Ghost · Deal · Famous
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She comes back every fifty years, if she ever existed.
Stand where it happened
The Sands are offshore and dangerous; view from Deal seafront or pier. Do not go onto the Sands.
Every fifty years, they say, a wedding party sails onto the Goodwin Sands again. Last due: 1998. Nobody saw a thing.
The Goodwin Sands are a ten-mile sandbank off Deal that has wrecked hundreds of ships. The most famous ghost story says the schooner Lady Lovibond ran onto them on 13 February 1748. Her captain had just married and brought his bride aboard, and the jealous mate, who loved her too, steered the ship onto the sands, drowning everyone. The ship is said to reappear every fifty years. When the 250th anniversary came in 1998, Deal was full of ghost-hunters, but nothing was seen. Researchers have found no record of the ship before a newspaper story in 1924.