BBC - Coast Series 9 (2014) Part 5 Sea and the City

Coast: Series 9

Coast continues to uncover the secrets of our shores, through untold tales of explorers from as far apart as Cornwall and Australia; it reveals little-known gems, including a coastal walk that takes in the history of Britain; investigates the clandestine sex trade that scandalised Victorian Britain and decimated the Royal Navy; discovers how Greenwich became the global centre of sea navigation and reveals what becomes of our coast in winter. Coast also crosses the Atlantic to find out why Nova Scotia, in Canada, appealed to its Scottish settlers, and it ventures to the French channel coast to unearth its connection with the birth of Britain's Ordnance Survey maps.

Part 5: Sea and the City

Stories that connect cities to the sea. Nick Crane visits the east coast port of Immingham, finding out how it has been specially engineered to import the vast quantities of coal it handles. Tessa Dunlop discovers how Hitler's bombers could have drowned London, and possibly helped win the Second World War, by destroying the embankments that contain the River Thames - if not for a series of top-secret defensive schemes. Ruth Goodman investigates how the Victorian government introduced laws to detain women suspected of prostitution as the Navy's sailors fell prey to sexually transmitted diseases, and Mark Horton reveals how determining a ship's exact position at sea meant Greenwich became the epicentre of global sea navigation.

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