Chapter 34

Why should a tide run three hours late inshore along the Bight of Sussex? We are told it is an eddy. Of course it is. But why an eddy of such extraordinary retardation? The main Channel tide runs from headland to headland. It is ‘true,’ as the phrase goes, at Saint Catharine’s, and again at Beachy and so on to Dungeness; and if you are going up-Channel outside, you carry it with you ‘true’ all the way. That it should be a little retarded in the Bight of Sussex one might understand, but that Bight is very shallow (i…