For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came
on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and
afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people.  They
lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last
towards the Naze.  Close inshore was a multitude of fishing
smacks--English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches
from the Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large
burden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships,
passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport
even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and
along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out
dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach,
a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.