Thames Estuary

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The Thames Estuary

Aerial view of the Blackwater Estuary, on the Essex coast, in the northern part of the Greater Thames Estuary. Mersea Island is at right.

The Thames Estuary is the area in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.

It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary ^[1], although physically the head of ‘’Sea Reach‘’, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary. The eastern boundary, as suggested in a Hydrological Survey of 1882-9, is a line drawn from North Foreland in Kent via the Kentish Knock lighthouse to Harwich in Essex. It is to here that the typical estuarine sandbanks extend ^[2]. The estuary has the world's second largest tidal movement, where the water can rise by 4 metres moving at a speed of 8 miles per hour.

The estuary is one of the largest of 170 such inlets on the coast of Great Britain. It constitutes a major shipping route, with thousands of movements each year including large oil tankers, container ships, bulk carriers and roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ferries entering the estuary for the Port of London and the Medway Ports of Sheerness, Chatham and Thamesport.

The Thames sailing barge worked in this area, designed to be suitable for the shallow waters in the smaller ports. One of the largest wind farms in the UK has been developed in the estuary, located 8.5km north of Herne Bay. The farm contains 30 wind turbines generating a total of 82.4MW of electricity. The much larger London Array of up to 1GW capacity is also planned.

[edit] The Greater Thames Estuary

The appellation Greater Thames Estuary ^[3] applies to the coast and the low-lying lands bordering the estuary itself. These are characterised by the presence of salt marshes, mudflats and open beaches: in particular the North Kent Marshes and the Essex Marshes. Rising sea levels in places may make it necessary to flood some of that land to take the pressure off the defences. Man-made embankments are backed by reclaimed wetland grazing areas; there are many smaller estuaries, including the Rivers Colne, Blackwater and Crouch; and there are small villages concerned with a coastal economy (fishing, boat-building, and yachting) ^[4]. The Isle of Sheppey, Foulness Island and Mersea Island are part of the coastline

Where higher land reaches the coast there are some larger settlements, such as Clacton-on-Sea (to the north in Essex), Herne Bay in Kent, and the Southend-on-Sea area within the narrower part of the estuary

The Thames Estuary is part of Thames Gateway, designated as one of the principal development areas in Southern England.

This area has had several proposed sites for the building of a new airport to supplement, or even to replace Heathrow. In the 1960s Maplin Sands was a contender; in 2002 it was to be at Cliffe, Kent. The new airport would be built on a man-made island in the estuary north of Minster-in-Sheppey ^[5] There is also some discussion about the need for a Lower Thames Crossing in order to alleviate traffic congestion at Dartford.

[edit] Cultural references

Joseph Conrad's The Mirror of the Sea (1906) contains a memorable description of the area as seen from the Thames.

The form of speech of many of the people of the area, principally the accents of those from Kent and Essex, is often known as Estuary English.

[edit] References

Coordinates: 51°30′N 0°35′E / 51.5, 0.583