HKB
water is most violent. Colonel Reid states that all calcareous stones rolled along from the west are soon ground into sand, and in this form they pass round Portland Island.[429]
The storm of 1824 burst over the Chesil Bank with great fury, and the village of Chesilton, built upon its southern extremity, was overwhelmed, with many of the inhabitants. The same storm carried away part of the Breakwater at Plymouth, and huge masses of rock, from two to five tons in weight, were lifted from the bottom of the weather side, and rolled fairly to the top of the pile. One block of limestone, weighing seven tons, was washed round the western extremity of the Breakwater, and carried 150 feet.[430] The propelling power is derived in these cases from the breaking of the waves, which run fastest in shallow water, and for a short space far exceed the most rapid currents in swiftness. It was in the same month, and also during a spring-tide, that a great flood is mentioned on the coasts of England, in the year 1099. Florence of Worcester says, "On the third day of the nones of Nov. 1099, the sea came out upon the shore and buried towns and men very many, and oxen and sheep innumerable." We also read in the Saxon Chronicle, for the year 1099, "This year eke on St. Martin's mass day, the 11th of Novembre, sprung up so much of the sea flood, and so myckle harm did, as no man minded that it ever afore did, and there was the ylk day a new moon."
South of the Bill, or southern point of Portland, is a remarkable shoal in the channel at the depth of seven fathoms, called "the Shambles," consisting entirely of rolled and broken shells of Purpura lapillus, Mytilus edulis, and other species now living. This mass of light materials is always in motion, varying in height from day to day, and yet the shoal remains constant.
Dorsetshire.--Devonshire.--At Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, the "Church Cliffs," as they are called, consisting of lias about one hundred feet in height, gradually fell away at the rate of one yard a year, from 1800 to 1829.[431]