A famous sandbank stretching 10 m. along the E. coast of Kent, about 5½ m. from the shore; with the flowing of the tidal current the hidden sands are apt to shift and change their outline, and when storms of great violence sweep over them, despite their being well marked by four lightships and nine buoys, they have often been the occasion of a long series of melancholy shipwrecks; the shoal forms a splendid breakwater for the Downs, an excellent anchorage, stretching between the Goodwins and the shore; they are supposed popularly to be the remnants of an estate which belonged to the great Earl of Godwin (q. v .), but this supposition is a mere fable.