DESPITE their name, there's nothing good about the Goodwin Sands, which comprises three hook-shaped banks off England's south east coast. For centuries these sandbars have been known to seamen as 'The Ship Swallowers', and it is an apt title for shoals which have claimed countless ships and lives.

The Goodwins are 10 miles long and four miles wide, and are among the most treacherous sandbanks in the world. Even in this era of science and big engineering projects they remain untamed, and not even the lightships and buoys marking their outlines and channels make them safe, for the pattern is continually changing.

One survey revealed that there were only nine feet of water where there has been 28 a few months earlier. The North Goodwin light buoy had to be moved 600 ft. to show the navigable channel separating the Sands from the Brake Sands, between Deal and Ramsgate.

Another recent survey disclosed that the Gull Stream, dividing the North and South Goodwins, was silting up. Vessels using it on their way to London were unwittingly endangering themselves.

Various other factors combine to give these sandbars their sinister character. At times they are disarmingly deceptive, appearing so friendly when uncovered at low tides that cricket and football are played on them by holidaymakers who row out.

Geologists have found that the Goodwins consist of an 80-ft. depth of sand, coal, shells, andcoral resting on a bed of soft chalk. And although they look static, they are often in turmoil as a result of the tides which assail them.

Each ebb and flow releases a rush of water which seethes and churns over the sandbars, frequently altering the pattern of alternate shoals and deep water areas. Driven by the swirling tides, thousands of tons of sand are constantly moved around.

Yet much of the sand is packed so hard that ships which go aground are often broken up by being lifted on the waves and then dropped on to the iron-hard surface. Whole fleets have sometimes succumbed to such treatment.

One of the worst disasters occurred in 1703, when 13 naval vessels commanded by Rear- Admiral Beaumont were driven on to the Sands by a raging storm. Pounded relentlessly, the entire fleet foundered within eight hours and hardlv a soul was saved.Throughout the centuries at least 50,000 human lives have been claimed by these sinister sandbanks, and the vessels wrecked on them have included passenger ships as well as merchant ships and mcn-o'-war.

The ever-present dangers have resulted in many heroic rescues by the crews of R.N.L.I, craft stationed along the Kentish coast. A typical life saving mission was carried out by the crew of the Valmcr life-boat Charles Dibdin (Civil Service No. 2), when an American ship, the Luray I'ictory, of Los Angeles, became stranded on the Goodwins on January 30-31, 1946.

Coxswain Frederick Upton put to sea to investigate and found the stricken vessel, but the waters round her were too shallow for the life-boat to get alongside, and she had to lie off until the next flood tide made a close approach possible. Meanwhile she was joined by the tug Persia.

That rising tide enabled Coxswain Upton to bring his boat near enough to the American ship to fasten the Persia's towing hawser to her.

Yet the tug was unable to drag the imperilled vessel off the sandbank. The life-boat then returned to shore for refuelling, but rejoined the Persia within an hour. Even in that short time the stranded ship had begun to break up as a result of terrific pounding by the waves, and it was clear that she would soon sink.With great skill Coxswain Upton manoeuvred the life-boat against the side of the Luray Victory and held her there long enough for one American seaman to jump aboard. Repeating the operation 48 times, he succeeded in taking off the whole of the crew without a single casualty, snatching them from the Goodwin's eager maw before their ship broke in half.

The total number of ships which have been victims of these treacherous Sands is unknown, but 50 sank there during World War II. A few which went aground rolled clear with the rising tide, but the majority had their backs broken and became a total loss.

Eminent engineers have tried to erect warning beacons on the Goodwins, only to be thwarted by the merciless seas. The Duke of Wellington proposed to build a fort on them, and Admiral Cochrane suggested binding them with asphalt as a base for a lighthouse.

Trinity House achieved some success in 1849 by putting up a strongly braced mast, but this survived for only 30 years—the longest period attained by any warning device on 'CalamityCorner', as the Sands were once nicknamed by seamen who sailed along the coast of Kent.

Schemes for making the Goodwins safe have been examined by Parliamentary committees, and there have been suggestions that the area might be reclaimed from the sea by surrounding it with breakwaters to form a great harbour.

But none of these projects came to much, the practical problems eventually being accepted as insurmountable. Some promising ideas havehad to be rejected because they would have been too costly.

A scheme to dump 50,000 tons of rubble there every week, until an island was created, was abandoned when experts reported that the operation would have to continue for years to satisfy the greedy Sands and raise them permanently above the high-water mark.

Companies formed to recover the vast treasure deposited on the Goodwins by hundreds of wrecks have not achieved any more success.

Nevertheless, the notion of putting the sandbanks to good use has not been permanently shelved. With bigger and bigger oil tanker ships being built, the need for suitable berthing facilities is pressing, and the Ministry of Transport is examining the possibility of creating a new deep-sea port by driving sheet piling into the Sands and filling the area with rubble, as earlier schemes envisaged, but using modern engineering techniques.

The enterprise would be completed by building a huge dock between Ramsgate and Deal. It would be three miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, and would be big enough and deep enough to accommodate any present or future super-tanker.

Tradition avers, in fact, that these threatening shoals once supported trees and were an island 900 years ago, before they were submerged by violent storms. Some of the most destructive weather in English history is known to have occurred in the 11 th century, and the storms and floods of that period could easily have overwhelmed an offshore territory as big as the Goodwins.

According to some historians they are the remnants of a fertile region which the Romans called Insula Inferna, and which was given to the See of Canterbury by William of Normandy.

They get their name from Earl Godwin, brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor, being part of the estates attached to that earldom.

Even in those distant days the island was apt to be flooded by spring tides, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was required to maintain a sea wall to protect the Earl's offshore property.

Not so long ago it was suggested that, instead of being reinforced and incorporated in a huge new seaport, the Sands might be destroyed by exploding a nuclear device there. The idea was vetoed by scientists who stated that it would be impossible to control an explosion of the necessary magnitude, and that there was no guarantee that it would do the trick without dangerous side-effects.

Not surprisingly, the Goodwins have ghost stories about ships which went asunder on them long ago. The most romantic of these tales concerns the Lady Lovibund, sunk in 1742 with 50 wedding guests aboard. (continued on page 144)THE GOODWINS (continuedfront page 128) The skipper had just been married, and a wedding breakfast was in progress as the ship sailed near the south east coast of England. But while the bridegroom was preoccupied with his guests a disappointed rival took the helm and steered the vessel on to the treacherous Sands.

She was engulfed and everybody aboard her perished. But legend says that on stormy nights the Lady Lovibund re-enacts her last voyage, sailing to destruction with her lights ablaze and sounds of revelry coming from her.

The forerunners of the present warning lights around the 'great coffin for ships', as one writer described the Goodwins, included a primitive vessel with candle lamps dangling from her yardarms. In 1841 a civil engineer named William Bush attempted to build a lighthouse on the Sands at his own expense, and after many setbacks he managed to erect his 'Light for all nations', as he called it. But the structure, which was not completed until 1845, developed a 4-ft. tilt and had to be abandoned.

Even in our own times lightships have been lost while guarding other ships from sailing to destruction on the Goodwins. One was run down and sunk between the two world wars, and another was rammed and sent to the bottom during World War II.

On 12th November, 1961, the East Goodwin lightvessel broke adrift and was reported heading southwards over the Goodwin Sands.

Coxswain Upton, who took out Walmer's Charles Dibin (Civil Service jVb. 32) life-boat, said: 'The seas were tremendous and as the night wore on the waves became bigger and bigger.

Unless you have had experience of the seas on the sands you just can't visualise with what force they can hit you; a spot of water will almost knock you out, and the breakers come down like ton weights.

'Some of the crew were able to get a little sleep, but I could not leave the wheel. The rum did its rounds but I stuck to ginger wine. It was as much as I could do to keep her from capsizing, for one mistake out there and we could all have had it ' First charted in Elizabethan days, these malevolent sandbars still present a major menace to coastwise shipping, and the amount of bounty they hold in the form of wrecks is greater than that of any other part of Neptune's kingdom. The Goodwin Sands are a perpetual challenge to the men of the R.N.L.I..