Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. II, No. X., March 1851

by Various

But these are only the docks on the left bank of the river; on the other side, docks extend from Rotherhithe to Deptford; the Surrey Docks, the Commercial Docks, and the East Country Docks. When the gigantic extent of these docks, and the mass of property in them, are considered, Tyre and Sidon shrink up into utter insignificance.

But of all these astonishing places, our present attention is devoted only to the London Docks, properly so called, as being connected with the operations of the Queen's Pipe; the damaged and unsalable goods of these docks being its food. In these docks are especially warehoused wine, wool, spices, tea, ivory, drugs, tobacco, sugars, dye-stuffs, imported metals, and sundry other articles. Except the teas and spices, you may procure inspection of all these articles, as they lie in their enormous quantities, by a ticket from the secretary. If you wish to taste the wines, you must have a tasting order for the purpose.

Imagine yourselves, then, entering the gateway of the London Docks. If you wish only to walk round and see the shipping, and people at work, you can do that without any order. As you advance, you find yourself surrounded right and left by vast warehouses, where numbers of people, with carts and trucks, are busily at work taking in and fetching out goods. On your right you soon pass the ivory warehouse, where no lady is admitted except by a special order. The cause of this singular regulation, by no means complimentary to the fair sex, we were unable to ascertain. No lady could very well be suspected of carrying off in her muff an elephant's tooth of some hundred weight, but there must have been female thieves, dexterous enough to secrete, perhaps a rhinoceros's tooth, of perhaps some dozen pounds, valued at one pound seven shillings per pound; and thus contrived to bring a stigma on the whole sex.

Vast heaps of ivory lie on the floor of this warehouse, in huge elephants' tusks, of from twenty to a hundred pounds weight each; tusks of rhinoceros, and the ivory weapons of sword-fish and sea-unicorns. Here lay, on our last visit, the African spoils of Mr. Gordon Cumming; and, indeed, the spectacle is one that carries you away at once to the African deserts, and shows you what is going on there while we are quietly and monotonously living at home.

Proceeding down the dock-yard, you see before you a large area literally paved with wine-casks, all full of the most excellent wines. On our last visit, the wine then covering the ground was delicious Bordeaux, as you might easily convince yourself by dipping a finger into the bunghole of any cask; as, for some purpose of measurement, or testing the quality, the casks were most of them open. This is, in fact, the great depôt of the wine of the London merchants, no less than sixty thousand pipes being capable of being stored away in the vaults here. One vault alone, which formerly was seven acres, has now been extended under Gravel-lane, so that at present it contains upward of twelve acres! These vaults are faintly lit with lamps, but on going in, you are at the entrance accosted with the singular demand—"Do you want a cooper?" Many people, not knowing its meaning, say, "No, by no means!" The meaning of the phrase is, "do you want to taste the wines?" when a cooper accompanies you to pierce the casks, and give you the wine. Parties are every day, and all day long, making these exploratory and tasting expeditions. Every one on entering is presented with a lamp at the end of a lath, about two feet long, and you soon find yourselves in some of the most remarkable caving in the world. Small streets, which you perceive are of great extent, by the glimmering of lamps in the far distance, extend before you, and are crossed by others in such a manner that none but those well acquainted with the geography of these subterranean regions could possibly find their way about them. From the dark vaulted roof over head, especially in one vault, hang strange figures, black as night, light as gossamer, and of a yard or more in length, resembling skins of beasts, or old shirts dipped in soot. These are fed to this strange growth by the fumes of the wine.

For those who taste the wines the cooper bores the heads of the pipes, which are ranged throughout these vast cellars on either hand in thousands and tens of thousands, and draws a glassful. These glasses, though shaped as wine-glasses, resemble much more goblets in their size, containing each as much as several ordinary wine-glasses. What you do not drink is thrown upon the ground; and it is calculated that at least a hogshead a day is thus consumed. Many parties who wish for a cheap carouse, procure a tasting order, take biscuits with them, and drink of the best of all sorts of wine in the cellars, and in quantities enough to terrify any disciple of Father Mathew. Here, again, we find a regulation permitting no ladies to enter these cellars after one o'clock. For such a rule there must be a sufficient cause, and the fact which we have just stated may perhaps furnish the key to it.

Not less striking than those cellars is the Mixing House above, where there are vats into which merchants who wish to equalize all their wines of one vintage can have them emptied, and then re-drawn into their casks. The largest of these vats contains twenty-three thousand two hundred and fifty gallons; and to it the famous Heidelburg Tun is a mere keg.

But the reader may ask, what have these wine-cellars to do with the Queen's Pipe? It is this: in the centre of the great east vault you come to a circular building without any entrance. It is the root and foundation of the Queen's Pipe. Quitting the vault, and ascending into the warehouse over it, you find that you are in the Great Tobacco Warehouse, called the Queen's Warehouse, because the Government rent the Tobacco Warehouses here for fourteen thousand pounds per annum. This one warehouse has no equal in any other part of the world. It is five acres in extent, and yet it is covered with a roof, the framework of which is of iron, erected, we believe, by Mr. Barry, the architect of the new houses of parliament, and of so light and skillful a construction, that it admits of a view of the whole place; and so slender are the pillars, that the roof seems almost to hang upon nothing. Under this roof is piled a vast mass of tobacco in huge casks, in double tiers; that is, two casks in height. This warehouse is said to hold, when full, twenty-four thousand hogsheads, averaging one thousand two hundred pounds each, and equal to thirty thousand tons of general merchandise. Each cask is said to be worth, duty included, two hundred pounds; giving a sum total of tobacco in this one warehouse, when filled, of four millions, eight hundred thousand pounds in value! Besides this, there is another warehouse of nearly equal size, where finer kinds of tobacco are deposited, many of them in packages of buffalo-hide, marked "Giron," and Manilla for cheroots, in packages of sacking lined with palmetto leaves. There is still another warehouse for cigars, called the Cigar Floor, in which there are frequently one thousand five hundred chests, valued at one hundred pounds each, at an average, or one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cigars alone.

The scene in the Queen's Warehouse, to which we return, is very singular. Long streets stretch right and left between the walls of tobacco-casks; and when the men are absent at one of their meals, you find yourself in an odd sort of solitude, and in an atmosphere of tobacco. Every one of these giant hogsheads is stripped twice from the tobacco during its stay in this warehouse; once on entrance, to weigh it, and again before leaving, to ascertain whether the mass is uninjured; and to weigh what is found good for the duty, and for the sale price to the merchant. Thus the coopers take all these hogsheads twice to pieces, and put them together again. This tobacco is of the strong, coarse kind, for pigtail, shag, snuff, &c. The finer kinds, as we have said, go to the other warehouse.

But your eye is now attracted by a guide-post, on which is painted, in large letters, "To the Kiln." Following this direction, you arrive at the centre of the warehouse, and at the Queen's Pipe. You enter a door on which is rudely painted the crown royal and the initials "V.R.," and find yourself in a room of considerable size, in the centre of which towers up the kiln; a furnace of the conical kind, like a glass-house or porcelain furnace. On the door of the furnace is again painted the crown and the "V.R." Here you find, in the furnace, a huge mass of fire, and around are heaps of damaged tobacco, tea, and other articles ready to be flung upon it, as it admits of it. This fire never goes out, day or night, from year to year. There is an attendant who supplies it with its fuel, as it can take it; and men, during the day-time, constantly coming laden with great loads of tobacco, cigars, and other stuff, condemned to the flames. Whatever is forfeited, and is too bad for sale, be it what it will, is doomed to the kiln. At the other Docks damaged goods, we were assured, are buried till they are partly rotten, and then taken up and disposed of as rubbish or manure. Here the Queen's Pipe smokes all up, except the greater quantity of the tea, which, having some time ago set the chimney of the kiln on fire, is now rarely burnt. And strange are the things that sometimes come to this perpetually burning furnace. On one occasion, the attendant informed us, he burnt nine hundred Australian mutton-hams. These were warehoused before the duty came off. The owner suffered them to remain till the duty ceased, in hopes of their being exempt from it; but this not being allowed, they were left till so damaged as to be unsalable. Yet a good many, the man declared, were excellent; and he often made a capital addition to his breakfast from the roast that, for some time, was so odoriferously going on. On another occasion he burnt thirteen thousand pairs of condemned French gloves.