Here where the River winds in and out are the Docks, those tremendous basins which have done so much to alter the character of London River during the last hundred years, that have shifted the Port of London from the vicinity of London Bridge and the Upper Pool, and placed it several miles downstream, that have rendered the bascules of that magnificent structure, the Tower Bridge, comparatively useless things, which now require to be raised only a very few times in the course of a day.
In its course from the mouth inwards to the Port the River is steadily narrowing. At Yantlet Creek the stream is about four-and-a-half miles across; but in the next ten miles it narrows to a width of slightly under 1,300 yards at Coalhouse Point at the upper end of the Lower Hope Reach. At Gravesend the width is 800 yards, at Blackwall under 400, while at London Bridge the width at high tide is a little less than 300 yards.
The Pool.
Just above and just below the Tower Bridge is what is known as the Pool of London. Standing on the bridge, taking in the wonderful picture up and down stream—the wide, filthy London River, with its craft of all descriptions, its banks lined with dirty, dull-looking wharves and warehouses, we find it hard to think of this as the River which we shall see later slipping past Clevedon Woods and Bablock-hythe or under Folly Bridge at Oxford. Up there all is bright and clean and sunny: here even on the blithest summer day there is usually an overhanging pall of smoke which serves to dim the brightest sunshine and add to the dreariness of the scene.
Yet, despite its lack of beauty, despite all the drawbacks of its ugliness and its squalor, this is one of the most romantic places in all England: a place to linger in and let the imagination have free rein. What visions these ships call up—visions of the wonderful East with its blaze of colour and its burning sun, visions of Southern seas with palm-clad coral islands, visions of the frozen North with its bleak icefields and its snowy forest lands, visions of crowded cities and visions of the vast, lonely places of the earth. For these ordinary-looking ships have come from afar, bearing in their cavernous holds the wealth of many lands, to be swallowed up by the ravenous maw of the greatest port in the world.
Work and Wealth on a Thames-side Wharf.
Every minute is precious here. Engines are rattling as the cranes lift up boxes and bales from the interiors of the ships and deposit them in the lighters that cluster round their sides. Inshore the cranes are hoisting the goods from the vessels to the warehouses as fast as they can. Men are shouting and gesticulating; syrens are wailing out their doleful cry or screaming their warning note. Everything is hurry and bustle, for there are other cargoes waiting to take the place of those now being discharged, and other ships ready to take the berths of those unloading; and there are tides to be thought of, unless precious hours are to be wasted.
It is a fascinating place, is the Pool, and one which never loses its interest for either young or old.