The Dyce family is fully clothed. The women shawled and heavy skirted, gather
souvenirs and shells from the beach, beyond them the lowish chalk cliffs stand
over a receded tide, above the whole scene, the distant tail of Donati's
comet. William Dyce's painting of
Pegwell Bay[i]
depicts an activity unchanged, and the bay itself, with its cliffs and strata, sweeps
to the west towards Sandwich and the Stour Estuary. Little moved over time, a site of ancient
disembarkation and more recent travel by SR.N4 hovercraft. Hoverlloyd (later Hoverspeed) operated cross
channel services from Ramsgate to Calais until 1982; the modern archaeologist
or dog walker can explore the remains of the hoverport where the ramps enter
the bay with white markings still visible and where delineated parking zones are
partially covered in scrub. The SR.N4 cossetted
in a great heavy skirt like the ladies in Dyce's painting, was powered by four
Bristol Proteus engines, one of which is currently on display at Bristol M Shed
museum. These powerful but thirsty
engines propelled the craft and also inflated the black skirt that acts as a cushion
between hull and water and land.
Slipping into the sea below the West Cliff
beside the harbour, some children were playing on the sand, occasionally
running and paddling up to their wastes.
Here the water takes on a milkiness, chalk leaching a fine sediment that
drifts with the current until a point some twenty yards out where it meets deeper
bluer water, the whole mixing in swirls of khaki, white and cyan. May sea temperatures are around ten or eleven
degrees Celsius, offering a bearable first swim.
From Swimming Residency Club, 2015.
[i] William Dyce (1858-60) Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858. Oil on canvas. Tate Britain
