Let us take a walk round some of the Hull docks, and try to realise what the import and export trade really means.
Here, in the Alexandra Dock, is a huge iron steamship into which coal is being shipped by means of electric coal hoists or by transporter belts. Its cargo of 5,000 tons is being taken on board at the rate of ten tons a minute. From the hold of another equally large ship grain is pouring into lighters ranged alongside. It will require five working-days of ten hours each to discharge its cargo of 6,000 tons. Then the ship will take its place under the coal hoists, and its empty hold will be filled with an outgoing cargo of ‘black diamonds.’
The Victoria Dock is mainly given up to vessels unloading timber from the White Sea and the Baltic, a large proportion of it being ‘pit props’ for the coal mines of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
In the Albert and William Wright Dock, as well as in the Alexandra Dock, are vessels discharging hundreds of cases of bacon and hams from the United States, or of frozen carcasses of sheep from South America. From the hold of another vessel are being brought up crate after crate of eggs from North Russia, from another bale after bale of wool from Australia. Lined up alongside another big steamship are dozens of agricultural engines and machines made by workmen in Gainsborough and Lincoln. In a few weeks’ time they will be at work in the corn-fields of Russia.
Agricultural Machinery on the way to Russia.
Every day of the week we shall find ships giving up their cargoes of linseed and cottonseed from India, Egypt, or South Russia. But if we want to see the ‘butter boats’ emptied, we must be on the spot in the very early hours of a Monday morning. For these boats arrive from Denmark during the Sunday, and the work of transporting their cargoes to the lines of railway waggons that await their arrival begins with the last stroke of midnight. By four or five o’clock on the Monday morning the butter is on its way to all parts of the north of England. The cargo of one ship alone is sometimes consigned to as many as 300 separate stations.
A Steam Trawler.