GRAVESEND TO THE NORE.
Morning on the Lower Thames—Gravesend—Pilots and Watermen—A Severe Code—Tilbury and its Memories—The Marshes—Wild-fowl Shooting—Eel Boats—Canvey Island—Hadleigh Castle—Leigh, and the Shrimpers—Southend and the Pier—Sailing—Sheerness—The Mouth of the Medway—The Dockyard—The Town and its Divisions—The Nore—A Vision of Wonder—Shoeburyness—Outward Bound.
THE beautiful stretches of the Upper River must always offer an attraction to men who have an eye for colour, and to whom the curious spectacle of cultured wildness is pleasant.
But there are some who, while they remember the long reaches where the willow herbs shine and the glassy river rolls, think kindly of the other reaches where the signs of toil begin, and where the great stream pours on between banks that have nothing to redeem them save strangeness of form and infinite varieties of bizarre tints.
A voyage in a small boat from the hill where the Greenwich Observatory cuts sharp against the sky, down to the rushing channels where the black flood flows past the Woolwich Piers, is always unpleasant to those whose senses are delicate, but as soon as we reach Gravesend we come to another region, and there those who care little for brilliance of colour, those who care little for softness of effect, those who care only for stern suggestion, find themselves at home.
One of the pleasantest experiences in life is to wake in the early dawn, put sail on a fast yacht, and run on the tide from Gravesend, past the grim end of the Lower Hope. The colliers weigh anchor, the apple-bowed brigs curtsy slowly on the long rush of swelling water, and as you look up from your cabin you receive sudden and poignant suggestions that tell of far-off regions, and that take you away from the grim world that you have just left behind.
Here is a clumsy black brig bustling the water before her! The ripples fly in creamy rings from her bows; her black topsails, with their queer patches, flap a little as the wind comes and goes, and you hear the hoarse orders given by the man who stands near the helm, and who is in authority for the time. Then a great four-master spreads her wings, and while the little tug puffs and frets around her as though there were important business to do, which did not allow of a moment’s consideration, the big ship slowly slides away, and gathering power under her canvas, surges into the brown deep, and takes the melancholy emigrants away towards the Nore.
Then the “tramps” of the ocean—the ugly colliers—are not without interest. One of them foams up to you, and you know that the man in command of her has perhaps not slept for seventy-two hours. He has made his wallowing rush from the North country; he has risked all the dangers of fog and darkness and storm, and he has brought his vessel up to the derrick with satisfaction. Then in a few hours the swarm of “whippers” have cleared her; the rattle of the great cranes has rung through the night, and the vessel has been emptied in a time that would seem astonishing to those who manage sanitary corporation business on shore, and who condemn us to endure the presence of ghastly stenches and unspeakable sights for hour after hour. The anchors are whipped up and the ocean “tramp” tears away on her trip to the Tyne.
There is not a single sight or sound that does not convey its own interest. If it is autumn time, the racing yachts are clearing for action, dapper men are bounding hither and thither, as though there were nothing in life to be cared for excepting success in the race that must shortly be begun. The gun fires, and the lazy breeze of the morning strikes the huge spinnakers, while the razor-bowed craft move slowly out, and gradually gather speed until the troubled water foams in crisp whirls and rolls away aft in long creamy trails.