262
THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
the island and back again would be long and, in the absence of the shade
of trees, somewhat fatiguing, it was proposed to approach Canvey from the
Thames Estuary side and then to walk through to Benfleet.
Accordingly an excellent sailing boat was engaged to convey the party (a
very small one) from Southend Pier to the island. The start was made at
about three o'clock, and as there was a fine fresh breeze, an exceedingly
enjoyable sail was obtained to the Chapman Sands, at Canvey. The party
was landed in a row boat, and then a ramble along the shore to Hole Haven
was taken. There is a Coast Guard Station here, and a somewhat celebrated
rustic inn, the "Lobster Smack," concerning which some stories of the old
smuggling days are current. This part of the Thames Estuary has been
frequently mentioned in fiction. The marshes of Cliff and Cooling on the
Kentish shore are very graphically described in Dickens' Great Expectations.
Canvey Island and its neighbourhood figures largely in Mr. Coulson
Kerwahan's Captain Shannon, and in Mr, Robert Buchanan's Andromeda, the
last-named work being a publication of the present year.
The walk along the shore proved that with time to make a careful search
many interesting objects of natural history could be found. The commoner
species of mollusca were very much in evidence, and several somewhat
infrequent species of littoral plants were noticed.
Mr. T. S. Holmes had intended to be present, but most unfortunately
failed to come up with the party in a walk across the island. He has,
however, furnished the following sketch of the geology of the district, which
he had intended to demonstrate at the meeting ;—"If we glance at a
geological map of Canvey Island and the district within a radius of ten miles
around it, showing the drift or superficial beds as well as the older formations,
we see that Canvey Island consists solely of the latest of all, the alluvium of
the Thames, of which the adjacent marshes of Bowers, Pitsea, Vange'
Fobbing, and Corringham are also composed. If we then proceed to note the
distribution of the older deposits of the Thames in this district we see a
curious break in their continuity between Fobbing on the west, and Leigh
eastward, the river having, since their deposition, taken a northward turn from
Fobbing to Pitsea and thence eastward to Benfleet and Hadleigh, sweeping
away in its course its own older gravel and brickearth and leaving the more
recent alluvium of the marshes in its place. North of Canvey Island we find
London Clay ; capped between Hadleigh and Rayleigh by beds of the Bagshot
Series, which are covered here and there, in their turn, by patches of gravel,
representing" locally the Westleton beds of the late Sir Joseph Prestwich.
The highest ground in the district is thus formed both between Hadleigh and
Rayleigh, and at Laindon Hills, a few miles to the west. The London Clay
attains a thickness at Rayleigh of 400 ft. On the Kentish shore at Cliffe the
Chalk forms a cliff some 300 or 400 ft. above the marsh, and may be seen on
the Essex side about East Tilbury at a slightly lower elevation. But a boring
at Thames Haven, in the marsh west of Canvey Island, gave a section, of
which that below is an abstract. (Whitaker : Geol. Lond. Vol. 2 p. 36.)
The boring is on the marsh, about 450 ft. from the river bank.1
1 See Trans Essex F. Club vol. iv. p. 64.