How the Sea Abandoned England's Most Elegant Resort: Southport

This is the story of a resort that built its fortune on the finest beach on England's coast — and was then betrayed by that same shoreline as the sea itself began to withdraw. A Southport tragedy of Victorian ambition, an iron pier built to outrun a retreating tide, decades of quiet decline, and the empty storefronts left behind as more than a mile of sand now stands where the water used to be.