INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF HASTINGS CASTLE
PHYSICAL CHANGES OF THE COAST AT HASTINGS
THE artificial developments that have taken place in and about Hastings are by no means the chief cause of the difficulty which we shall have in giving some general idea of the site as it appeared in early times.
It may appear easy enough to strip the modern town of its buildings, and, by careful examination of the contour of the ground, to reconstruct the primaeval hills and valleys with their green tracts of forest-land running down to the verge of the sea. The real difficulty is to estimate, even approximately, the enormous physical changes which have taken place upon the coast-line. Even to attempt this it is necessary to be familiar with the operation of certain natural forces which have been, and are yet, at work upon the whole of the south-eastern shores of England. It is well known that for ages past the beach-drift or shingle has been moving along the coast in an almost continuous stream from west to east, whence it seldom returns. The average eastward tidal progress of the shingle at Hastings in calm weather, with a very slight westerly wind, is at the rate of about twenty-seven yards a day.[1] This movement is popularly known as the phenomenon of the " Eastward Drift." The changes of the coast produced by this drift have alternately formed and ruined the port of Hastings and the majority of the " Cinque Ports." This same drift, which will under certain conditions produce a bar or breakwater of shingle, offering safe anchorage to a fleet, will, under other conditions, break through the bar and transform the haven into a howling wilderness of shingle.
The forces producing this phenomenon are the rising or flood-tide, acting in conjunction with the prevalent south-westerly winds. The great Atlantic tidal wave, when it strikes upon the western coast of Ireland, divides into two streams - one portion passing to the north and the other to the south. This latter stream enters the English Channel, and, gathering force as the straits become more contracted, it sweeps forward at a tremendous speed to find its level in the German Ocean. Twice a day this flood-tide, if the wind be blowing from the west or south-west, will cause countless thousands of tons of beach to roll in an easterly direction, gradually filling up the embayed portions of the coast, and massing in huge banks or "fulls " along the western sides of the capes and headlands. When the angle formed between the coast-line and any headland has been filled with shingle, the surplus masses of beach will continually drift round the nose of the promontory, and will generally either follow the coast-line, or will sometimes, if arrested by a submerged -
- ↑ See " Observations on Tidal Transit," by S. H. Deckles, F.R.S., and Dr. J. Bowerbank, F.R.S. Hastings and St. Leonards News, April 15, 22, 29, and July 22, 1870.
