The “Mighty Thames”—Poor Jack Home Again—Provident Sailors—The Belvedere Home and its Inmates—A Ship Ashore—Rival Castaways—Greenwich Pensioners—The Present System Compared with the Old—Freedom Outside the Hospital—The Observatory—The Astronomer Royal—Modern Belief in Astrology—Site of Greenwich Park—The Telescopes and Observations—The Clock which Sets the Time for all England—Sad Reminiscences—The Loss of the Princess Alice—The Old Dreadnought—The Largest Floating Hospital in the World—The Trinity House: Its Constitution, Purposes, and Uses—Lighthouses and Light-vessels—Its Masters.
“Let the Rhine be blue and bright
In its path of liquid light,
Where the red grapes fling a beam
Of glory on the stream;
Let the gorgeous beauty there
Mingle all that’s rich and fair;
Yet to me it ne’er could be
Like that river great and free,
The Thames! the mighty Thames!”