AT PURFLEET.
Around Ingress Abbey lies the village of Greenhithe, another yachting station, with forty feet of water at the end of the pier at low tide. Stone Church, said to have been designed by the architect of Westminster Abbey, and beautiful and elaborate enough in some parts of it to suggest close kinship with that great edifice, stands on a proud eminence above the village, and is visible for miles around.
At Greenhithe the cement works commence, and extend themselves to Northfleet, which is a town perpetually enveloped in a cloud of white smoke, floating over the river in great wreaths, so that Tilbury and Gravesend, lying only a brief distance away, are in some states of weather completely hidden from sight until Northfleet has been passed.
To Tilbury is now to fall the often forfeited glory of containing the largest docks in the world. The heavy traffic of the Thames is gradually being arrested at a lower portion of the river. “One thing hangs upon another,” remarks a recent writer, “and just as Tenterden Steeple is accountable for Goodwin Sands, so the Suez Canal is responsible for the Albert Dock, and for those that are being made at Tilbury. The long, weight-carrying iron screws that are built to run through the canal are not adapted for the turnings and windings of Father Thames in the higher reaches, and so, after the fashion of Mahomet, the docks now are sliding down the river to the ships instead of the ships coming up the river to the docks.” Thus it happened that some years ago the population of Gravesend began to be increased by immense gangs of navvies, builders, and masons, who during the day-time were engaged on the Tilbury side of the river in digging vast trenches, building huge walls, and scooping out of the peat and clay accommodation for the merchant navy of England.
ERITH PIER.
The new docks at Tilbury are the property of the East and West India Dock Company, which is forestalling competition by thus competing with itself. They are being dug out of what has for centuries been a great muddy waste. An army of nearly 3,000 labourers has been employed on the excavations. When the docks are completed eight large steamers will be able to take in coal at one time; the largest vessels built will be able to enter the gates with ease; there will be wharves and warehouses capable of accommodating no inconsiderable portion of the entire trade of the Thames. Branch lines of railway will run along the wharves, and be connected with each warehouse. The main dock occupies fifty-three acres of ground. The jetties surrounding the basins will be forty-five feet wide. At Tilbury, it is probable, the great work of furnishing dock accommodation for the shipping using the Thames will be finally brought to an end. It is all but impossible to imagine that the time will ever arrive when the Albert, and Victoria, and Tilbury, and East and West India Docks, will be too small for the demands of a trade almost inconceivably greater than that which passes through the Port of London now.