A year of simultaneous current and water level measurements at the Inner Dowsing light tower, 16 km off the Lincolnshire coast, has been analysed to investigate the tidal and shallow-water tidal components and the non-tidal water movements. These data are used in conjunction with coastal and other off-shore observations to give a detailed description of the actual off-shore tide and surge propagation in this complex region. The results are compared with analyses of elevation data elsewhere along the British coast of the North Sea. The principal tidal constituents are obtained from analysis of the year of data and from separate monthly analyses: the variability of these monthly analyses gives estimates of the errors involved when analysing data where only a single month is available. The year of current meter observations is used to determine the amplitude and phase relationship between neighbouring tidal constituents which are not separable from shorter periods of data. These relationships are close to those in the elevations. For the M2 constituent there is an annual modulation which is coherent along the length of the British coast of the North Sea, and which is substantially larger than the modulation in the astronomical forces. Some insight into the behaviour of tides in the vicinity of the Wash is obtained by representing each constituent as the sum of a progressive and a standing wave. At the Inner Dowsing the influence of the Wash is apparent. Cotidal and coamplitude charts are plotted for the constituents O1, K1, N2, M2 and S2. Similar charts are plotted for the shallow-water tidal constituents M4, MS4 and M6. At the Inner Dowsing the sense of rotation of all the shallow-water current ellipses is clockwise and this is in the opposite sense to the ellipses for the astronomical tides which rotate anticlockwise. This is shown to be due to the non-rectilinear direction of the flood and ebb currents, a phenomenon which also explains the relatively greater importance of shallow-water tides in the currents than in the elevation. Non-tidal residuals at the Inner Dowsing are not markedly smaller than at coastal stations within the Wash. For low-frequency residuals the coherence between coastal and off-shore measurements is very high, but his coherence is reduced at higher frequencies. Long-period oscillations of water level are spread across the low frequency spectrum with peaks at periods of 40 and 70 hours. Wave propagation at non-tidal frequencies is from north to south, as for the tidal waves. At the tower there is a small but significant interaction between tides and surges. The statistical distribution of residual amplitudes is closely normal for the north-south component of current, but less so for the elevations and for the weaker east-west current component. Energy fluxes are in the direction of the progressive wave propagation from north to south. Of the total energy flux 87.5% is accounted for by the M2 constituent, and only 0.35% is due to long-period surges. There is no evidence of a phase adjustment between elevations and currents to accommodate the enhanced energy dissipation at Spring tides.