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River Wall, West Thurrock.—Low Water.
preservation, peculiar combinations of spring tides, upland drainage, and certain winds operating on the sea below, now and then override all precautions, drive the water over the embankments, and create consternation and havoc in the marsh-land below.
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River Wall and Marshes between Erith and Woolwich.—A High Spring Tide.
It fell to our lot to witness such an instance in—as we recollect—the year 1852. Some such a combination of untoward atmospheric phenomena as occasioned the frightful catastrophe at the Hondsbossche, in Holland, in 1287, had heaped up the waters of the North Sea to such an extent, that when the spring tides came round, and a long continuance of wet had set an inordinate gush of upland waters running down the river, we happened to journey from Rosherville to London in one of the old Gravesend steamers, and to arrive in Halfway Reach about the top of high-water. We were invited up on the paddle-box by a civil and somewhat scientific captain, and introduced to one of the strangest scenes we had ever witnessed. Right and left lay the marshes, 17 feet at least below our vessel’s water-line, and consequently some 31 feet below the level of our eye, stretching their monotonous level far away up to the stems of the trees which skirted the rising grounds. Between them the river seemed buoyed up, as in a basin, by the river walls: over these, in a dozen places between Erith and Woolwich, cataracts were pouring down the inner sides of the slopes, and slowly pushing a sheet of water further and further up into the marshes. Herdsmen, in every variety of excitement, were gathering together, and driving towards the rising lands the hundreds of head of cattle which had but a short time before been grazing in peace without a thought of danger; whilst other excited groups, with ready boats at hand, were dotted along the top of the wall in suspicious places, eagerly engaged in efforts to fend off the flood with planks, and buckets of earth, and sods, and extemporised clay fortifications, for the very short period during which the water could remain at its height. The determined stand made at the entrance of the Halfway House—a remote river-side inn, seen in our illustration—with planks and clay, was worthy of all praise, and it proved, we are glad to be able to add, successful.
