Goodwin Sands

[Bru]

That i don't doubt is true of humans in so called "quicksand"

But we're not talking about humans or about quicksand. There are numerous accounts of vessels being completely swallowed within a few tides after running aground on the Goodwins and the various sandbanks of the Thames Estuary

 

[LittleSister]

What is this liquified sand that is not quicksand then?

What do you think are the mechanisms by which vessels are 'swallowed'?

 

[Bru]

What is this liquified sand that is not quicksand then?

What do you think are the mechanisms by which vessels are 'swallowed'?

Like i said, i don't know what the mechanism behind it is but i DO know that it's a historical fact that vessels sometimes vanish within a few tides after running aground on seemingly solid sand on the Goodwins and in the Thames Estuary*

I assume, because it seems logical, that liquefaction plays a part in that process and it follows, by further logical deduction , that there must be more to it than that since as you rightly say a vessel would only sink so far in liquefied sand

* I cited the loss of S.B. Defence on the Buxey Sands because an uncle of mine several generations back was her mate and I've researched her loss. There were plenty of others

 

[Hallberg-Rassy]

Fluids, gases, all tend to move in circular patterns, so may be it's just what happens when the sands saturate with water and then get moved by the current or tide? In the same ways that a cake mix or bread dough folds into itself?

If someone's not already done it, it'd be interesting to drop a tracker into them and see where it goes over time.

It is true, boats have disappeared into them, then reappeared. There was that terrible case of a live export animal carrier that months later turned up as 100s of skulls & bones littering the sands.

If a boat tips, then catches, and starts to fill up with watery sand, I could see why that'd drag it down as it moved.

 

[LittleSister]

Sand doesn't have to be watery to move. There's many millions of tons of sand etc. moving every tide in that estuary. (For example, I have seen evidence of the pits which are dug in commercial dredging for aggregates quickly starting to refill.) A vessel which has sunk could, depending on position, easily be soon submerged (by non-liquified sand) and later re-appear. I suspect people are confusing such processes with the popular myths around quicksand.

 

[Bru]

I'm not talking about vessels which have sunk

The phenomenon I'm talking about is where otherwise seaworthy vessels have run around and been abandoned, often temporarily, which then disappear *beneath* the sands within 24 to 48 hours instead of floating off as you'd expect

In the case of the S B. Defence, she was left intact and aground for barely 24 hours and when the salvors arrived only her mast and rigging, perfectly intact, were visible above the sands

It is a well known phenomenon on the East Coast

 

[Lucy52]

Postulate. If a vessel were to go aground on the sands and by agitation sink into the sand. If as the sand dries out it holds on to the vessel, then when the tide returns it may down flood, the vessel will then lose positive buoyancy and will be lost to the sand.

 

[LittleSister]

by agitation sink into the sand.

How would that work? What mysterious force is acting to push or pull the hull down below its normal floating marks? Why doesn't a boat sink in water 'by agitation'?

If as the sand dries out it holds on to the vessel, then when the tide returns it may down flood,

How would it hold on to the vessel sufficiently strongly to counteract the several tons of reserve buoyancy the average vessel has?

Why doesn't this all happen to the thousands upon thousands of vessels we see drying out twice a day around our coast?

 

[Tomahawk]

Sister..
All I can suggest is that you demonstrate we are wrong by deliberately grounding on somewhere like the Buxey and waiting..

Or you can do a bit of reading up on the subject.

 

[Lucy52]

Evidence, vessels disappear into the sands.

People who get "stuck" in the sands can't pull themselves out even though the should float out.

Water is fluid sand not unless agitated as shown in the video and in a fluidised bed.

It is possible that the vessel is held in the sand when the sand is not agitated, there being less movement of the vessle when it is partially held in the sand. Water might be needed to flow arround the keel to release it to float out.

A sandy beach is not the same as a sand bank formed at sea. The beach largely being driven up to and along the land, the bank at sea are free to roll over and drift.in any direction.

A simple practical experiment would confirm or refute the idea that vessels can be held and submerged in the sand, as proposed by Tomahawk.

Are you saying it doesn't happen?

 

[LittleSister]

Are you saying it doesn't happen?

I'm saying I'm sceptical, and that no-one has yet offered an explanation, convincing to me, as to how this could happen.

I suspect the tales of vessels being lost to the sands are a combination of accidents involving other factors, and folk tales.

 

[LittleSister]

Sister..
All I can suggest is that you demonstrate we are wrong by deliberately grounding on somewhere like the Buxey and waiting..

Or you can do a bit of reading up on the subject.

I haven't been able to find any references to vessels being swallowed by quicksand on the Buxey, the Goodwins or anywhere else, but I'd been interested to read any you can point me to.

Francis Cooke, Charlie Stock, Des Sleightholme, and, I think, Maurice Griffiths and Thames Barges, have been recorded deliberately grounding on the Buxey and living to tell the tale. Our (former?) fellow forumite Nutmeg (aka The Blind Sailor)
proposed going for a walk on the Buxey and no one on here attempted to dissuade him.

'Having spent many a fascinating hour aground on the Buxey, keel banging like a town band drummer and praying in a loud falsetto voice, there's no doubt that it's a sport which broadens both mind and buttock.' (Des Sleightholme, in 'Anchors Aweigh')

 

[Gargleblaster]

If a vessel displaces its own weight in water and its volume is greater than an equal volume of water it will float. Then specific gravity plays a part. The specific gravity of water is 1, the specific gravity of salt water is greater than one and varies around the world, so in salt water a boat displaces less water than it would in fresh, i.e. floats higher. Therefore for a boat to sink in liquid sand the specific gravity of the sand would be such that the boat displaces more volume of sand than its own volume at least up to the point where the sand was able to enter the boat, as it would with water.

So sinking is probably not what happens when a boat is resting on liquid sand. However I have no idea what other effects may cause the boat to be dragged down. Maybed sea monsters on the Goodwin Sands.

 

[LittleSister]

So sinking is probably not what happens when a boat is resting on liquid sand. However I have no idea what other effects may cause the boat to be dragged down. Maybed sea monsters on the Goodwin Sands.

Those same sea monsters are said to go to the Buxey sands for their holidays.

 

[Gargleblaster]

Those same sea monsters are said to go to the Buxey sands for their holidays.

Is that what they are? I thought they were seals.

 

[Bru]

Hervey Benham's Down Tops'l (published in 1951 by George Harrap) p.146

Joshua Francis went to see Defence "...despite his protests that it was useless; for this time a gale had blown and the Buxey had been hungry. Sure enough, when they rowed the boat alongside on the first few inches of flood tide they were level with the decks. The sand had swallowed the barge up to the iron band in a few wild days' devouring."

Other reports (which I don't currently have access to) put the timescale shorter (as short as the next day) and vary in that they say only the mast was showing. Contemporary reports said that within days the barge had disappeared altogether

S.B. Defence ran aground in a gale and her crew of two were rescued by the crew of another sailing barge who launched their barge boat, despite the conditions, to take them off. When the gale abated (be that the next day or a few days later (as above there is inconsistency on this point) a salvor, set out to recover her if possible (the S.B. Eva Annie, driven aground and sunk in the same gale, was salvaged intact).

This is the historical reference which I have researched to the extent that records are available. I have seen other references which I have not recorded as they were not of interest

It is worth noting the comment that "the Buxey was hungry". It is also apposite that the Goodwins were known as, and indeed marked on early charts as, "Ye Shippe Swallower"

Be as sceptical as you like, the fact is that it is a fact that on occasions grounded vessels have been swallowed by the sandbanks of the Thames Estuary and the Goodwins. How? Why? I do not know and perhaps is not known. But that this was known to happen in antiquity is clear and obvious from the writings of the time

 

[LittleSister]

Unsurprising to me that in a few days of gales a sunken barge is buried up to its decks. An awful lot of sand and shingle is thrown about in a gale by wind, waves and tides.

Neither is it surprising that the Goodwins (or any similar sandbanks) are known as a ship-swallower. That this happens sometimes in days, but more usually in months and years, seems to me no indication at all that there is quicksand swallowing watertight hulls.

Barges used to deliberately dry out on the sands and load sand and shingle. Do you think they would do this if they thought they might just vanish beneath the sands?

Why have I never read cautionary tales about such dangers from Maurice Griffiths, Des Sleightholme, Charlie Stock and others from an earlier era when drying out on sandbanks was more common? Those writers did, by contrast, highlight the deadly dangers of being bashed on the sands by waves, the boat filling if a deep keeled boat were laid too far over, the wind rising or changing direction, being holed by debris or one's own anchor fluke, or getting neaped.

I am open to persuasion that there is some sort of danger to intact yachts from quicksand, but I've seen no evidence yet.

 

[LittleSister]

 

[Bru]

Up I give

I know what I know from historical research and that's that!

 

[Capt Popeye]

Those same sea monsters are said to go to the Buxey sands for their holidays.

Well yes, I understand that them sea monsters also go to Buxley when hungary for a meal