Category:The Swale

English: Colloquially, by long historic tradition, The Swale, is a natural seawater channel in north Kent about 40 miles ESE of London connecting directly to the English Channel along the south end of the Isle of Sheppey and the mouth and bay like estuary of the lower River Medway along it's northern. The swale forms what might be called a second mouth of the River Medway running roughly N-S on the inside of the Isles of Sheppey, England.

Since it connects with the English Channel at either end the Swale is a tidewater basin, once considered a sheltered part of the River Medway, and was for several centuries during the Age of Sail, an important sheltered backwater making up a valuable part of the British Navy's fleet anchorages. The anchorage served the English (and later, the British) fleets from the dockyards of Sheerness on the north-west corner of the Isles of Sheppey beside the fortified mouth of the River Medway and the older Chatham dockyards Chatham. Much of the Swale has become increasingly shallow in recent years, in many places all but silted up exacerbating an already bad problem from sandbars.