“The Chalk Wall Falls to the Foam”: Reimagining Littoral Space in the Poetry of the Dover Cliffs

Where beaches and harbors have frequently been taken to signify openness and intermingling, a different coastal setting, the cliffs of Dover, overtly bespeaks opposition and closure. Demarcating the British coast at its closest point to continental Europe, the cliffs often stand for Britain’s supposedly elemental insularity. However, the chalk composing the cliffs makes them, in their own way, as malleable and permeable as a beach. I argue that poems by Matthew Arnold, W. H. Auden, and Daljit Nagra contest the cliffs’ association with an exclusive Britishness by focusing on their material composition. In these poems, the cliffs’ chalk—formed by fossilized marine microorganisms at a time when what would become Britain was at the bottom of a prehistoric sea—attests to Britain’s geohistorical contingency. Arnold, Auden, and Nagra use this chalk geology to develop a new model of British identity as contingent, permeable, and linked with the wider world. In these poems, that is, Dover’s cliffs collapse oppositions rather than enforcing them: they blur the lines between Britain and the world, past and present, organic and inorganic, human history and geological history. The literature of the Dover cliffs thus highlights the revisionary potential of this distinctive kind of littoral space.

Offensive Actions

This chapter refers to the kernel of the Trawler Reserve that had been created prior to the war and was born of the perceived need to develop a defensive force capable of dealing with the threat of offensive enemy minelaying. It details how fishing vessels and fishermen were recruited by the Admiralty for defensive minesweeping duties and other directly belligerent activities. It also recounts the opening months of the Great War that had seen extensive activities by enemy surface minelaying vessels and submarines off the British coast. The chapter talks about the general instructions issued to Auxiliary Patrol units stationed around the British coasts in early 1915 that were specifically focused on dealing with the threats on spies. It looks into vessels operating in the Orkney and Shetland Archipelago that were required to sink or harass U-boats voyaging westwards by way of the top of Scotland.

IV

In point of fact, as the latter would have said, Mrs Westgate disembarked by the next mid-May on the British coast. She was accompanied by her sister, but unattended by any other member of her family. To the lost comfort of a husband respectably...

Historic tsunami in Britain since AD 1000: a review

The British coast is not considered at particular risk from tsunami, a view that is supported by a number of recent government reports. However, these reports largely ignore some written historic records that suggest southern Britain has experienced a number of events over the past 1000 yrs. This study briefly assesses these records and recognises four groups of events: 1) sea disturbance and coastal floods in southeast England linked to earthquakes in the Dover Straits (e.g. 1382 and 1580), 2) far-field tsunami reaching the coast of the British Isles, for example, from earthquakes along the Azores-Gibraltar Fault Zone offshore Portugal (e.g. 1755), 3) tsunami associated with near-coastal low magnitude earthquakes (e.g. 1884 and 1892), and 4) a flood event in AD 1014 that has been linked to comet debris impact. The seismogenic events range from minor water disturbance, through seismic seiching, to small and "giant" waves, suggesting near-coastal, low-magnitude, shallow earthquakes may be capable of triggering disturbance in relatively shallow water, as supported by similar occurrences elsewhere, and that the British tsunami risk requires a more careful evaluation.

The Seasonal Succession of Appendicularians (Tunicata: Appendicularia) off Plymouth

Earlier descriptions showed that the community of appendicularians off the British coast was mainly composed of Oikopleura dioica (Appendicularia; Müller, 1846) and Fritillaria borealis (Appendicularia; Lohmann, 1896), rarely by Oikopleura fusiformis (Appendicularia; Fol, 1872) and Fritillaria pellucida (Appendicularia; Quoy & Gaimard, 1833) and exceptionally by Oikopleura longicauda (Appendicularia; Vogt, 1854). Based on weekly samples collected during 1989 at a single station off the coast of Plymouth, we describe the first complete seasonal cycle of appendicularians in this area. The results suggest that rather than being occasional visitors, O. fusiformis, F. pellucida and O. longicauda are consistently present and abundant from mid to late summer. Moreover, the seasonal shifts in structure of the community of appendicularians in the area, as depicted by multivariate analysis, are consistent with those of the more southerly central Cantabrian coast (Spain). This suggests that they are viable populations rather than occasional expatriates from other areas.