According to Dr. J. Holland Rose, the authority on Napoleonic subjects, it was at a spot somewhere along this little stretch that Napoleon at the beginning of the last century proposed to land one of his invading columns. Other columns would land at various points on the Essex and Kent coasts, and all would then converge on London, the main objective. In fact, the Thames Estuary was such a vulnerable point that it occupied a considerable position in the scheme of defence drawn up for Pitt by the Frenchman Dumouriez.
Gravesend itself from the River is not by any means an ill-favoured place, despite its rather commercial aspect. Backed by the sloping chalk hills, and with a goodly number of trees breaking up the mass of its buildings, it presents a tolerably picturesque appearance. Particularly is it a welcome sight to those returning to England after a long voyage, for it is frequently the first English town seen at all closely.
Gravesend
At Gravesend the ships, both those going up and those going down, take aboard their pilots. The Royal Terrace Pier, which is the most prominent thing on Gravesend river front, is the headquarters of the two or three hundred navigators whose business it is to pilot ships to and from the Port of London, or out to sea as far as Dungeness on the south channel, or Orfordness, off Harwich, on the north channel. These men work under the direction of a “ruler,” who is an official of Trinity House, the corporation which was founded at Deptford in the reign of Henry VIII., and which now regulates lighthouses, buoys, etc.
Gravesend is famous for two delicacies, its shrimps and its whitebait, and the town possesses quite a considerable shrimp-fishing fleet.
As in the Medway Valley, the cement works form a conspicuous feature in the district round about. In fact, all this stretch, where the chalk hills crop out towards the River’s edge, has been famous through long years for the quarrying of chalk and the making of lime, and afterwards cement. As long ago as Defoe’s time we have that author writing: “Thus the barren soil of Kent, for such the chalky grounds are esteemed, make the Essex lands rich and fruitful, and the mixture of earth forms a composition which out of two barren extremes makes one prolific medium; the strong clay of Essex and Suffolk is made fruitful by the soft meliorating melting chalk of Kent which fattens and enriches it.”
A River-side Cement Works
On the Essex coast opposite Gravesend are the Tilbury Docks and the Tilbury Fort—eloquent reminders of the present and the past. At the Fort the ancient and the new lie in close proximity, the businesslike but obsolete batteries of modern times keeping company with the quaint old blockhouse, which at one time formed such an important point in the scheme of Thames defence.