THE WEST INDIA DOCKS.
A little lower down the river there were erstwhile landmarks of another sort. Gaunt gibbet-posts stood along the shore, with bones of pirates bleaching upon them, and music of creaking chains. A reminiscence of this variety of ancient Thames scenery survives in the name of Execution Dock, which designation is only less repellant than another favourite place-name of the same period—Hanging Ditch, to wit.
The docks at Millwall are chiefly employed by steamers of large tonnage trading between London and the various European and American ports. Great bands of emigrants set out from here to the New World, and as their ships swing into the river there is much signalling to friends on shore and much pathetic leave-taking on the decks.
MILLWALL DOCKS.
The docks are two, joined by a bridge, and a tonnage of more than 1,000,000, “gross register,” passes in and out annually. Ready access to the railways is to be found at Millwall, but many of the vessels unload into dumb-barges, which swarm all over the Millwall waters, one man on board each barge, propelling his craft with a pole, and seeming to take his labour like a light recreation, and as if there were not the slightest need for hurry in all the world. These dumb-barges, sluggish and unwieldy, it is the common habit to denounce as one of the nuisances of the Thames. They float upward or downward with the tide; they are now “end on” across the river, floating sideways, and now lazily making a tolerably straight course; they get in the way of passing steamers, and are indescribably slow in getting out again. The single man on board seems to be influenced by the habit of the craft which he controls. He steadfastly declines to regard himself as an inconvenience, and if the tide drifts him into the middle of the stream he makes no haste to leave a clear course again, but prods slowly away with his long pole, utterly careless of mankind, and with an indifference to oath and objurgation which is positively sublime.