History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 2 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

No valid or ostensible reasons were then assigned for their determined opposition, nor were any arguments worthy of record brought forward against the proposed Bill. “We shall be ruined,” alike exclaimed the merchant and the shipowner; while the parliamentary opponents of the government, taking up the cry, ultimately obliged Sir Robert, who “narrowly escaped falling a sacrifice to the ungovernable rage of the mob which beset the avenues to the House of Commons,”[342] to abandon the Bill. So endurable were the impressions made by the violent opposition to Walpole’s scheme, and so strong the force of prejudice, that this most valuable measure lay dormant for more than sixty years, and even then might not have become law had the necessity of establishing docks with bonding warehouses attached to them not been brought prominently under public notice by Mr. Patrick Colquhoun, in his remarkable treatise on the commerce and police of the River Thames. Increased accommodation for the number of ships frequenting the river had now become equally necessary, the trade of London with distant nations requiring in 1796 no less than three thousand five hundred and three small craft of different sorts to discharge or load the merchant vessels which lay in the stream.

Depredations from ships in London.

London, therefore, from the extent of its trade, and the disproportionate space allotted on the surface of the water for the accommodation of vessels frequenting the port, and on land for the collection and stowage of their cargoes, at that time afforded numerous and greatly increased facilities for the secret disposal of merchandise and property of every kind. A wide and lucrative field was thus opened for the depredations of a host of plunderers of every sort, trained in their nefarious arts with all the regularity and system of a disciplined body. Their numbers and stratagems of course increased with the augmentation of the commerce of the river; and especially with the practice of sending cargoes in lighters to wharves at the distance of several miles from the discharging vessels, or from the wharves on board the loading vessels, the necessary result of the overcrowded state of the harbour. The great numbers of lumpers, watermen, lightermen, coopers, and labourers employed upon the wharves, as well as the seamen and petty officers of too many vessels, in league with the lower classes of revenue officers, now formed a large and dangerous band of conspirators against the property of the merchants and the revenues of the Crown. Mates of merchantmen then claimed by custom as their perquisites the sweepings of the hold, consisting of such parts of the cargo as might from any cause have dropped out of their packages; and numerous charges were made against the inferior members of this class, whose duty it was to take care of the cargo under their charge, that they had been tempted to injure the packages with a view to increase their perquisites. Mr. Colquhoun’s treatise furnishes an account of the vessels employed in the trade of London, and of the value of their cargoes, with an estimate of the number of packages plundered in each branch of trade during the year ending the 5th of January, 1798.[343]

The extent of the plunder.

From this statement it would appear that in that year there were eighteen hundred and forty-three foreign, and eleven thousand six hundred and one British vessels, embracing those employed in the coal and coasting trades, of a tonnage, including their repeated voyages, of one million seven hundred and seventy-six thousand three hundred and twenty-six tons, entering and clearing to and from the port of London. The value of the imports and exports he computed at 60,591,000l. (a very large estimate, but no doubt he includes the repeated transfers by ship or barge), in, perhaps, three million packages. He estimates the amount of plunder of the West India packages alone at no less a sum than of 232,000l. The plunder of the East India trade he sets down at 25,000l., and of the cargoes of the vessels in that of the United States of America at 30,000l. The entire aggregate amount of plunder, including 20,000l. in the coal trade, and the like sum in the coasting trade, he estimates at 461,500l. from merchant vessels, while the loss in tackle, apparel, and stores of thirteen thousand four hundred and forty-four vessels he computes at 45,000l., making the total depredations during one year in the River Thames, prior to the construction of docks and the establishment of the warehousing system, as not less than 506,500l. To this amount must be added a large sum for the depredations on stores belonging to ships of war, which were by no means exempt from plunder.

As regards the depredations at that time committed upon merchant shipping and goods, Mr. Colquhoun mentions one remarkable case, of the enormous quantity of fifty tons of sugar,[344] three whole puncheons of rum, besides three hundred gallons pumped out of different casks, and a large quantity of coffee, which were proved to have been plundered from one vessel.

Instances of robberies.

In another case, in August 1794, a small vessel arrived in the river from Antigua, with seventy hogsheads of sugar, five of which were actually stolen by three tidesmen in collusion with the mate and a well-known receiver. In this case the master of the vessel, happening to be a stranger, had expressed so much apprehension with regard to the dishonesty of the lumpers, that the revenue officers proposed, with a view of allaying his fears, to discharge the cargo. The result being that, while he remained on shore in fancied security, he lost one-fourteenth part of the whole!

Scuffle-hunters.

“Game” ships.