Dover pilots' roll

The forty-one licensed pilots of the Kentish approaches, created by the settlement of 4253 after the Pilot Wars. Pilots are proposed, admitted and struck off only by the roll itself; each works his own stretch, and a pilot's refusal of a passage is absolute.

The licensed pilots of the Kentish approaches, whose water was divided among the roll after the Pilot Wars by stretches much like those the old pilot companies had held.

Named with it

• Pilot Thomas Deal · fourth stretch
• Pilot Reuben Whitfield · eastern stretch
• Pilot Maud Sandown · second stretch
• Pilot Jonas Wantsume · sixth stretch
• Pilot Ellen Sandgate · keeps the roll's instruction book
• Pilot Thomas Bearsted · 4402

Ties

• names written down by the Dover Quay Office
• the Board has proposed enlarging it four times
• holds packet shares in the Dover packet service
• its copy book rivals the Admiralty route circular
• licensed by the Dover Quay Office
• their book is kept apart from the Admiralty's

At the table

No piloted hull lost in eleven years, though unpiloted small craft have been lost by the score. Twice (4388, 4571) outsiders were defeated by every pilot simply not sailing. Keeps the unpublished pilots' copy of weather windows, better than the Admiralty circular, with odd non-weather bearings; bearings on four stretches were moved during the Black Wake and never moved back. A 'ground' refusal clusters in the closed months. Its fund, levied on every passage and run by three elected pilots, maintains four unexplained men and bought shares in the three packets on the moved stretches. The roll grew to forty-four for nineteen months after the Black Wake. It keeps its own wreck list and a list of masters who asked for irregular routes. They keep a fund for widows, hold pilot dinners, and keep the 'pilots' copy', a book of weather windows better than the Admiralty's, shown to outsiders rarely. The roll's own book records losses, refusals and nine men struck off.