Swale boaters lost in fog 'rescued'

Bit worried about oldbilbo's comments about cement boulders.

Me too!

Here's a 'zample from a chart..... BA1607 or somesuch, or I'm a monkey's uncle. It's all in yon new-fangled EU metric stuff so needs to be 'cut a bit o' slack' - except the Survey Diagram, where much of it seems to date from before Pontius was a River Pilot.


puddinpan.jpg



I did have a look at one of my pristine Made In England Hydrographic Office Fathoms charts - one of my very early prized Beaulieu Bargains, and worth every one of the six pennies I paid for it. The fine pen-and-ink 'View From Seaward' of the North Kent Coast is exquisitely drawn, but as much use to me as a yard of pump water.....


" ___________/\_______________|_|__________________X__________________"



Anyways.... anyways.... I promise to take along not even £20 worth of petrol, and there's a reason for that. ;) I'll just go with the flow...
 
You need to be careful in case you disturb the Roman Shipwreck, or get to be alongside it.....

http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...ete_projects/the_roman_shipwreck_project.aspx


PUDDING PAN ROCK.—Much plain Samian ware has been dredged from shoals in the Thames estuary off Whitstable and Herne Bay, particularly from the Pan Sand 2½ miles north-east of Herne Bay. The discoveries are regarded as salvage from the wreck of a cargo boat bringing Lezoux pottery from the coast of Gaul to Britain in about 160 A.D. As long ago as 1778, thediscoveries were brought to the notice of the Society of Antiquaries, but the most important publications are those by Mr. Reginald A. Smith in Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond. Ser. 2, Xxi, 268, and ibid. xxii, 395, and these give full references to all earlier papers. Representative series of the types may be seen in the British Museum and in the Guildhall Museum, while Maidstone Museum, Canterbury Museum and Rochester Museum have each one or more examples and there are others in private hands and in museums all over the country. Of the potter’s stamps, which are of special interest, Mr. Smith’s publications give full lists; however, since the date of their compilation (1907—9) the British Museum has considerably enlarged its collection from the Rock, and in compiling the new list of the stamps now in that Museum here given (fig. 33), Mr. C. F. C. Hawkes has been able to check and supplement the older lists in a number of places. His list should throughout be considered as a supplement to Mr. Smith’s, to which and to Mr. H. B. Walters’ Catalogue of Roman Pottery in the British Museum the reader is referred for full references.
 
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Might an 'higorunt furriner' ask a potentially-importunate qwessie?

Wherein the East Coast Pilot there is mention, time and again, of 'suitable only for shoal-draught boats', what in the settled opinion of ECF swamp-dwellers constitutes 'shoal draught'.....? As in "near LW the Copperas Channel is suitable only for shoal-draught boats.”

Would that be akin to a wet West Country meadow aka a Zummerset Levels paddy field? Where one can plainly see the gulls' red knees?

:confused:

I often stem the tide going west towards the Copperarse Channel, to catch the full tide going up the Medway and have gone through the Copperarse at low tide with my 5'10" draft. I must admit I do stop breathing but have never had less than a foot below my keel at springs.
 
I asked a local about the charted cement boulders etc, here's what he said:
" I can only go back to the early 70’s when I started inshore trawling and net fishing out of Whitstable. There were various explanations about the reference to ‘cement boulders’ shown on the chart at Studhill and Pudding Pan and unfortunately I cannot substantiate any of them.
They range from Roman remains (cement shipments or ballast) of shipwreck, very early historic construction which a receding coastline has left underwater or natural geological outcrops of sandstones. As most of the descriptions for seabed information follow a visual reference (going back to tallow on the end of a lead line!) it is quite likely that whatever the boulders were or are, they appeared to be made of concrete. There are areas along the North Kent coast that consist of cliffs formed from a mixture of clay and soft sandstone. The erosion of the cliff by wave action often reveals boulders made of this material, locally referred to as ‘clite’. The clay around them dissolves leaving a more sandstone based, rounded boulder. You may note there is a feature to the west called ‘Clite Hole’.
As I say, it is all a bit of a mystery and I don’t know that anyone has recovered one of the ‘boulders’ in recent years or even confirmed that they are still there. I know that when we were trawling, a ‘lump of clite’ was very unwelcome in your net or even in drift nets etc"

Just to add, I am reasonably fearless as to where I roam across these shallows, and I have never hit one yet!
 
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