast, opposite Sheerness, are two famous places, Southend and Shoeburyness—the one a famous resort for trippers, the other an important school of artillery.
Not so very long ago Southend was unheard of. Defoe, who covered the ground hereabouts pretty thoroughly, makes no mention of it even as a hamlet; yet to-day it is a flourishing and constantly growing town—not so much a watering-place nowadays as a rather distant suburb of London. For here and in the adjacent district of Westcliff, now by the builders and the trams joined on, and even in Leigh still farther west, live many of London’s more successful workers, making the daily journey to and from town. Nor is this surprising, for Southend is an enterprising borough—one that makes the most of its natural advantages, and endeavours to cater equally well for the residents and the casual visitors. Of course, the town will always be associated with day-trippers from London, folk who come down with their families to get a “whiff of the briny,” and a taste of the succulent cockles for which Southend is noted, and to enjoy a ride in one of the numerous boats, or on the tram that runs along the mile and a half length of Southend’s vaunted possession, the longest pier in England. And while we laugh sometimes at these trippers with their ribald enjoyment of strange scenes, we must admit that they choose a most healthy and enjoyable place.
At Shoeburyness, approached by way of the tramcars, things are far more serious. Cockney joviality seldom gets so far from the pier as this. Off the land here is a very extensive bank of shallows, and here the artillerymen carry out their practice, the advantage being that in such a spot the costly projectiles fired can be recovered and put in order for future use.
Canvey Island, which lies tucked away in a little corner to the west of Leigh, is yet another example of man’s triumph over nature, for it has veritably been stolen from the waters. It was reclaimed as long ago as 1622, by one Joas Cropperburgh, who for his labours received about two thousand of its six thousand acres. And Dutch most assuredly Canvey is—with quaint Dutch cottages, one of them a six-sided affair, dated 1621, and set up by the very Dutchmen who came over to construct the dams, and with Dutch dykes dividing the fields instead of hedges. Robert Buchanan, in his novel “Andromeda,” wrote of it in these terms: “Flat as a map, so intermingled with creeks and runlets that it is difficult to say where water ends and land begins, Canvey Island lies, a shapeless octopus, right under the high ground of Benfleet and Hadleigh, and stretches out muddy and slimy feelers to touch and dabble in the deep water of the flowing Thames. Away across the marshes rise the ancient ruins of Hadleigh Castle, further eastwards the high spire and square tower of Leigh Church.”
At the village of Benfleet, which he mentions, the Danes landed when in 874 they made one of their characteristic raids on the Thames Estuary; and here they hoarded up the goods filched from the Essex villages till such time as there should come a wind favourable for the journey home.
Like various other places on the Estuary and the lower reaches of the River, Canvey Island has on occasions been proposed as a place for deep-sea wharves, so that unloading might be carried out without the journey up river, but so far nothing definite has come of these suggestions.