mud and in water alternately, according to the tide, is an isolated round tower, looking much as though it had strayed from the fortifications, lost its way, and got stuck in the mud; the three heavy guns mounted on its summit bear both down our channel of approach and on the anchorage which is just round Garrison Point. This tower, however, being no more considered sufficient for its duty than its bulkier neighbour over the way, is to be enclosed by another of these casemated batteries, supported by a second on shore close behind it, and whose guns will rake the channel of approach, the whole being again supported by a fort, perched on the only hill in a low straggling bit of ground forming the left or western shore of the mouth of the Medway, and known as the Isle of Grain, and which, in co-operation with another new fort placed on the first rising ground in the peninsula, and which will be by-and-by noticed more fully, is to warn off all intruders on this—to an enemy—most attractive isle.
Such, then, are the formidable materials of the apparatus intended to hinder our approach to the entrance of the Medway. Before, therefore, addressing ourselves to the attempt on so hazardous a pass, let us see if we cannot manage some assistance or diversion landward. It would be possible, it is true, to throw a force—if the floating batteries would allow us—on the shore eastward of the Sheerness batteries, just where the ground begins to rise, and just where the shore of Sheppey vanishes out of our engraving; but there is but little water except for a short period at high tide; and the landing of artillery, without which the attack would be useless, would be attended with much risk and difficulty: it would be better to pass round the east coast of the island, and use the Swale as a canal for bringing up at any rate the guns and other stores. From the two ferries there are good roads, one of which is shown in our illustration, and both uniting, pass round under the Minster heights, and find their way across the flat country to Sheerness. Here, however, both the Commissioners and Nature combine to baffle an advance; for the former recommend the erection of a strong fort and two auxiliary towers on the heights which command the road, whilst the level of the flat land in question is such, that on opening a sluice in command of the Sheerness garrison, the whole of the country, from the Medway to the Thames, can be inundated, and Sheerness isolated in a sheet of water.
Supposing, then, our advancing squadron to determine at all hazards to try and force the passage, it would be raked in front as it steered down the channel of approach by the guns of the tower in the mud and its surrounding covered battery, as well as by those of the battery on the shore of the Isle of Grain, the whole seaward face of the north line pouring in a tremendous flanking fire all the while. Supposing it to pass through this feu d’enfer, as it rounded the point, gun after gun of each tier of the bastioned work, as well as of the new fortification, would be brought to bear; and as the squadron reached the anchorage, the new battery at the angle of the landward fortifications, and the fort on the Isle of Grain, would add their quota and place it in the centre of five distinct points of fierce assault.
It is just possible, however, that so tremendous a pounding as this might be endured, and that the expedition might continue its course up the river. In the first, or Saltpan Reach, it would have a little breathing time; but as it turned into the second, known by the quaint name of Ket Hole Reach, it would be saluted with some unmistakeable symptoms of a further and most formidable opposition. The channel here narrows to little more than half a mile: the point of the isolated land projecting on the right in our illustration is called Oakham Ness (D). On this point and on the opposite shore two strong forts are to be erected, whose guns shall fire at once down and across the river, concentrating a heavy fire on the advancing squadron; and as soon as these two works shall have been connected by a boom, the Commissioners think that Chatham will be well protected from attack by the Medway.
Still, as in the case of Sheerness, there remains to be seen what opportunity an invading force has of combining a land attack with that by the river; in other words how Chatham, the bût of the Medway expedition, is protected landward. It seems admitted that, in this case, there really is something worth protection from bombardment. A building-yard for men-of-war, of very considerable importance, and under process of enlargement at this moment, whilst improvements also in hand in the navigation of the river will still further add to its importance; an arsenal with its usual concomitants, large military barracks and hospitals,—all these seem worth no little attention: so, it appears, thought our immediate ancestors for a century and a half back, as the present works date from 1710, and subsequently. We are informed, too, of another circumstance in connection with what may be called the landward view of the matter, for the same, or very similar, strategical reasons which induced Bishop Gundulph to build that massy Norman keep on the banks of the Medway at Rochester, which remains to this day like a huge tombstone to the memory of feudalism, still exist in all their force. Chatham and Rochester lie on the high road from the continent to London. An enemy who had landed near Deal, and was advancing on the metropolis, must attack Chatham before he could cross the river (as there is not another bridge but that at Rochester for miles higher up), or make a considerable detour by Maidstone, and leave so important a garrison in his rear. These military reasons for the importance of Chatham, we think, will be comprehensible; there are others connected with its position relatively to the great chain of chalk hills which strike through Kent and Surrey—that huge natural fortification against southern invasion—not so easily understanded of the people, and which shall therefore be let alone.
Chatham is a place much visited by sightseers; its “lines,”—even poor Tom Hood’s Mrs. Higginbottom saw them quite plainly, “with the clothes drying on them,”—are or were famous in guidebooks; and most people therefore are more or less aware that the dockyard—with its building-sheds, timber-yards, gun-wharf, stores, &c. &c.—lie along