Not only Ministers of the Crown resorted to Greenwich for whitebait dinners: they were long popular with Londoners in general; but now that the swiftest of communication with London is obtainable, this most easily perishable of fish is just as readily to be had there, and Greenwich has suffered in consequence. Whitebait, supposed by some to be a distinct species of fish, and declared by others to be merely the small fry of herring, are caught between Blackwall and Greenwich, said to be the only waters in which they are found.
All the way from Greenwich to Woolwich, a matter of three miles, run the electric trams; the river going in a bold loop almost due north, along Blackwall Reach. A fine, broad, new road runs across the dreary flats to the Blackwall Tunnel; and all along these once solitary levels great modern factories are springing up. The explorer will not get much joy of going that way; nor indeed will he find much by going ahead into Woolwich, for the mean things that fringe about the skirts of a great city are abundantly evident.
Woolwich looks imposing from the river, with its crowded houses backed by the wooded heights of Charlton and Shooter’s Hill, but it is disappointing on close acquaintance. Its streets, of the narrowest, described to the present writer by a contemptuous attendant at the Free Ferry as “not wide enough to wheel a bassinette,” are old without being either ancient or picturesque, and although they own such attractive names as “Nile” and “Nelson” Streets, “Bellwater Gate,” and “Market Hill,” are grim and repellent. The parish church, in midst of these unlovely surroundings, is exactly in keeping: a grim, eighteenth-century affair of dull stock brick, like a factory. Many of the crowded tombstones around it were removed in 1894. Among them was one to a certain Emmanuel Skipper, who died in 1842, whose epitaph concluded:
“As I am now, so will you be,
Therefore, prepare to follow me.”
To which some one, apparently a stone-worker engaged in the churchyard, added in very neat lettering:
“To follow you I’m not intent,
Till first I know which way you went.”
North Woolwich, whose name will be found by the diligent student of maps, on the opposite shore, is not, as might reasonably be supposed from its situation, in Essex, but is a portion of the county of Kent. There are, of course, many instances throughout England of detached portions of shires and counties islanded in others, but perhaps none so oddly arbitrary as this, where a broad river separates the two portions. Rarely ever do we find an altogether satisfactory explanation of these peculiarities. In the present instance it is held to be owing to the ancient local manorial possessions of Count Haimo, Sheriff of Kent in the reign of William the Conqueror, lying on either side of the Thames, and that, therefore, the smaller portion of his holding was included in that county in which his greater interests lay. It is an ingenious, if not altogether convincing theory.
Woolwich is associated with one of the most terrible shipwrecks of modern times. A good many years have passed since the wreck of the pleasure-steamer Princess Alice thrilled London, but there are many yet living who remember the occasion. The Princess Alice plied frequently in the summer between London and Gravesend, and was generally crowded. She was exceptionally well filled on that fatal day, September 3rd, 1878. More than eight hundred people were aboard. London trippers are proverbially jolly, and those who in those days made holiday at Gravesend and Rosherville were folk of exuberant spirits. Music and dancing occupied the attention of the holiday folk on the return voyage, and all went well until after passing Gallions Reach and rounding Tripcock’s Tree Point. Night had fallen upon the broad and busy river, and coming swiftly down-stream appeared the lights of a large screw-steamer, the Bywell Castle collier. The captains of both vessels were taken by surprise, and both lost their presence of mind, with the result that the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice immediately forward of her engine-room, and cut her in two. In less than four minutes the Princess Alice had sunk, and 670 persons were drowned. Some few, with the exercise of much agility, jumped aboard the collier at the moment of the collision, but many were women and children, and many more were in the saloon, and were caught there, as in a trap.
It was finally decided in litigation that the Princess Alice was alone to blame for the disaster. Some of the drowned were buried in Woolwich Cemetery, where a monument stands, erected by a “national sixpenny subscription” contributed by over 23,000 subscribers. Around it are long lines of small stones, marking where the dead lie. The inscription on the monument gives figures considerably at variance from those given in books of reference. It states: “It was computed that seven hundred men, women, and children were on board. Of these about 550 were drowned. One hundred and twenty were buried near this place.”
This melancholy spot is situated on the one-time pleasant hill-side above Plumstead, between Woolwich and Abbey Wood; close to where Bostal Woods still look down from their craggy heights upon the wide-spreading marshes of Plumstead and Erith. This was once an exceedingly delightful escarpment, densely clothed with noble woods and vigorous undergrowth, stretching away to Erith, but the suburban expansion of London is spoiling it. Cemeteries—the abodes of the dead—and little mean streets of houses, scar the once rustic hill-sides, and along the road that goes to Erith, down in the levels, the electric trams run swiftly. But the place-names are still fragrant: Abbey Wood, Picardy, Belmont, and Belvedere; and indeed the great Abbey Wood is still very much more than a name.