Explore "Cornwall" by Sabine Baring-Gould on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Off the mouth of the English Channel the tidal-stream is materially influenced by the indraft and outset of the channel, and is found to run northward and eastward with a falling tide at Dover, and southward and westward with a rising tide at that place. At spring tides the tide rises in Padstow Bay 22 ft., at Bude a foot higher, at the Lizard only 14-1/2 ft., at Scilly 16 ft. Nowhere on the Cornish coast is there the enormous rise seen at St Malo, where ordinary tides rise from 23 to 26 ft., and spring tides 48 ft. above low-water mark.
On account of the varying force with which the channel and spring tides blend south of the Scilly group the stream is incessantly altering, but north of this towards the Bristol Channel, the stream becomes more regular, and while the water is ebbing at Dover, it sets northward turning sharply round Trevose Head into the Bristol Channel, and so when the tide is flowing at Dover, it is running with equal speed in ebb out of the channel and along the coast towards Scilly.