CLIFFS OF CHALK
Anyone could see that Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong’s clipper ship
couldn’t squeeze through the narrow passage of water. “We’ll get stuck,
‘ shouted the crew.
But old Captain Stormy, as he was sometimes called, did some fast
thinking. “All hands grab some soap and lather her sides,” Stormy
yelled.
The men lathered soap and rubbed the slippery suds onto the sides of the
ship. And sure enough, the ship was so slippery that it slid right
through the passageway, and it even brushed past some
black cliffs along the Dover coast in England. The cliffs scraped off
all the soapsuds from the ship, and the suds washed the cliffs white.
That story about the black cliffs turning white is a whopper. But it’s
still a popular tall tale, especially among sailors.
The passageway of water that the ship supposedly slid through is called
the Strait of Dover. The strait separates France from England. On the
English side of the strait, lies the town of Dover where the famous
white cliffs line the coast. The cliffs are white because they are made
of thick layers of chalk. And they never were black.
