  We study by a combination of numerical and analytical Evans function
techniques the stability of solitary wave solutions of the St. Venant equations
for viscous shallow-water flow down an incline, and related models. Our main
result is to exhibit examples of metastable solitary waves for the St. Venant
equations, with stable point spectrum indicating coherence of the wave profile
but unstable essential spectrum indicating oscillatory convective instabilities
shed in its wake. We propose a mechanism based on ``dynamic spectrum'' of the
wave profile, by which a wave train of solitary pulses can stabilize each other
by de-amplification of convective instabilities as they pass through successive
waves. We present numerical time evolution studies supporting these
conclusions, which bear also on the possibility of stable periodic solutions
close to the homoclinic. For the closely related viscous Jin-Xin model, by
contrast, for which the essential spectrum is stable, we show using the
stability index of Gardner--Zumbrun that solitary wave pulses are always
exponentially unstable, possessing point spectra with positive real part.
