Dover: Defining "Awesome" Since 80 AD

This is the modern port city of Dover, as taken from the approach to Dover Castle.


Dover is very well known for it's trademark white cliffs and the castle there which has never been taken; in it's current form it is approaching 900 years old and no siege has ever been successful in wrenching it from the grasp of whoever held it.


It sits on a very tall hill at the English side of the shortest sea crossing between the British Isles and literally anywhere else. The Romans built lighthouses here in about 80 AD (one of which is still standing), the Normans put a castle here upon invading in 1066 AD, and Henry II built a new keep and began fortifying the defenses between 1168 and his death in 1189.


Both of Henry II's sons would add on to the defenses with walls and moats and really, really steep hills.


The castle resisted a 4-month-long siege by the French in 1216. The French considered laying another siege, but realized that they didn't have the manpower after some very ugly losses in a number of other battles, and gave up.


Dover played no small part in securing England then, and the same was true several hundred years later. Dover is also the site of some secret tunnels, first built in the Napoleonic era and added onto during the Second World War. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the tunnel complex, as they're selling a book with those pictures in it. So now, pictures are unrelated to my commentary.


During WWII, these tunnels acted as a switchboard for British military communications, an artillery command center, a surgical hospital, and a strategic planning center for several naval operations, the most well-known of which is Operation Dynamo: the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk. It was organized by Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay from what is now known as the Admiralty Casemate - a section of tunnel that he devised the operation in and oversaw its execution, often for 23 hours a day, sleeping for an hour per night.


Ramsay and Churchill expected to save about 45,000 soldiers with this effort. At the time, there were about 200,000 British soldiers that had been trapped. Under ideal circumstances, they expected to save about a quarter of their forces, and that's to say nothing of the French soldiers who were trapped, and who numbered about 60,000 less than the British.


But between the Allied forces holding the Dunkirk perimeter and the Royal Navy's effort commanded by Ramsay, and the flood of civilian volunteers who piloted their small boats over 20 miles of open ocean and another 20 of French coastline to lend a hand, in ten days the effort had retrieved 330,000 soldiers. The evacuation has been widely regarded in England as a miracle, and there's little wonder as to why.


The best views of Dover are from Admiralty Overlook, very close to where Ramsay would have overseen his operation.


By the way, it's also worth noting that the wind at Dover while we were there was somewhere between 40 miles per hour and 'absolutely terrifying'.

Next post: First trip to London.