Ships Come Home
In the grey dawn liners from the Seven Seas slip into the docks of London; and men and women gather there to meet friends. Some even meet their sweethearts. They are the lucky ones. It was not yet light. Dawn was a good hour away, and it was very cold. I was travelling away from London towards Woolwich in a jangling, dirty workman's train. On the platform at Fenchurch Street I had noticed several other people obviously on their way to meet friends, but they had been assimilated in the gloom of the long train; and I was glad, for I was enjoying myself in a carriage full of dock workers: a carriage that reeked of smoke and manly conversation. The train ploughed wearily on through the darkness, stopping at stations.... Stepney East.... Burdett Road.... Bromley.... Canning Town.... Bleak, unfriendly places under their pale lights. More early Londoners stormed the carriage at each station and split pleasantries rather like roadmen hitting a spike:
"Goo' mornin', Bill...."
"It ain't a goo' mornin'. It's a blinkin' cold mornin'!"
The laughter could not have been louder if the retort had been made by a judge or a king!
The conversation was both technical and sporting. The technical discussion centred round the life and shortcomings of a certain foreman, who, I gathered, although he knew less about a ship than a —— —— school-teacher, was, if not a man of iron, at least a man of blood. So they said. Football and racing! They knew the parentage, habits, and hobbies of every League player, also the result of contests going right back to ancient times. They all had "a bit" on the three-thirty.
* * *
North Woolwich! In the still air of dawn I could feel the nearness of shipping. I could not see much, but I knew that I was surrounded by ships. The docks were not awake. The steam winches were not screaming, the hammers were stilled; yet over the dark docks lay the presence of great ships home from sea....
I walked on past the shrouded cranes, standing in their straight lines near the water's side. I came upon a tall ship looming up like a cliff. I could make out a man leaning over her deck far above. I asked him if this was the ship I wanted. He opened his mouth, and there descended curious, unwilling sounds, like something trying hard to escape from his throat and then changing its mind and trying to get back again. I think he was talking Japanese.
So I walked along to the stern of the ship to read the name, and there I met a man gazing upward, too. It turned out that we were both looking for the same ship, so we walked on together.
"What an experience it is," he said. "I wonder how many people in London have ever done this. I'm generally asleep at this time of the morning. How early London wakes up. Think of those workmen's trains...."
"Are you meeting a friend in the ——," I asked.
He coughed slightly and said, "Yes," and the way he said it told me that it was going to be a romantic occasion.
Then dawn. If there is anything more wonderful in London than dawn coming up over the tangled shipping of the docks I would like to know of it. First a silvery light in the air, a chilly greyness, then a flush in the east, and with startling suddenness every mast, every funnel, every leaning crane is silhouetted jet-black against the pearl-coloured sky.... Unreal ... still ... silent.
Gradually the docks awaken. Men walk along the wharfside, doors are opened. In the depths of little ships men rise and become busy with ropes; there is, from some, a smell of frying bacon; on tall ships mast lights grow pale in the dawn light, men in swinging cradles yawn and start painting a ship's hull, and from far off sounds the first hammer of a new day.
As light grows one's sense of smell increases. This is strange. The air is now full of a pungent smell of hemp and tow and tar, and even distant docks, stored with their merchandise, seem to contribute their part as the dawn wind blows.
High up in the sky there is a flush of pink cloud, such a delicate flamingo pink that changes, spreads, and fades even as you look. It becomes gold, and you know that at any moment the sun may rise up like a tocsin and call all the world to work.
* * *
We found the ship. A mountain she was, towering up above us with tiny holes in her side like the entrances to caves. She smelt of fried fish, bacon and eggs and coffee....
Soon after I was aboard I had to look the other way for I had seen my friend holding a girl in his arms and I had heard him say:
"And how are you, darling?"
"Splendid!" she cried. "Let me look at you! Come into the light."
So you see wonderful things happen to some people when tall ships come out of the Seven Seas and find their way to London Town.