Deal, Kent

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Deal, a coastal town in Kent, was the first English soil James Cook set foot on in 1771, returning from his first voyage to Australia. It lies where the North Sea meets the English Channel, eight miles northeast of Dover and eight miles south of Ramsgate. The French coast is visible from the shore on clear days, roughly 25 miles away.

  In the Domesday Book of 1086, this settlement appeared as a village called Addelam. By 1278, it had joined the Cinque Ports network as a 'limb port'. In the centuries that followed, it grew into what was called the busiest port in England. Soldiers, smugglers, and famous writers all left their mark here.

  In 1968, Middle Street became the first conservation area in Kent. That designation speaks to what the town's streets still communicate: a long story of ships, storms, and hard-won skills. How did geography and the wind make this shore so vital to English seafaring? And what drove its boatmen to earn a reputation for bravery that spread far beyond Kent?

  154

• 2. Shelter and Danger

  ›

  The Goodwin Sands lie a few miles off Deal's shore, and the water between them and the town carries a name: the Downs. This stretch of sheltered water became an essential anchorage during the age of sail, used by ships whose onward passage was blocked by the wind.

  A ship leaving London under a westerly wind sailed comfortably as far as the North Foreland. Past that point, heading south and west into the Channel, the same wind became a headwind. The only option was to anchor in the Downs and wait.

  One or two hundred ships might be riding at anchor there at any ordinary time. In difficult periods, three hundred or more were windbound at once. When the wind finally shifted, the anchorage would erupt: anchors weighed, sails set, and ships heading off in several directions as others arrived to take their place.

  Chalk makes up most of the seabed beneath the Downs, and it holds anchors poorly when winds blow hard from the north or northeast. Ships that dragged toward the Goodwin Sands provided regular salvage work for the boatmen on shore. That hazard was as much a part of Deal's economy as the trade in provisions and stores.

  When the nearby port of Sandwich silted up, there was no longer a harbor close enough to resupply the anchored fleet. Everything had to come out by small boat, launched from the open beach. That arrangement continued until steam power made the whole business obsolete; by the 1880s, only small sailing vessels still commonly used the Downs.

  Lord Nelson was among those who called at the anchorage. The Navy had recognized its importance early, establishing a small yard at Deal in 1672 to supply ships anchored there. Just outside the yard's gates, a semaphore tower planned as a link to the Admiralty was converted to a timeball tower in 1855. That tower stands today as a museum.

  56913

• 3. The Boatmen

  ›

  To launch a boat from Deal's shingle beach, the crew secured the hull on greased wooden skids, held back by a chain running through a hole in the keel known as the 'ruffles'. At the right moment the chain was released, and the lugger rushed toward the surf while the crew set the foresail as fast as they could. If the boat failed to gain enough speed, the waves would turn it broadside and smash it.

  The largest of these vessels, the first-class luggers, measured up to 38 feet in length with a beam of 12 feet 3 inches. They were clinker-built open boats, carrying six tons of ballast in a hull that itself weighed three and a half tons. An enclosed forepeak at the bow gave the crew somewhere to sleep or take shelter.

  In 1607, two boatmen were awarded £30 a year to sweep the floor of the Downs for lost anchors. Lost anchors were a constant hazard. Ships that slipped their cables or parted their chains left heavy gear on the seabed, where it could snare the anchors of other waiting vessels. In the three years from 1866, more than 600 anchors were recovered from the Downs.

  In November 1859, the boatmen supplied 30 anchors and chains to ships in the Downs, all within 12 days. Seventeen of those were provided in a single day. The lugger Albion earned the most from that run of work: £2,022 8 shillings and 6 pence. Other boats took several hundred pounds each.

  Smuggling reached its peak in Deal around 1737, using specially built fast galleys that worked best in calm, misty conditions. In 1784, the government sent soldiers into the town backed by naval cutters offshore, and the boatmen's boats were smashed or burned. The resentment that followed was set aside when the Napoleonic Wars began, bringing a large fleet to the Downs that needed the boatmen's services.

  By 1833, Deal had 21 first-class luggers working from the beach, alongside 15 of the smaller boats called 'cats' and 54 oared galleys for lighter work in the Downs.

  589

• 4. The Garrison Town

  ›

  In 1495, a man named Perkin Warbeck arrived by sea at Deal, claiming the throne of England and landing his supporters on the beach. The townspeople, loyal to King Henry VII, drove them off in what became known as the Battle of Deal.

  Henry VIII constructed three castles around the town: Sandown, Deal, and Walmer, built to defend against a foreign naval attack. Deal Castle is a device fort, a form of artillery fortification designed specifically for coastal defense. Both Deal and Walmer Castles are now operated by English Heritage.

  The Royal Marines Depot was established in Deal in 1861, taking over a complex of barracks originally built after the outbreak of the French Revolution. By 1930, the site housed the Royal Marines School of Music. In 1989, the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed the barracks, killing 11 bandsmen.

  In the Second World War, 12 people in Deal were killed by shellfire, struck by 120 shells. In January 1940, the Dutch ship Nora, cut loose after striking a mine, hit and severely damaged the town's iron pier.

  The first pier at Deal, designed by Sir John Rennie, was built in 1838 and destroyed by a gale in 1857. Its iron replacement opened in 1864. The current pier, opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on the 19th of November 1957, is the last fully intact leisure pier in Kent.

  23410

• 5. A Town on Paper

  ›

  On the 30th of April 1660, Samuel Pepys recorded a visit to Deal in his diary, describing the town as 'pitiful'. He was not the last to be unimpressed. William Cobbett, stopping here in September 1823, described Deal in Rural Rides as 'a most villainous place', full of 'filthy-looking people' and partly demolished barracks.

  Daniel Defoe went further. In his 1704 book The Storm, he wrote about the town in terms the townspeople found defamatory, and they accused him of libel. Defoe's attack took the form of verse. He wrote that 'the barbarous hated name of Deal shou'd die, or be a term of infamy'.

  Charles Dickens stationed Richard Carstone at Deal in Bleak House, bringing two of his other characters there by chance. Dickens described the approach to Deal on a raw misty morning as 'very gloomy', its beach covered in capstans, boats, and bare upright poles. Jane Austen placed Deal in Persuasion as the only place where Sophia Croft had ever been ill. That illness, the novel explains, came from being separated from her husband while he patrolled the North Sea.

  Ian Fleming chose Deal as the setting for his 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker. The villain Hugo Drax builds his rocket just outside the town, and Bond must travel there to investigate.

  Elizabeth Carter, born in Deal in 1717, became a poet, classicist, and translator, and a member of the Bluestocking Circle around Elizabeth Montagu. The composer John Ireland lived at 122 High Street from 1936 to 1939. In 1980, Russell Hoban reimagined Deal as a settlement called 'Good Shoar' in his post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker.

  121346