detached from the main fleet, anchored for one night
in Hole Haven, and some Dutch sailors landed on
Canvey the next morning. This was the only place
in Essex where the enemy actually landed, and although
the whole county was greatly alarmed thereby, the
object of the landing seems to have been to obtain
a few sheep for victualling, rather than any military
purpose.
INDUSTRIES.
Fishing is certainly the oldest industry in which
the people of South Benfleet have been engaged,
and is still carried on. The Ray has always produced
an abundance of shell fish and formerly yielded
oysters of excellent quality from both natural and
artificial beds. The fishery here was, with Hadleigh
Castle and certain other fishing rights in Tilbury Hope,
granted to Anne of Cleves as part of her allowance
on her divorce by Henry VIII. Hole Haven has
always been a great resort of fishermen; lobsters
were at one time kept there to await the demand
from the London market, and in 1803 a committee
of the Fish Association recommended the construction
of a road from Hole Haven to London by way of
Raynham, a distance of twenty-nine miles, for the
rapid transport of fish, but the scheme was never
carried out.
South Benfleet has, however, been a seaport as
well as a fishing village, although it was never able,
in this respect, to rival Leigh, nor was it ever so busily
engaged as that port in shipbuilding. In 1565 South
Benfleet was returned as having five ships and fifteen
mariners or fishermen, and Leigh as having thirty-one
ships and 230 mariners ; Prittlewell in the same year
had ten ships, Burnham twenty-one and North
Shoebury only one. In 1543 we find jurors from
South Benfleet being summoned to appear at an
Admiralty Court held at Milton, a hamlet on the shore
between Leigh and Southchurch. When the
"Katherine Plesaunce" was being built at