Photo by Noemi Lusetti
Conservation campaigners have appealed directly to King Charles to protect the historic Goodwin Sands from commercial dredging, warning that the treacherous sandbank containing over 2,000 shipwrecks could face destructive aggregate extraction despite its marine protected area status.
The Goodwin Sands Conservation Trust has written to the King as head of the Crown Estate, asking him to remove the 10-mile sandbank off Kent from the estate’s list of potential marine aggregate extraction sites.
Centuries of maritime heritage at risk
The Goodwin Sands has claimed vessels across more than 2,000 years of history, with Shakespeare describing it as “a very dangerous flat, and fatal.” The shifting sands have entombed ships and dozens of Second World War aircraft, creating what historian Dan Snow describes as a “magical subsea landscape.”
Snow said: “Every period of our history over the last 2,000 years has left a rich legacy there, which is unusual, probably unique.”
Crown estate refuses blanket protection
Despite the area’s marine protected area designation in 2019, the Crown Estate has refused to guarantee protection from aggregate extraction, stating it cannot “provide blanket, permanent exemptions for any part of the seabed” unless required by specific national designations.
A licence to extract 2.5 million tonnes was approved in 2018, though sand was eventually sourced elsewhere.
Legal experts call for policy protection
Michael Williams, visiting professor of law at Plymouth University, argues the Crown Estate could protect the area through policy. He said: “You can say this is a highly sensitive archaeological area and therefore we will tend not to grant applications unless there’s exceptional circumstances.”
Royal appeal meets bureaucratic response
Joanna Thomson, chair of the conservation trust, questioned whether the King knows his public funding is “coming from licences to develop the seabed without proper protections.” However, a palace aide referred the appeal back to the Crown Estate.
Thomson drew parallels with land-based heritage protection: “Every year we have Remembrance Day at beautiful cemeteries on land, yet there’s the crown estate potentially allowing dredgers to run riot through graves. We wouldn’t allow that to happen on land.”
The campaign highlights the tension between commercial interests and heritage protection in marine environments, where underwater cultural sites often lack the robust legal protections afforded to terrestrial archaeological sites.