Transcriber’s Notes.

Map of the River Thames from its Source to Windsor

Map of the River Thames to Windsor

FATHER THAMES

Offices of The Port of London Authority

Frontispiece

FATHER THAMES

BY

WALTER HIGGINS

WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., LTD.

3 & 4 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.C.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

FATHER THAMES

Book I.—London River.
Book II.—The Great City which the River made.
Book III.—The Upper River.

This book is also issued in separate parts, as above.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

LONDON RIVER

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BOOK I

LONDON RIVER

FATHER THAMES

INTRODUCTION

The River and its Valley

England is not a country of great rivers. No mighty Nile winds lazily across desert and fertile plains in its three and a half thousand miles course to the sea; no rushing Brahmaputra plunges headlong down its slopes, falling two or three miles as it crosses half a continent from icy mountain-tops to tropical sea-board. In comparison with such as these England’s biggest rivers are but the tiniest, trickling streams. Yet, for all that, our little waterways have always meant much to the land. Tyne, Severn, Humber, Trent, Thames, Mersey, Ouse—all these, with many smaller but no less well-known streams, have played their part in the making of England’s history; all these have had much to do with the building up of her commercial prosperity.

One only of these rivers we shall consider in this book, and that is old “Father Thames”: as it was and as it is, and what it has meant to England during two thousand years. In our consideration we shall divide the River roughly into three quite natural divisions—first, the section up to the lowest bridge; second, the part just above, the part which gave the River its chief port and city; third, the upper river.

However, before we consider these three parts in detail, there is one question which we might well ponder for a little while, a question which probably has never occurred to more than a few of us; and that is this: Why was there ever a River Thames at all? To answer it we must go back—far, far back into the dim past. As you know, this world of ours is millions of years old, and like most ancient things it has seen changes—tremendous changes. Its surface has altered from time to time in amazing fashion. Whole mountain ranges have disappeared from sight, and valleys have been raised to make fresh highlands. The bed of the ocean has suddenly or slowly been thrust up, yielding entirely new continents, while vast areas of land have sunk deep enough to allow the water to flow in and create new seas. All this we know by the study of the rocks and the fossil remains buried in them—that is, by the science of geology.

How the Thames was made.

Now, among many other strange things, geology teaches us that our own islands were at one time joined on to the mainland of Europe. In those days there was no English Channel, no North Sea, and no Irish Sea. Instead, there was a great piece of land stretching from Denmark and Norway right across to spots miles out beyond the western limits of Ireland and the northern limits of Scotland. This land, which you will best understand by looking carefully at the map, p. 4, was crossed by several rivers, the largest of them one which flowed almost due north right across what is now the North Sea. This river, as you will see from the map, was chiefly produced by glaciers of the Alps, and, in its early stages, took practically the same course as the River Rhine of these days. As it flowed out across the Dogger district (where now is the famous Dogger Bank of our North Sea fishermen) it was joined by a number of tributary rivers, which flowed down eastwards from what we might call the “back-bone of England”—the range of mountains and hills which passes down through the centre of our islands. One of these tributaries was a river which in its early stages flowed along what is now our own Thames Valley.

In those days everything was on a much grander scale, and this river, though only a small tributary of the great main continental river, was a far wider and deeper stream than the Thames which we know. Here and there along the present-day river valley we can still see in the contours of the land and in the various rocks evidences of the time when this bigger stream was flowing. (Of this we shall read more in Book III.) Thus things were when there came the great surface change which enabled the water to flow across wide tracts of land and so form the British Islands, standing out separately from the mainland of Europe.

All that, of course, happened long, long ago—many thousands of years before the earliest days mentioned in our history books—at a time about which we know nothing at all save what we can read in that wonderful book of Nature whose pages are the rocks and stones of the earth’s surface.

By the study of these rocks and the fossil remains in them we can learn just a few things about the life of those days—the strange kinds of trees which covered the earth from sea to sea, the weird monsters which roamed in the forests and over the hills. Of man we can learn very little. We can get some rough idea of when he first appeared in Britain, and we can tell by the remains preserved in caves, etc., in some small degree what sort of life he lived. But that is all: the picture of England in those days is a very dim one.

How and when the prehistoric man of these islands grew to some sort of civilization we cannot say. When first he learned to till the soil and grow his crops, to weave rough clothes for himself, to domesticate certain animals to carry his goods, to make roads along which these animals might travel, to barter his goods with strangers—all these are mysteries which we shall probably never solve.

Just this much we can say: prehistoric man probably came to a simple form of civilization a good deal earlier than is commonly supposed. As a rule our history books start with the year of Cæsar’s coming (55 B.C.), and treat everything before that date as belonging to absolute savagery. But there are many evidences which go to show that the Britons of that time were to some considerable extent a civilized people, who traded pretty extensively with Gaul (France, that is), and who knew how to make roads and embankments and, perhaps, even bridges.

As early man grew to be civilized, as he learned to drain the flooded lands by the side of the stream and turn them from desolate fens and marshes to smiling productive fields, and as he learned slowly how to get from the hillsides and the plain the full value of his labour, so he realized more and more the possibilities of the great river valley.

The Thames flows in what may be regarded as an excellent example of a river-basin. A large area, no less than six thousand square miles, is enclosed on practically all sides by ranges of hills, generally chalk hills, which slope down gently into its central plain; and across this area, from Gloucestershire to the North Sea, for more than two hundred miles the River winds slowly seawards, joined here and there by tributaries, which add their share to the stream as they come down from the encompassing heights.

The Birth of the River.

On the extreme west of the basin lie the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire. Here the Thames is born. The rain which falls on the hill-tops makes its way steadily into the soil, and is retained there. Down and down it sinks through the porous limestone and chalk, till eventually it reaches a layer of impenetrable material—clay, slate, or stone—through which it can no longer pursue its downward course. Its only way now is along the upper surface of the stratum of impermeable material. Thus it comes in time to the places on the hillsides where the stratum touches the open air (see diagram on p. 8), and there it gushes forth in the form of springs, which in turn become tiny streams, some falling westwards down the steep Severn valley, others running eastwards down the gentler declivity.

At their northern end the Cotswolds sweep round to join Edge Hill; and then the hill-wall crosses the uplands of that rolling country which we call the Central Tableland, and so comes to the long stretch of the East Anglian Heights, passing almost continuously eastward through Hertfordshire and North Essex to Suffolk. On the south side the ring of hills sweeps round by way of the Marlborough Downs, and so comes to the long scarp of the “North” Downs, which make their way eastwards to the Kentish coast.

Within the limits of this ring of hills the valley lies, not perfectly flat like an alluvial plain, but gently, very gently, undulating, seldom rising more than two or three hundred feet above sea-level, save where that great ridge of chalk—the Chiltern-Marlborough range—straddles right across the basin at Goring.

Standing on one of the little eminences of the valley we can survey the scene before us: we can watch the River for many miles winding its way seawards, and note in all directions the same fertile, flourishing countryside, with its meadows where the soft-eyed cattle browse on the rich grass; its warm, brown plough-lands; its rich, golden fields of wheat, oats, and barley; its pretty orchards and farms close at hand; its nestling, tidy villages; its little pointed church steeples dotted everywhere. We can see in the distance, maybe, one or two compact little towns, for towns always spring up on wide, well-farmed plains, since the farmers must have proper markets to which to send their supplies of eggs, butter, cheese, and milk, and proper mills where their grain may be ground into flour.

It is a pleasant, satisfying prospect—one which suggests industrious, thrifty farmers reaping the rich reward of their unsparing labours; and it is an interesting prospect, too, for this same prosperous countryside, very little altered during half-a-dozen centuries, has done much to establish and maintain the position of the Thames as the great river of England.

The usefulness of a river to its country depends on several things. In the first place, it must be able to carry goods—to act as a convenient highway along which the traffic can descend through the valley towards the busy places near the mouth. That is to say, it must be navigable to barges and small boats throughout a considerable portion of its length. In the second place, there must be the goods to carry. That is to say, the river must pass through a countryside which can produce in great quantity things which are needed. In the third place, the chief port of the river must lie in such a position that it is within comparatively easy distance of good foreign markets.

Now let us see how these three conditions apply to the River Thames.

Firstly, with regard to the goods themselves. If we take our map of England, and lay a pencil across it from Bristol to the Wash, we shall be marking off what has been through the greater part of English history the boundary of the wealthy portion of Britain, for only in modern times, since the development of the iron and coal fields, and the discovery that the damp climate of the north was exactly suited to the manufacture of textiles, has the great industrial North of England come into being. England in the Middle Ages, and on till a century or more ago, was an agricultural country; its wealth lay very largely in what it grew and what it reared; and the south provided the most suitable countryside for this sort of production. The consequence was that the Thames flowed right down through the centre of wealthy England. All round it were the chalk-ranges on which throve the great herds of long-fleeced sheep that provided the wonderful wool for which England was famous, and which was in many respects the main source of her prosperity. In between the hills were the cornfields and the orchards. And dotted all down the course at convenient points were thriving towns, each of which could, as it were, drain off the produce of the area behind it, and so act as a collecting and forwarding station for the traffic of the main stream.

The River, too, was quite capable of dealing with the great output, for it was navigable for barges and small boats as far as Lechlade, a matter of 150 miles from the mouth, and its tributaries were in most cases capable of bearing traffic for quite a few miles into the right and left interior. Moreover, its current at ordinary times was neither too swift nor too sluggish.

So that, with the wealth produced by the land and the means of transport provided by the River, the only things needed to make the Thames one of Europe’s foremost rivers were the markets.

Here again the Thames was fortunate in its situation, for its mouth stood in an advantageous position facing the most important harbours of Normandy, Flanders, Holland, and Germany, all within comparatively easy distance, and all of them ready to take our incomparable wool and our excellent corn in exchange for the things they could bring us. Moreover, the tides served in such a way that the double tides of the Channel and the North Sea made London the most easily reached port of all for ships coming from the south.

Thus, then, favoured as it was by its natural situation and by its character, the Thames became by far the most important highway in our land, and this it remained for several centuries—until the coming of the railways, in fact.

Now the River above London counts for very little in our system of communications. Like all other English waterways, canals and rivers alike, it has given place to the iron road, notwithstanding the fact that goods can be carried by water at a mere fraction of the cost of rail-transport. But our merchants do not seem to realize this; and so in this matter we find ourselves a long way behind our neighbours on the Continent.

LONDON RIVER

CHAPTER ONE

London River

From its mouth inwards to London Bridge the Thames is not the Thames, for like many another important commercial stream it takes its name from the Port to which the seamen make their way, and it becomes to most of those who use it—London River.

Now where does London River begin at the seaward side? At the Nore. The seaward limit of the Port of London Authority is somewhat to the east of the Nore Light, and consists of an imaginary line stretching from a point at the mouth of Havingore Creek (nearly four miles north-east of Shoeburyness on the Essex coast) to Warden Point on the Kent coast, eight miles or so from Sheerness; and this we may regard quite properly as the beginning of the River. The opening here is about ten miles wide, but narrows between Shoeburyness and Sheerness, where for more practical purposes the River commences, to about six miles.

Right here at the mouth the River receives its last and most important tributary—the Medway.

For some miles up the estuary and the lower reaches the character of the River is such that it is difficult to imagine anything less interesting, less impressive, less suggestive of what the river approach to the greatest city in the world should be; for there is nothing but flat land on all sides, so flat that were not the great sea-wall in position the whole countryside would soon revert to its original condition of marsh and fenland. Were we unfamiliar with the nature of the landscape, a glance at the map would convince us at once, for in continuous stretch from Sheerness and the Medway we find on the Kentish bank—Grain Marsh (the Isle of Grain), St. Mary’s Marshes, Halslow Marshes, Cooling Marshes, Cliffe Marshes, and so on. Nor is the Essex bank any better once we have left behind the slightly higher ground on which stand Southend, Westcliff, and Leigh, for the low, flat Canvey Island is succeeded by the Mucking and East Tilbury Marshes.

The Nore Lightship. Where London River joins the Sea.

The river-wall, extending right away from the mouth to London on the Essex side, is a wonderful piece of engineering—man’s continuously successful effort against the persistence of Nature—a feature strongly reminiscent of the Lowlands on the other side of the narrow seas. Who first made this mighty dyke? No one knows. Probably in many places it is not younger than Roman times, and there are certain things about it which tend to show an even earlier origin.

Indeed, so long ago was it made that the mouth and lower parts of the River must have presented to the various invaders through the centuries very much the same appearance as they present to anyone entering the Thames to-day. The Danes in their long ships, prowling round the Essex and Thanet coasts in search of a way into the fair land, probably saw just these same dreary flats on each hand, save that when they sailed unhindered up the River they caught in places the glint of waters beyond the less carefully attended embankment. The foreign merchants of the Middle Ages—the men of Genoa and Florence, of Flanders and the Hanseatic Towns—making their way upstream with an easterly wind and a flowing tide; the Elizabethan venturers coming back with their precious cargoes from long and perilous voyages; the Dutch sweeping defiantly into the estuary in the degenerate days of Charles II.—all these must have beheld a spectacle almost identical with that which greets our twentieth-century travellers returning from the East.

Sheerness on Sea

Perhaps, at first sight, one of the most striking things in all this stretch of the River is the absence of ancient fortifications. True, we have those at Sheerness, but they were made for the guarding of the dockyard and of the approach to the important military centre at Chatham, which lies a few miles up the River Medway. Surely this great opening into England, the gateway to London, this key to the entire situation, should have had frowning castles on each shore to call a halt to any venturesome, invading force. Thus we think at once with our twentieth-century conception of warfare—forgetting that the cannon of early days could never have served to throw a projectile more than a mere fraction of the distance across the stream.

Not till we pass up the Lower Hope and Gravesend Reaches and come to Tilbury and Gravesend, facing each other on the two banks, do we reach anything like a gateway. Then we find Tilbury Fort on the Essex shore, holding the way upstream. Here, at the ferry between the two towns, the River narrows to less than a mile in width; consequently the artillery of ancient days might have been used with something like effectiveness.

Training Ships off Greenhithe.

“Arethusa” for Homeless Boys

“Worcester” Nautical Training College

From Gravesend westwards the country still lies very low on each bank, but the monotony is not quite so continuous, for here and there, first at one side and then at the other, there rise from the widespread flats little eminences, and on these small towns generally flourish. At Northfleet and Greenhithe, for instance, where the chalk crops out, and the River flows up against cliffs from 100 to 150 feet high, there is by contrast quite a romantic air about the place, and the same may be said of the little town of Purfleet, which lies four miles up the straight stretch of Long Reach, its wooded chalk bluffs with their white quarries very prominent in the vast plain. But, for the most part, it is marshes, marshes all the way, particularly on the Essex shore—marshes where are concocted those poisonously unpleasant mixtures known as “London specials,” the thick fogs which do so much to make the River, and the Port as well, a particularly unpleasant place at certain times in winter. When a “London special” is about—that variety which East Enders refer to as the “pea-soup” variety—the thick, yellow, smoke-laden mist obscures everything, effectively putting an end to all business for the time being.

Passing Erith on the Kent coast, and Dagenham and Barking on the Essex, we come to the point where London really begins on its eastward side. From now onwards on each bank there is one long, winding line of commercial buildings, backed in each case by a vast and densely-populated area. On the southern shore come Plumstead and Woolwich, to be succeeded in continuity by Greenwich, Deptford, Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey; while on the northern side come in unbroken succession North Woolwich, Canning Town, and Silvertown (backed by those tremendous new districts—East and West Ham, Blackwall and Poplar, Millwall, Limehouse, Shadwell, and Wapping). In all the eleven miles or so from Barking Creek to London Bridge there is nothing to see but shipping and the things appertaining thereto—great cargo-boats moving majestically up or down the stream, little tugs fussing and snorting their way across the waters, wind-jammers of all sorts and sizes dropping down lazily on the tide, small coastal steamers, ugly colliers, dredgers, businesslike Customs motor-boats and River Police launches, vast numbers of barges, some moving beautifully under their own canvas, some being towed along in bunches, others making their way painfully along, propelled slowly by their long sweeps; there is nothing to hear but the noises of shipping—the shrill cry of the syren, the harsh rattling of the donkey-engines, the strident shouts of the seamen and the lightermen. Everything is marine, for this is the Port of London.

London’s Giant Gateway

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.

CHAPTER TWO

The Estuary and its Towns

Sheppey, on the coast of which is the Warden Point that forms one end of the Port of London boundary line, is an island, separated from the mainland of Kent by the Swale. People frequently speak of it as the “Isle of Sheppey,” but this title is not strictly correct, for the name Sheppey really includes the word “island.” William Camden, that old writer on geographical subjects, informs us that “this Isle of Sheepe, whereof it feedeth mightie great flocks, was called by our ancestours Shepey—that is, the Isle of Sheepe.”

Though it is only eleven miles long and five miles broad, this little island presents within its compass quite a variety of scenery, especially when the general flatness of the whole area round about is borne in mind; for, in addition to its riverside marshes, it has a distinctly hilly ridge, geologically related to the North Downs, surmounted by a little village rejoicing in the high-sounding name of Minster-in-Sheppey, wherein at one time was the ancient Saxon “minster” or “priory” of St. Saxburga. But the oft-repeated words concerning “prophets” and “honour” apply to this little out-of-the-way corner, for the men of Kent are wont to say that when the world was made Sheppey was never finished.

Naturally, from its situation, right at the entrance to the Thames, Sheppey always played some considerable part in the warfare of the lower river. What happened in these parts in very early days we do not know. We can only conjecture that Celts, coming across from the mainland of Europe in their frail vessels, found this way into Britain, and without hindrance sailed up the River to found the tiny settlement of Llyndin hill: we can only surmise that later some of the Saxons worked their way guardedly up the wide opening while the main body of their comrades found other ways into this fair land. Not till the ninth century do we begin to get any definite record of invasion. Then in 832 we find the Vikings, with their long-boats, hovering about the mouth of the River, landing in Sheppey and raiding that little island with its monastery on the hill. They returned in 839; and in 857 they came with a great fleet of their long-boats—350 of them—in order that they might advance up the River and make an attack on the city. In 893 they came yet again, landing either at Milton Creek on the Swale, or at Milton nearly opposite Tilbury (it is uncertain which); but the men of London drove them off. So it went on for many years, invasion after invasion, till the days of Canute, when the River played a very great part in the warfare, now favouring, now hampering the Danish leaders.

From the time of the Norman Conquest onwards there was, of course, nothing in the way of foreign invasions; and the Thames, ceasing to be a gateway by means of which the stranger might enter England, became a barrier impeding the progress of the various factions opposing each other in the national struggles—the War of the Barons, the Wars of the Roses, and the great Civil War. In these, however, the Thames below London played no very great part. Not till the days of Charles II., when the Dutch helped to write such a sorry chapter in our history, did the Thames again loom large in our military annals.

Sheerness is, of course, the most famous place on the island, for it has long been a considerable dockyard and port. The spot on which it was built was reclaimed from the marshes in the time of the Stuarts, and was chosen in the days of Charles II. as the situation for a new dockyard. If we turn up the “Diary” of old Samuel Pepys, the Secretary of the Admiralty of those days, we shall find under the date of August 18, 1665: “Walked up and down, laying out the ground to be taken in for a yard to lay provisions for cleaning and repairing of ships, and a most proper place it is for the purpose;” while on February 27, two years later, His Majesty was at Sheerness to lay those fortifications which were destined within less than six months to be destroyed by the Dutch.

The other important town in Sheppey is Queenborough, a well-known packet-station. Originally this was Kingborough, but it was rechristened by Edward III. in honour of his Queen, Philippa, at the time when William Wykeham (of whose skill as a builder we shall read in the chapter on Windsor in Book III.) erected a castle on the spot where the railway-station now stands. Eastchurch, towards the other end of the island, developed a splendid flying-ground during the War.

On the other side of the Medway, forming a peninsula between that river and the Thames, lies the Isle of Grain—a place which is not an island and which has nothing whatever to do with grain. It consists of a marshy promontory with a packet-station, Port Victoria, and a seaplane base, Fort Grain, and very little else beside. At its western extremity is the dirty little Yantlet Creek, close to which stands the well-known “London Stone,” an obelisk set up to mark the point where, prior to the Port of London Act, ended the power of the Lord Mayor of London in his capacity as Conservator of the Thames.

Westwards from Yantlet Creek are great flats out of which rise the batteries of Shornemead and Cliffe, considerable forts designed to serve with that of Coalhouse Point, opposite on the Essex shore, as a defence of the River. They were built in no very remote times, but were practically never anything else than useless against modern artillery, and were destined, so later military engineers said, to do more damage to each other than to any invading foes.

On the Essex coast, opposite Sheerness, are two famous places, Southend and Shoeburyness—the one a famous resort for trippers, the other an important school of artillery.

Not so very long ago Southend was unheard of. Defoe, who covered the ground hereabouts pretty thoroughly, makes no mention of it even as a hamlet; yet to-day it is a flourishing and constantly growing town—not so much a watering-place nowadays as a rather distant suburb of London. For here and in the adjacent district of Westcliff, now by the builders and the trams joined on, and even in Leigh still farther west, live many of London’s more successful workers, making the daily journey to and from town. Nor is this surprising, for Southend is an enterprising borough—one that makes the most of its natural advantages, and endeavours to cater equally well for the residents and the casual visitors. Of course, the town will always be associated with day-trippers from London, folk who come down with their families to get a “whiff of the briny,” and a taste of the succulent cockles for which Southend is noted, and to enjoy a ride in one of the numerous boats, or on the tram that runs along the mile and a half length of Southend’s vaunted possession, the longest pier in England. And while we laugh sometimes at these trippers with their ribald enjoyment of strange scenes, we must admit that they choose a most healthy and enjoyable place.

At Shoeburyness, approached by way of the tramcars, things are far more serious. Cockney joviality seldom gets so far from the pier as this. Off the land here is a very extensive bank of shallows, and here the artillerymen carry out their practice, the advantage being that in such a spot the costly projectiles fired can be recovered and put in order for future use.

Canvey Island, which lies tucked away in a little corner to the west of Leigh, is yet another example of man’s triumph over nature, for it has veritably been stolen from the waters. It was reclaimed as long ago as 1622, by one Joas Cropperburgh, who for his labours received about two thousand of its six thousand acres. And Dutch most assuredly Canvey is—with quaint Dutch cottages, one of them a six-sided affair, dated 1621, and set up by the very Dutchmen who came over to construct the dams, and with Dutch dykes dividing the fields instead of hedges. Robert Buchanan, in his novel “Andromeda,” wrote of it in these terms: “Flat as a map, so intermingled with creeks and runlets that it is difficult to say where water ends and land begins, Canvey Island lies, a shapeless octopus, right under the high ground of Benfleet and Hadleigh, and stretches out muddy and slimy feelers to touch and dabble in the deep water of the flowing Thames. Away across the marshes rise the ancient ruins of Hadleigh Castle, further eastwards the high spire and square tower of Leigh Church.”

At the village of Benfleet, which he mentions, the Danes landed when in 874 they made one of their characteristic raids on the Thames Estuary; and here they hoarded up the goods filched from the Essex villages till such time as there should come a wind favourable for the journey home.

Like various other places on the Estuary and the lower reaches of the River, Canvey Island has on occasions been proposed as a place for deep-sea wharves, so that unloading might be carried out without the journey up river, but so far nothing definite has come of these suggestions.

CHAPTER THREE

The Medway and its Towns

From its position right at the entrance to the River the Medway tributary has always offered a considerable contribution to the defence of London. Going off as it does laterally from the main stream, the Medway estuary has acted the part of a remarkably fine flank retreat. Our forces, driven back at any time to the refuge of the River, could always split up—part proceeding up the main stream towards London, and part taking refuge in the protected network of waterways behind Sheppey and the Isle of Grain. So that the indiscreet enemy, chasing the main portion of the fleet up the estuary of the River, would always be in danger of being caught between two fires. Which fact probably accounts for the tremendous importance with which the Medway has always been regarded in naval and military circles.

Passing between the Isle of Grain and Sheppey, and leaving on our left hand the Swale, in which, so tradition says, St. Augustine baptized King Ethelbert at Whitsun, 596, and on the other bank Port Victoria, the packet-station, we find nothing very striking till we catch sight of Upnor Castle, on the western bank of the river, facing the Chatham Dockyard Extension. This queer old, grey-walled fortress with its cylindrical towers, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, is not a very impressive place. It does not flaunt its strength from any impregnable cliff, or even fling defiance from the top of a little hill. Instead, it lies quite low on the river bank. Yet it has had one spell of real life as a fortress, a few days of activity in that inglorious time with which the tributary will ever be associated—the days of “the Dutch in the Medway,” when de Ruyter and van Ghent came with some sixty vessels to the Nore and in about two hours laid level with the ground the magnificent and recently-erected fortifications of Sheerness. This and the happenings of the next few weeks formed, as old John Evelyn says in his “Diary,” “a dreadfull spectacle as ever Englishman saw, and a dishonour never to be wiped off!”

In the pages of Charles Macfarlane’s story, “The Dutch in the Medway,” is to be found a most interesting account of these calamitous days, from which we cull the following extracts: “On the following morning—the memorable morning of the 12th of June—a very fresh wind from the north-east blew over Sheerness and the Dutch fleet, and a strong spring-tide set the same way as the wind, raising and pouring the waters upward from the broad estuary in a mighty current. And now de Ruyter roused himself from his inactivity, and gave orders to his second in command, Admiral van Ghent, to ascend the river towards Chatham with fire-ships, and fighting ships of various rates. Previously to the appearance of de Ruyter on our coasts, his Grace of Albemarle had sunk a few vessels about Muscle Bank, at the narrowest part of the river, had constructed a boom, and drawn a big iron chain across the river from bank to bank, and within the boom and chain he had stationed three king’s ships; and having done these notable things, he had written to Court that all was safe on the Medway, and that the Dutch would never be able to break through his formidable defences. But now van Ghent gave his Grace the lie direct; for, favoured by the heady current and strong wind, the prows of his ships broke through the boom and iron chain as though they had been cobwebs, and fell with an overwhelming force upon the ill-manned and ill-managed ships which had been brought down the river to eke out this wretched line of defence. The three ships, the Unity, the Matthias, and the Charles V., which had been taken from the Dutch in the course of the preceding year—the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden’s flattering poem—were presently recaptured and burned under the eyes of the Duke of Albemarle, and of many thousands of Englishmen who were gathered near the banks of the Medway.

“On the following morning (Thursday, the 13th of June) at about ten o’clock, as the tide was rising, and the wind blowing right up the river, van Ghent, who had been lying at anchor near the scene of his yesterday’s easy triumph, unfurled his top-sails, called his men to their guns, and began to steer through the shallows for Chatham.

“The mid-channel of the Medway is so deep, the bed so soft, and the reaches of the river are so short, that it is the safest harbour in the kingdom. Our great ships were riding as in a wet dock, and being moored to chains fixed to the bottom of the river, they swung up and down with the tide. But all these ships, as well as many others of lower rates, were almost entirely deserted by their crews, or rather by those few men who had been put in them early in the spring, rather as watchmen than as sailors; some were unrigged, some had never been finished, and scarcely one of them had either guns or ammunition on board, although hurried orders had been sent down to equip some of them and to remove others still higher up the river out of the reach of danger.

“It was about the hour of noon when van Ghent let go his anchor just above Upnor Castle. But his fire-ships did not come to anchor. No! Still favoured by wind and tide, they proceeded onward, and presently fell among our great but defenceless ships. The two first of these fire-ships burned without any effect, but the rest that went upward grappled the Great James, the Royal Oak, and the Loyal London, and these three proud ships which, under other names, and even under the names they now bore, had so often been plumed with victory, lay a helpless prey to the enemy, and were presently in a blaze.

“Having burned to the water’s edge the London, the James, and the Royal Oak, and some few other vessels of less note, van Ghent thought it best to take his departure. Yet, great as was the mischief he had done, it was so easy to have done a vast deal more, that the English officers at Chatham could scarcely believe their own eyes when they saw him prepare to drop down the river with the next receding tide, and without making any further effort ... the trumpeters on their quarter decks playing ‘Loth to depart’ and other tunes very insulting and offensive to English pride.”

What shall we say of Chatham, Rochester, and the associated districts of Stroud and New Brompton? It is difficult, indeed, to find a great deal that is praiseworthy. They may perhaps still be summed up in Mr. Pickwick’s words: “The principal productions of these towns appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men.”

Formerly the view from the heights of Chatham Hill must have been a splendid one, with the broad Medway and its vast marshlands stretching away for miles across to the wooded uplands of Hoo. Now it appears almost as if a large chunk of the crowded London streets had been lifted bodily and dropped down to blot out the beauties of the scene, for there is little other to be seen than squalid buildings huddled together in mean streets, with just here and there a great chimney-stack to break the monotony of the countless roofs.

The dockyard at Chatham is much the same as any other dockyard, and calls for no special description. From its slips have been launched many brave battleships, right down from the days of Elizabeth to our own times. Here at all seasons may be seen cruisers, battleships, destroyers, naval craft of all sorts, dry docked for refitting. All day long the air resounds to the noise of the automatic riveter, and the various sounds peculiar to a shipbuilding area.

For many years the dockyard was associated with the name of Pett, a name famous in naval matters, and it was on one member of the family, Peter Pett, commissioner at Chatham, that most of the blame for the unhappy De Ruyter catastrophe most unjustly fell. Somebody had to be the scapegoat for all the higher failures, and poor Pett went to the Tower. But not all people agreed with the choice, as we may see from these satirical lines which were very popular at the time:

“All our miscarriages on Pett must fall;

His name alone seems fit to answer all.

Whose Counsel first did this mad War beget?

Who would not follow when the Dutch were bet?

Who to supply with Powder did forget

Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend and Upnor? Pett.

Pett, the Sea Architect, in making Ships

Was the first cause of all these Naval slips;

Had he not built, none of these faults had bin:

If no Creation, there had been no Sin.”

Rochester Castle.

The river here is a very busy place, and is under certain circumstances quite picturesque. There is a weird blending of ancient and modern, of the dimly-comprehended past and the blatant, commercial present, along Limehouse Reach, with its tremendous coal-hoists, and its smoking stacks, and its brown-sailed barges and snorting tugs—with the great masses of Rochester Castle and Cathedral looming out behind it all.

Limehouse Reach is, indeed, an appropriate name, for all along this part, especially in the suburbs of Stroud and Frindsbury, the lime and cement-making industries are carried on extensively. Throughout a great deal of its length the Medway Valley is scarred by great quarries cut into the chalk hills; for it is chalk and the river mud, mixed roughly in the proportion of three to one and then burned in a kiln, which give the very valuable Portland cement, an invention now about a century old.

Rochester Cathedral

Rochester itself is a quaint old place, standing on the ancient Roman road from Dover to London, and guarding the important crossing of the Medway. It can show numbers of Roman remains in addition to its fine old Norman castle, and its Cathedral with a tale of eight centuries. The town stands to-day much as it stood when Dickens first described it in his volumes. The Corn Exchange is still there—“oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave, red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign;” and so are Mr. Pickwick’s “Bull Hotel,” and the West Gate (Jasper’s Gateway), and Eastbury House (Nuns’ House) of “Edwin Drood”; also the famous house of the “Seven Poor Travellers.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Gravesend and Tilbury

The dreary fenland district which stretches from the Isle of Grain inland to Gravesend is that so admirably used by Dickens for local colour in his novel, “Great Expectations.” Some of his descriptions of the scenery in this place of “mudbank, mist, swamps, and work” cannot be bettered.

Here is Cooling Marsh with its quaint, fourteenth-century relic, Cooling Castle Gatehouse, built at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt, when the rich folk of the land found it expedient to do little or nothing to aggravate the peasantry. The builder, Sir John de Cobham, realizing the danger, saw fit to attach to one of the towers of his stronghold a plate, to declare to all and sundry that there was in his mind no thought other than that of protection from some anticipated foreign incursions. This plate is still in position on the ruin, and reads:

“Knowyth that beth and schul be

That I am mad in help of the cuntre

In knowyng of whyche thyng

Thys is chartre and wytnessynge.”

According to Dr. J. Holland Rose, the authority on Napoleonic subjects, it was at a spot somewhere along this little stretch that Napoleon at the beginning of the last century proposed to land one of his invading columns. Other columns would land at various points on the Essex and Kent coasts, and all would then converge on London, the main objective. In fact, the Thames Estuary was such a vulnerable point that it occupied a considerable position in the scheme of defence drawn up for Pitt by the Frenchman Dumouriez.

Gravesend itself from the River is not by any means an ill-favoured place, despite its rather commercial aspect. Backed by the sloping chalk hills, and with a goodly number of trees breaking up the mass of its buildings, it presents a tolerably picturesque appearance. Particularly is it a welcome sight to those returning to England after a long voyage, for it is frequently the first English town seen at all closely.

Gravesend

At Gravesend the ships, both those going up and those going down, take aboard their pilots. The Royal Terrace Pier, which is the most prominent thing on Gravesend river front, is the headquarters of the two or three hundred navigators whose business it is to pilot ships to and from the Port of London, or out to sea as far as Dungeness on the south channel, or Orfordness, off Harwich, on the north channel. These men work under the direction of a “ruler,” who is an official of Trinity House, the corporation which was founded at Deptford in the reign of Henry VIII., and which now regulates lighthouses, buoys, etc.

Gravesend is famous for two delicacies, its shrimps and its whitebait, and the town possesses quite a considerable shrimp-fishing fleet.

As in the Medway Valley, the cement works form a conspicuous feature in the district round about. In fact, all this stretch, where the chalk hills crop out towards the River’s edge, has been famous through long years for the quarrying of chalk and the making of lime, and afterwards cement. As long ago as Defoe’s time we have that author writing: “Thus the barren soil of Kent, for such the chalky grounds are esteemed, make the Essex lands rich and fruitful, and the mixture of earth forms a composition which out of two barren extremes makes one prolific medium; the strong clay of Essex and Suffolk is made fruitful by the soft meliorating melting chalk of Kent which fattens and enriches it.”

A River-side Cement Works

On the Essex coast opposite Gravesend are the Tilbury Docks and the Tilbury Fort—eloquent reminders of the present and the past. At the Fort the ancient and the new lie in close proximity, the businesslike but obsolete batteries of modern times keeping company with the quaint old blockhouse, which at one time formed such an important point in the scheme of Thames defence.

This old Tilbury Fort, with its seventeenth-century gateway, has been so frequently painted that many folk who have never seen it are quite familiar with its outline. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the folk of Tilbury, realizing how vulnerable their settlement was, set to work to fortify it, and later Henry VIII. built a blockhouse here, probably on the site of an ancient Roman encampment. This, when the Spanish Armada threatened, was altered and strengthened by Gianibelli, the clever Italian engineer. Hither Elizabeth came, and, so tradition says, made a soul-stirring speech to her soldiers:

The Gatehouse, Tilbury Fort.

“My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery. But I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. And therefore I am come among you at this time, not as for any recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst of the heat and the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm. To which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.”

She had need to feed them on words, for by reason of her own meanness and procrastination the poor wretches had empty stomachs, or would have had if the citizens of London had not loyally come to the assistance of their soldiers. In any case Elizabeth’s exertion was quite unnecessary, for the winds and the waves had conspired to do for England what the Queen’s niggardliness might easily have prevented our brave fellows from doing.

An earlier and no less interesting drama was enacted at Tilbury and Gravesend in the reign of Richard II. Close in the train of that national calamity, the Black Death, came in not unnatural consequence the outbreak known as the Peasants’ Revolt. Just a short way east of Tilbury, at a little village called Fobbing, broke out Jack Straw’s rising; and almost simultaneously came the outburst of Wat Tyler, when the Kentish insurgents marched on Canterbury, plundered the Palace, and dragged John Ball from his prison; then moved rapidly across Kent, wrecking and burning. At Tilbury and Gravesend these two insurgent armies met, and thence issued their summons to the King to meet them. He, brave lad of fifteen, entered his barge with sundry counsellors, and made his way downstream. How he met the disreputable rabble, and how the peasants were enraged because he was not permitted to land and come among them, is a well-known story, as is the furious onslaught on London which resulted from the refusal.

Thus far up the River came the Dutch in those terrible days of which we read in our last chapter. They sailed upstream on the day of their arrival, firing guns so that the sound was heard in the streets of London, but they came to a halt slightly below the point where the barricade, running down into the water from the Essex shore, largely closed up the waterway, and where the little Fort frowned down on the intruders. No attempt was made to stay them; indeed, none could have been made, for while the little blockhouse was well provided with guns, it was practically without powder; and the invaders could have proceeded right into the Pool of London without hindrance had they but known it. However, they were content for the time being with merely frightening the countryside with their terrible noise. As Evelyn says in his “Diary” (June 10): “The alarm was so great that it put both country and city into a panic, fear and consternation, such as I hope I shall never see more; everybody was flying, none knew why or whither.” Having done this, the Dutch passed downstream to Sheerness, where their companions were engaged in destroying the fortifications. How long they stayed in these parts may be judged by this other extract from Evelyn, dated seven weeks after (July 29): “I went to Gravesend, the Dutch fleet still at anchor before the river, where I saw five of His Majesty’s men-of-war encounter above twenty of the Dutch, in the bottom of the Hope, chasing them with many broadsides given and returned towards the buoy of the Nore, where the body of their fleet lay, which lasted till about midnight.... Having seen this bold action, and their braving us so far up the river, I went home the next day, not without indignation at our negligence, and the Nation’s reproach.”

In 1904 it was proposed in the House of Commons that there should be made at Gravesend a great barrage or dam, right across the River Thames, with a view to keeping a good head of water in the stream above Gravesend, much as the half-tide lock (about which we shall read in Book III.) does at Richmond. This, the proposers said, would do away with the cost of so much dredging, and would make the building of riverside quays a much simpler and more satisfactory matter, for by it the whole length of river between Gravesend and London would be to all intents converted into one gigantic dock-basin. It was proposed that the barrage should have in it four huge locks to cope with the large amount of shipping, also a road across the top and a railway tunnel underneath. But many weighty objections were urged, and numerous difficulties were pointed out, so that the scheme fell through; and so far the only semblance of a barrage known to Gravesend has been that which was thrown right across the lower River for defensive purposes during the Great War.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Marshes

The stretch between Gravesend and the beginnings of the Metropolis can scarcely be regarded as an interesting portion of the River. True, there are one or two places which stand out from the commonplace level, but for the most part there is nothing much to attract; and certainly from the point of view of the navigator of big ships there is much in this stretch to repel, for here are to be found the numerous shoals which tend to make the passage of the River so difficult.

Indeed, the problem of the constant filling of the bed of the River has always been a difficult one with the authorities. The River brings down a tremendous quantity of material (it is estimated that 1,000 tons of carbonate of lime pass beneath Kingston Bridge each day), and the tides bring in immense amounts of sand and gravel. Now, what becomes of all this insoluble material? It passes on, carried by the stream or the tidal waters, till it reaches the parts of the River where the downflowing stream and the incoming sea-water are in conflict, and so neutralize each other that there is no great flow of water. Then, no longer impelled, the material sinks to the bottom and forms great banks of sand, etc., which would in time grow to such an extent that navigation would be impeded, were not dredgers constantly engaged in the work of clearing the passage. It was largely this obstacle to efficient navigation that led to the creation of the great deep-sea docks at Tilbury.

Northfleet, formerly a small village straggling up the side of a chalk hill, is now to all intents a suburb of Gravesend, so largely has each grown in recent years. Here, officially at any rate, are situated (about a mile to the west of Gravesend proper) those notorious Rosherville Gardens which in the middle of last century made Gravesend famous, and provided Londoners with a plausible reason for a trip down the River. The gardens were laid out in 1830 to 1835 by one Jeremiah Rosher, several disused chalk-pits being used for the purpose; and here the jovial Cockney visitors regaled themselves within quaint little arbours with tea and the famous Gravesend shrimps, and later danced to the light of Chinese lanterns till it was time to return citywards from the day’s high jinks.

The Dockyard at Northfleet, constructed towards the end of the eighteenth century, was at one time a place of considerable importance, for here were built and launched numbers of fine vessels, both on behalf of the Royal Navy and of the East India Company. Now it has dwindled to comparative insignificance. Indeed, from a shipping point of view, the only interest lies in the numerous and familiar tan-sailed barges of the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers; for Northfleet is one of the main centres of the cement industry so far as the Thames-side is concerned—an industry which is in evidence right along this stretch till the chalk hills end at Greenhithe, the town from which Sir John Franklin set out in 1845 on his illfated expedition to the North-West Passage.

At Grays (or Grays Thurrock, as it is more properly called), on the Essex bank, are numbers of those curious subterranean chalk caves which are a feature of most of the chalk uplands on both sides of the River, and which have caused so much discussion among the archæologists. These consist of vertical shafts, 3 or 4 feet in diameter, dug down through anything from 50 to 100 feet of sand into the chalk below, where they widen out into caves 20 or more feet long. As many as seventy-two of them have been counted within a space of 4 acres in the Hangman’s Wood at Grays. What they were for no one can tell. All sorts of things have been conjectured, from the fabulous gold-mines of Cunobeline to the smugglers’ refuges of comparatively modern times. One thing is certain: they are of tremendous age. Probably they were used by their makers mainly as secret storehouses for grain. They are commonly called Dene-holes or Dane-holes, and are said to have served as hiding-places in that hazardous period when the Danes made life in the valley anything but pleasant. But this, while it may have been true, in no way solves the mystery of their origin.

Purfleet, especially from a distance, is by no means unattractive, for quite close to the station a wooded knoll, quaintly named Botany, rises from the general flatness, and its greenery, contrasting strongly with the white of the chalk-pits, lifts the town out of that dreariness, merging into the positively ugly, which is the keynote of this part of the River beside the Long and Fiddler’s Reaches. The Government powder-magazine sets the fashion in beauty along a stretch which includes lime-kilns, rubbish heaps of all sorts, and various small and dingy works. Here at Purfleet (and also at Thames Haven, lower down the River) have in recent years been set down great installations for the storage of petrol and other liquid fuels—a riverside innovation of great and increasing importance.

Bugsby’s Reach

To the west of Purfleet lies a vast stretch of flats, known as Dagenham Marshes, in many places considerably lower than the level of the River at high tide, but protected from its advances by the great river-wall. Apparently the wall at this spot must have been particularly weak, for right through the Middle Ages and onwards we find it recorded that great stretches of the meadows were laid under water owing to the irruption of the tidal waters into the wall. There were serious inundations in 1376, 1380, and 1381, when the landowners combined to effect repairs. Again in 1594 and 1595 there was a serious failure of the dyke, with the result that the whole adjacent flats were covered twice a day. Now, this in itself would not have been so extremely serious; but the constant passing in and out of the water caused a deep hole to be washed out just inside the wall, and made the material bank up and form a bar on the opposite side of the stream. For a quarter of a century nothing was done, but eventually the Dutchman Vermuyden was called in, and he repaired the wall successfully. But in the days of Anne came an even more serious irruption, when the famous Dagenham breach was formed. One night in the year 1707, owing to the carelessness of the official in charge, the waters broke the dyke once more, and swamped an area of a thousand acres or more, doing a vast deal of mischief. Once again the danger to navigation occurred, as the gravel, etc., swept out at each tide, formed a shoal half-way across the River, and fully a mile in length. So dangerous, indeed, was it that Parliament stepped in to find the £40,000 needed for the repairs—a sum which the owners of the land could not have found. The waters were partially drained off, and the bank repaired; but a very big lake remained behind the wall, and remains to this day, as most anglers are aware.

Towards the end of last century a scheme was set on foot for the construction of an immense dock here, because, it was urged, the excavations already done by the water would render the cost of construction smaller. Parliament agreed to the proposal, and it appeared as if this lonely part of Essex might become a great commercial centre; but the construction of the Tilbury Docks effectively put an end to the scheme. Now there is a Dagenham Dock, but it is merely a fair-sized wharf, engaged for the most part in the coal trade.

Barking stands on the River Roding, a tributary which comes down by way of Ongar from the Hatfield Forest district near Epping, and which, before it joins the main River, widens out to form Barking Creek, which was, before the rise of Grimsby, the great fishing harbour.

Barking is a place of great antiquity, and of great historic interest, though one would scarcely gather as much from a casual glance at its very ordinary streets with their commonplace shops and rows of drab houses—just as one would scarcely gather any idea of the charm of the Roding at Ongar and above from a glimpse of the slimy Creek. The town, in fact, goes even so far as to challenge the rival claims of Westminster and the City to contain the site of the earliest settlements of prehistoric man along the River valley. And certainly the earthworks discovered on the north side of the town—fortifications more than forty acres in extent and quite probably of Ancient British origin—even if they do not justify the actual claim, at least support the town in its contention that it is a place of great age.

Little or nothing is known, however, till we come to the time of the foundation of its Abbey in the year 670. In that year, perhaps by reason of its solitude out there in the marshes, the place appealed to St. Erkenwald, the Bishop of London, as a good place for a monastic institution, and the great Benedictine Abbey of the Blessed Virgin, the first English convent for women, arose from the low-lying fenlands, and started its life under the direction of the founder’s sister, St. Ethelburgha.

It was destroyed by the Danes when they ventured up river in the year 870, but was rebuilt by King Edgar, after lying practically desolate for a century. By the time of the Conquest it had become a place of very great importance in the land, and to it came William after the treaty with the citizens of London, and to it he returned when his coronation was over, and there established his Court till such time as the White Tower should be finished by the monk Gundulf and his builders.

Certainly it is a strange commentary on the irony of Time that this present-day desolation of drab streets should once have been the centre of fashion, to which came all the nobles in the south of England, bringing their ladies fair, decked out in gay apparel to appear before the King.

In 1376 the Abbey met with its first great misfortune. In that year Nature conspired to the undoing of man’s great handiwork on the River, and the tide made a great breach at Dagenham, thereby causing the flooding of many acres of the Abbey lands, and driving the nuns from their home to higher ground at Billericay. So much was the prosperity of the Abbey affected by this disaster that the Convent of the Holy Trinity, in London, granted the Abbess the sum of twenty pounds annually (a large sum in those days) to help with the reclaiming of the land.

Now of all the fine buildings of the Abbey practically nothing is left. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed into the King’s hands, and was afterwards sold to Lord Clinton. It has since gone through many ownerships, but no one has seen fit to preserve it. So that now practically all we can find is a sadly disfigured gateway at the entrance to the churchyard. This was at one time referred to as the “Chapel of the Holy Rood Loft atte Gate,” but the name was afterwards changed to the more conveniently spoken “Fire-bell Gate.” Of the actual Abbey buildings nothing remains.

The London church of All Hallows, Barking, standing at the eastern end of Tower Street, quite close to Mark Lane Station, bears witness to the privileges and great power of the nunnery in ancient days, for the church was probably founded by the Abbey, and certainly the patronage of the living was in the hands of the Abbess from the end of the fourteenth century to the time of the suppression of the monasteries.

Just to the west of the Creek mouth is the outfall of the northern drainage system of London. Vast quantities of sewage are brought daily, by means of a gigantic concrete outfall sewer, which passes across the flats from Old Ford and West Ham to Barking; and there they are deposited in huge reservoirs covering ten acres of ground. The sewage passes through four great compartments which together hold thirty-nine million gallons; and, having been rendered more or less innocuous, is discharged into the Thames at high tide. This arrangement was one of the chief objections urged against the great barrage at Gravesend.

CHAPTER SIX

Woolwich

For many years there was a local saying to the effect that “more wealth passes through Woolwich than through any other town in the world,” and, though at first sight this may seem a gross exaggeration, yet when we remember that Woolwich is in two parts, one on each side of the River, we can see at once the justice of that claim, for it simply meant that all the vast traffic to and from the Pool of London went along the Thames as it flowed between the two divisions of the town.

To-day as we look at the drab, uninteresting place which occupies the sloping ground extending up Shooter’s Hill and the riverside extent from Charlton to Plumstead, we find it difficult to believe that this was ever a place of such great charm that London folk found in it a favourite summer-time resort. Yet we have only to turn up the “Diary” of good old Pepys to read (May 28, 1667): “My wife away down with Jane and Mr. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre, and to lie there to-night, and so to gather may-dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Yarner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with; and I am contented with it.”

Of course, in those days Woolwich was in the country, surrounded by fields and woods, in the latter of which lurked footpads ever ready to relieve the unwary traveller of his purse. Thus we have Pepys writing in 1662: “To Deptford and Woolwich Yard. At night, I walked by brave moonlight with three or four armed men to guard me, to Rotherhithe, it being a joy to my heart to think of the condition that I was now in, that people should of themselves provide this for me, unspoke to. I hear this walk is dangerous to walk by night, and much robbery committed there”; and again in 1664: “By water to Woolwich, and walked back from Woolwich to Greenwich all alone; saw a man that had a cudgel, and though he told me he laboured in the King’s yard, yet, God forgive me! I did doubt he might knock me on the head behind with his club.”

Woolwich

Even a hundred years ago Woolwich was a comparatively small place, consisting largely of the one main street, the High Street, with smaller ways running down to the riverside. Shooter’s Hill was then merely wild heathland, ill-reputed as the haunt of highwaymen.

Yet, for all that, Woolwich has been an important place through long years, for here have existed for centuries various Government factories and storehouses—at first the dockyards, and afterwards the Arsenal.

Just when the dockyards were founded it is difficult to say, but it is generally agreed that it was either at the end of the reign of Henry VII. or at the beginning of that of Henry VIII. Certain it is that from the latter’s reign down to the early days of Victoria the dockyard flourished. From its slips were launched many of the most famous of the early old “wooden walls of England”—the Great Harry (afterwards called the Henry Grace de Dieu), the Prince Royal, the Sovereign Royal, and also many of those made famous by the glorious victories of Drake and Cavendish, and in the wonderful voyages of Hawkins and Frobisher. The Sovereign Royal, which was launched in the time of Charles I., was a fine ship of over 1,600 tons burden, and carried no less than a hundred guns. “This royal ship,” says old Stow, “was curiously carved, and gilt with gold, so that when she was in the engagement against the Dutch they gave her the name of the ‘Golden Devil,’ her guns, being whole cannon, making such havoc and slaughter among them.”

With the passing away of the “wooden walls” and the advent of those huge masses of steel and iron which have in modern times taken the place of the picturesque old “three-deckers,” Woolwich began to decay as a Royal dockyard; for it soon became an unprofitable thing to build at Thames-side, and the shipbuilding industry migrated to towns nearer to the coalfields and the iron-smelting districts.

Yet Woolwich continued, and has continued right down to this very day, its activities as a gun-foundry and explosives factory. Just when this part of the Royal works was founded we do not know. There is a story extant (and for years the story was accepted as gospel) to the effect that the making of the Arsenal was due entirely to a disastrous explosion at Moorfields in the year 1716. Apparently much of the Government work in those days was put out to contract, and a certain factory in the Moorfields area took a considerable share in the work. On one occasion a very large crowd had assembled to witness the casting of some new and more up-to-date guns from the metal of those captured by the Duke of Marlborough. Just as everything was ready, a clever young Swiss engineer, named Schalch, noticed that the material in the moulds was wet, and he warned the authorities of the danger. No notice was taken, the molten metal was poured into the castings, and there was a tremendous explosion. According to the story, the authorities were so impressed by the part which Schalch had played in the matter that they appointed him to take charge of a new Government foundry, and gave him the choice of a site on which to build his new place, and he chose the Woolwich Warren, slightly to the east of the Royal Dockyards. This is a most interesting story, and one with an excellent moral, no doubt—such a story, in fact, as would have delighted the heart of old Samuel Smiles; but, unfortunately for its veracity, there have been discovered at Woolwich various records which prove the existence of the Arsenal before Schalch was born.

In normal times the Arsenal provides employment for more than eight thousand hands, but, of course, in war-time this number is increased tremendously. During the South African War, for instance, more than twenty thousand were kept on at full time, and the numbers during the Great War, when women were called in to assist and relieve the boys and men, were even greater.

Of course, we cannot see everything at Woolwich Arsenal. There are certain buildings in the immense area where strangers are never permitted to go. In these various experiments are being carried out, various new inventions tested, and for this work secrecy is essential. It would never do for a rival foreign Power to get even small details of a new gun, or explosive, or other warlike device. But still there is much that can be seen (after permission to visit has been obtained from the War Office)—remarkable machines which turn out with amazing rapidity the various parts of cartridges and shells; giant rolling machines and steam-hammers that fashion the huge blocks of steel, and tremendous machines that convert them into huge guns; machines by which gun-carriages and ammunition-waggons are turned out by the dozen.

Half a century ago there was a great stir at Woolwich when the Arsenal turned out for the arming of the good ship Hercules a new gun known as the “Woolwich Infant.” This weapon, which required a fifty-pound charge of powder, could throw a projectile weighing over two hundredweights just about six miles, and could cause a shell to pierce armour more than a foot thick at a distance of a mile. Naturally, folk in those days thought them terrible weapons. But the “infants” were soon superseded, for a few years later Woolwich turned out what were known as “eighty-one-ton guns”—deadly weapons which could fire a shell weighing twelve hundred pounds. Folk lifted their hands in surprise at the attainments of those days; but it is difficult to imagine their amazement if they could have seen our present-day guns firing shells thirty miles, or the great “Big Bertha,” by means of which the Germans fired shots from a distance of seventy miles into Paris.

The tremendous guns of to-day are built up, not cast in moulds all in one piece, as were those in the early years of the Woolwich foundry. There is an inner tube and an outer, the latter of which is shrunk on to the former. The larger tube is heated, and of course the metal expands. While it is in that condition the other is placed inside, and the whole thing is lowered by tremendous cranes into a big bath of oil. The metal contracts again as it cools, and in that way the outer tube is fixed so tightly against the inner that they become practically one single tube, but with greatly added strength. The tube is then carried to a giant lathe, where it receives the rifling on its inner surface.

When we turn away from Woolwich it is perhaps with something like a sigh to think that men will spend all this money, and devote all this time and labour and material, merely in order that they may be able to blow each other to pieces.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Greenwich

The history of towns no less than the history of men can tell strange tales of failure and success. Some have had their era of intoxicating splendour, have been beloved of kings and commoners alike, have counted for much in the great struggles with which our tale is punctuated, and then, their little day over, have shrunk to the merest vestige of their former glory. Others, unknown and insignificant villages throughout most of the story, have sprung up, mushroom-like, almost in a night, and entered suddenly and confidently into the affairs of the nation.

In the former class must, perhaps, be counted Greenwich. True, it has not had the disastrous fall, the unspeakable humiliation, of some English towns—Rye and Winchelsea on the south coast, for instance—yet over Greenwich now might well be written that word “Ichabod”—“The glory is departed.” For Greenwich to-day, apart from its two places of outstanding interest, the Hospital and the Park with its Observatory, is largely an affair of mean streets, a collection of tiny, uninteresting shops and drab houses. Yet Greenwich was for long a place of great fame, to which came kings and courtiers, for here was that ancient and glorious Palace of Placentia, a strong favourite with numbers of our monarchs.

Greenwich Park.

Really it began its life as a Royal demesne in the year 1443, when the manor was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and permission given for the fortification of the building and enclosing of a park of two hundred acres. The Duke interpreted his permission liberally, and erected a new palace, to which he gave the name of Placentia, the House of Pleasance. He formed the park, and at the summit of the little hill, one hundred and fifty feet or more above the River, constructed a tower on the identical spot where the Observatory now stands. On Humphrey’s death the Crown once more took charge of the property. Edward IV. spent great sums in beautifying it, so that it was held in the highest esteem by the monarchs that followed. Henry VII. provided it with a splendid brickwork river front to increase its comeliness.

Here, in 1491, was born Henry VIII., and here he married Katherine of Aragon. Here, too, his daughters, Mary (1515) and Elizabeth (1533), first saw the light. Edward VI., his pious young son, breathed his last within the walls.

In those days the River banks did not present quite the same commercial aspect as in our own times; the atmosphere was not quite so befouled by the smoke of innumerable chimneys, the water was not quite so muddy; and in consequence the journey by water from the City to that country place, Greenwich, was a little more pleasant. Indeed, it is said that the view up river from Greenwich Park rivalled that from Richmond Hill in beauty. In those days all who could went by water, for the River was the great highway. Then was its surface gay with brightly painted and decorated barges, threading their way downstream among the picturesque vessels of that time.

From Placentia the sovereign could watch the ever-changing but never-ending pageant of the River, see the many great ships bringing in the wealth from all known lands, and watch the few journeying forth in search of lands as yet unknown. Thus on one occasion the occupants viewed the departure of three shiploads of brave mariners setting forth to search for a new passage to India by way of the Arctic regions—a scene which old Hakluyt describes for us: “The greater shippes are towed downe with boates and oares, and the mariners being all apparelled in watchet or skie-coloured cloth rowed amaine and made with diligence. And being come neare to Greenwiche (where the Court then lay) presently upon the newes thereof the courtiers came running out and the common people flockt together, standing very thicke upon the shoare; the privie counsel they lookt out at the windowes of the court and the rest ran up to the toppes of the towers; and shoot off their pieces after the manner of warre and of the sea, insomuch that the toppes of the hilles sounded therewith, the valleys and the waters gave an echo and the mariners they shouted in such sort that the skie rang againe with the noyse thereof. Then it is up with their sails, and good-bye to the Thames.”

Nor in talking of Greenwich must we forget the famous Ministerial fish dinners which were for so many years a great event in the life of the town. This custom arose, it is said, from the coming of the Government Commissioners to examine Dagenham Breach, when they so enjoyed the succulent fare set before them that they insisted on an annual repetition, which function was afterwards transferred to the “Ship” at Greenwich.

At the toe of the great horseshoe bend which gives us Millwall and the Isle of Dogs stands that famous group of buildings known as Greenwich Hospital, but more correctly styled the Greenwich Naval College.

This is built on the site of the old Palace. When, following the Revolution, Charles II. came to the throne, he found the old place almost past repair, so he decided to pull it down and erect a more sumptuous one in its place. Plans were accordingly drawn up by the architect, Inigo Jones, and the building commenced; but only a very small portion—the eastern half of the north-western quarter—was completed during his reign.

It was left to William and Mary, those eager builders, to carry on the work, which they did with the assistance of Sir Christopher Wren, to whose powers of architectural design London owes so much. Very little was done during the life of Queen Mary, but as the idea was hers, William went on with the work quite gladly, as a sort of memorial to his wife.

Of course, a very large sum of money was needed for the erection of such a place. The King himself provided very liberally—a good deed in which he was followed by courtiers and private citizens. But quite a large amount was found in several very interesting ways. Since the buildings were designed to provide a kind of hospital or asylum for aged and disabled seamen who were no longer able to provide for themselves, it was decided to utilize naval funds to some extent. So money was obtained from unclaimed shares in naval prize-money, from the fines which captured smugglers had to pay, and from a levy of sixpence a month which was deducted from the wages of all seamen. Building went on apace, and (to quote Lord Macaulay) “soon an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will observe that William claims no part in the merit of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to Mary alone. Had the King’s life been prolonged till the work was completed, a statue of her who was the real founder of the institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court which presents two lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are perpetually passing up and down the imperial River. But that part of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, and the great victory of La Hogue.”

Greenwich Hospital.

In 1705 the preparations were complete, and the first pensioners were installed in their new home. The place was very successful at the start, and it grew till at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were nearly three thousand men residing within the Hospital walls, and many more boarded out in the town.

Then through half a century the prosperity of the place began to decline. The old pensioners died off, and the new ones, as they came along, for the most part preferred to accept out-pensions and live where they liked. So that in 1869 it was decided to abandon the place as an asylum for seamen and convert it into a Royal Naval College, in which to give training to the officers of the various branches of the naval services, and also a Naval Museum and a Sailors’ Hospital.

Perhaps one of the most interesting places in the College is the Painted Hall, a part of Wren’s edifice, known as King William’s Quarter. The ceilings of this double-decked dining-hall—the upper part for officers and the lower for seamen—and the walls of the upper part are decorated most beautifully with paintings which it took Sir James Thornhill nineteen years to complete. Around the walls hang pictures which tell of England’s naval glory—pictures of all sizes depicting our most famous sea-fights and portraying the gallant sailors who won them. Naturally Lord Nelson is much in evidence here, and we can see in cases in the upper hall the very clothes he wore when he received that fatal wound in the cockpit of the Victory—the scene of which is depicted on a large canvas on the walls; also in cases his pigtail, his sword, medals, and various other relics.

The Museum is a fascinating place, for it contains what is practically a history of our Navy set out, not in words in a dry book, but in models of ships; and we can study the progress right from the Vikings’ long-boats, with their rows of oars and their shields hanging all round the sides, down to the massive super-dreadnoughts of to-day. Most interesting of all, perhaps, are the great sailing ships—the old “wooden walls of England”—which did so much to establish and maintain our position as a maritime nation—the great three-deckers which stood so high out of the water, and which with their tall masts and gigantic sails looked so formidable and yet so graceful. There in a case is the Great Harry—named after Henry VIII.—a double-decker of fifteen hundred tons burden, with three masts, and carrying seventy-two guns. She was a fine vessel, launched at Woolwich Dockyard in 1515, and was the first vessel to fire her guns from portholes instead of from the deck. In another case is the first steam vessel ever used in the Navy (1830), and a quaint little craft it is.

This is indeed a splendid collection, and we feel as if we could spend hours studying these fascinating little models.

The Royal Observatory.

On the site of Duke Humphrey’s tower in Greenwich Park is the world-famous Observatory. If you take up your atlas, and look at the map of the British Isles or the map of Europe, you will see that the meridian of longitude (or the line running north and south) marked 0° passes through the spot where Greenwich is shown. This means that all places in Europe to the right or the left—east or west, that is—are located and marked by their distance from Greenwich; and, if for no other reason, this town is because of this fact a very important place in the world.

The Observatory was founded in the reign of Charles II. This monarch had occasion to consult Flamsteed, the astronomer, concerning the simplifying of navigation, and Flamsteed pointed out to him the need for a correct mapping-out of the heavens. As a result the Observatory was built in 1695 in order that Flamsteed might proceed with the work he had suggested.

The Duke’s tower was pulled down, and the new place erected; but it was left to Flamsteed to find his own instruments and pay his own assistants, all out of a salary of one hundred pounds per annum. Consequently, he became so poor that when he died in 1719 his instruments were seized to pay his debts. His successor, Dr. Halley, another famous astronomer, refitted the Observatory, and some of his instruments can be seen there now, though no longer in use, of course.

Few people are allowed inside the Observatory to see all the wonderful telescopes and other instruments there; but there are several things to be seen from the outside, notably the time-ball which is placed on the north-east turret, and which descends every day exactly at one o’clock; also the electric clock with its twenty-four-hours dial.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Port and the Docks

Any person standing on London Bridge a couple of centuries ago would have observed a scene vastly different from that of to-day. Now we see the blackened line of wharves and warehouses on the two banks, and up against them steamers discharging or receiving their cargoes, while out in the stream a few vessels of medium size and one or two clusters of barges lie off, awaiting their turn inshore; otherwise the wide expanse of the stream is bare, save for the occasional craft passing up and down in the centre of the stream. But in days gone by, as we can tell by glancing at the pictures of the period, the River was simply crowded with ships of all kinds, anchored closely together in the Pool, while barges innumerable plied between them and the shore.

In very early days only Billingsgate and Queenhithe possessed accommodation for ships to discharge and receive their cargoes actually alongside the quay; for the most part ships berthed out in the stream, and effected the exchange of goods by means of barges.

Then, as trade increased by leaps and bounds, a number of “legal quays” were instituted between London Bridge and the Tower, and thither came the major part of the merchandise. Gradually little docks or open harbours were cut into the land in order to relieve the congestion of the quays. Billingsgate was the first of these, and for many years the most important. Now the dock has for the most part been filled in, and over it has been erected the famous fish-market, which still carries on one of the main trades of the little ancient dock. Others were St. Katherine’s Dock, a tiny basin formed for the landing of the goods of the monastery which stood hard by the Tower; St. Saviour’s Dock in Bermondsey on the Surrey side; and Execution Dock close to Wapping Old Stairs.

However, with the tremendous growth of trade following the Great Fire of London, concerning which we shall read in Book II., and with the growth in the size of vessels and the consequent increase in the difficulties of navigation, the facilities for loading and unloading proved totally inadequate, and the merchants were led to protest, on the grounds that the overcrowding led to great confusion and many abuses, and for a great number of years they entreated Parliament to take some action.

Dockland.

The coming of the great docks ended the trouble, and also tremendously changed the Port of London. When the West India Docks were opened in 1802, ships concerned with the transport of certain articles of commerce were no longer allowed to lie in the Pool for the purpose of discharge: they were compelled to go to the particular dock-quays set aside for their use, and to land there the merchandise they carried. Thus practically at a stroke of the pen the riverside wharves lost their entire traffic in such things as sugar, rum, brandy, spices, and other goods from the West Indies. Similarly, when the East India Docks were opened all the commerce of the East India Company was landed there. Thus, gradually, as the various larger docks were made from time to time, the main business of the Port shifted eastwards to Millwall, Blackwall, etc. Nor did it stop there. With the coming of ships larger even than those already catered for, it became necessary to do something to avoid the passage of the shallow, winding reaches above Gravesend, and, in consequence, tremendous docks were opened at Tilbury. So that now vessels of the very deepest draught enter and leave the docks independent of the tidal conditions, and do not come within many miles of London Bridge.

This does not mean that the riverside wharves and warehouses were rendered useless by the shifting of the Port. So great had been the congestion that even with the relief of the new docks there was still—and there always has been—plenty for them to do. To-day there are miles of private wharves in use: from Blackfriars down to Shadwell the River is lined with them on both sides all the way; and they share with the great docks and dock warehouses the vast trade of the Port of London.

Let us take a short trip down through dockland, and see what this romantic place has to show us. We must go by water. That is essential if we are to see anything at all, for so shut in is the River by tall warehouses, etc., that we might wander for hours and hours in the streets quite close to the shore, and yet never catch a glimpse of the water.

Leaving Tower Bridge, we find immediately on our left the St. Katherine’s Docks. These get their name from the venerable foundation which formerly stood on the spot. This religious house was created and endowed by Maud of Boulogne, Queen of Stephen, and lasted through seven centuries down to about a hundred years ago. It survived even the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which swept away all other London foundations, being regarded as more or less under the protection of the Queen. Yet this wonderful old foundation, with its ancient church, its picturesque cloisters and schools, its quaint churchyard and gardens—one of the finest mediæval relics which London possessed—was completely destroyed to make way for a dock which could have been constructed just as well at another spot. London knows no worse example of needless, stupid, brutal vandalism! St. Katherine’s Dock is concerned largely with the import of valuable articles: to it come such things as China tea, bark, india-rubber, gutta-percha, marble, feathers, etc.

London generally is the English port for tea: hither is brought practically the whole of the country’s consumption. During the War efforts were made to spread the trade more evenly over the different large ports; but the experiment was far from a success. All the vast and intricate organization for blending, marketing, distributing, etc., is concentrated quite close to St. Katherine’s Dock, and in consequence the trade cannot be managed so effectively elsewhere. The value of the tea entering the Port of London during 1913, the year before the War, and therefore the last reliable year for statistics, was nearly £13,500,000.

Low water, Dockhead Bermondsey

A little below St. Katherine’s, on the Surrey shore, is one of the curiosities of dockland—a dock which nobody wants. This is St. Saviour’s Dock, Bermondsey—a little basin for the reception of smaller vessels. It is disowned by all—by the Port of London Authority, by the Borough Council, and by the individual firms who have wharves and warehouses in the vicinity. You see, there is at one part of the dock a free landing-place, to which goods may be brought without payment of any landing-dues; and no one wants to own a dock without full rights. Shackleton’s Quest berthed here while fitting out for its long voyage south.

From St. Katherine’s onward for several miles the district on the north bank is known as Wapping. This was for many years the most marine of all London’s riverside districts. Adjoining the Pool, it became, and remained through several centuries, the sojourning-place of “those who go down to the sea in ships.” Here, at famous Wapping Old Stairs or one of the other landing-steps which ran down to the water’s edge at the various quay-ends, Jack said good-bye to his sweetheart as he jumped into one of the numerous watermen’s boats, and was rowed to his ship lying out in the stream; here, too, there waited for Jack, as he came home with plenty of money, all those crimps and vampires whose purpose it was to make him drunk and rob him of all his worldly goods. Harbouring, as it did, numbers of criminals of the worst type, Wapping for many years had a very bad name. Now all that has changed. The shifting of the Port deprived the sharks of their victims, for the seamen no longer congregated in this one area: they came ashore at various points down the River. Moreover, the making of the St. Katherine and later the London Docks cut out two big slices from the territory, with a consequent destruction of mean streets.

Limehouse Hole.

Entrance to Wapping Old Stairs.

Close to Wapping Old Stairs was the famous Execution Dock. This was the spot where pirates, smugglers, and sailors convicted of capital crimes at sea, were hanged, and left on the foreshore for three tides as a warning to all other watermen. Now, with the improvements at Old Gravel Lane, all traces have vanished, and the wrong-doers no longer make that last wretched journey from Newgate to Wapping, no longer stop half-way to consume that bowl of pottage for which provision was made in the will of one of London’s aldermen.

The goods which enter London Dock are of great variety—articles of food forming a considerable proportion.

Limehouse follows on the northern shore, and is perhaps, even more than Wapping, the marine district of these days. Here, in a place known as the Causeway, is the celebrated Chinese quarter. Regent’s Canal Dock, which includes the well-known Limehouse Basin, a considerable expanse of water, is the place where the Regent’s Canal begins its course away to the midlands. The chief goods handled at Limehouse Basin were formerly timber and coal, but since the War this has become the centre for the German trade. Here are frequently to be seen most interesting specimens of the northern “wind-jammers.”

Leaving Limehouse, the River sweeps away southwards towards Greenwich, and then turns sharply north again to Blackwall. By so doing it forms a large loop in which lies the peninsula known as the Isle of Dogs—a place which has been reclaimed from its original marshy condition, and covered from end to end with docks, factories, and warehouses, save at the southernmost extremity, where the London County Council have made a fine riverside garden. In the Isle are to be found the great West India Docks and the Millwall Docks. The former receive most of the furniture woods—mahogany, walnut, teak, satin-wood, etc.—and also rum, sugar, grain, and frozen meat; while the latter receive largely timber and grain.

On the Surrey side of the River, practically opposite the West India and Millwall Docks, are the Surrey Commercial Docks, occupying the greater portion of a large tongue of land in Rotherhithe. To these docks come immense quantities of timber, grain, cattle, and hides—the latter to be utilized in the great tanning factories for which Bermondsey is famous.

Blackwall, the last riverside district within the London boundary, is famous for its tunnel, which passes beneath the bed of the River to Greenwich. This is but one of a number of tunnels which have been made beneath the stream in recent years. There is another for vehicles and passengers passing across from Rotherhithe to Limehouse, while further upstream are those utilized by the various tube-railways in their passage from north to south.

Blackwall has a number of docks, large and small. Among the latter are several little dry-docks which exist for the overhauling and repairing of vessels. There was a time when shipbuilding and ship-repairing were considerable industries on the Thames-side, when even battleships were built there, and thousands of hands employed at the work; but the trade has migrated to other dockyard towns, and all that survive now are the one or two repairing docks at Blackwall and Millwall.

The Royal Albert and the Victoria Docks come within the confines of those great new districts, West Ham and East Ham, which have during the last thirty or forty years sprung up, mushroom-like, from the dreary flats of East London. Here are such well-known commercial districts as Silvertown and Canning Town. The former will doubtless be remembered through many years for the tremendous explosion which occurred there during the War—an explosion which resulted in serious loss of life and very great damage to property. It is also famous for several great factories, notably Messrs. Knight’s soap-works, Messrs. Henley’s cable and general electrical works, and Messrs. Lyle’s (and Tate’s) sugar refineries. These places, which employ thousands of hands, are of national importance.

Canning Town has to some extent lost its prestige, for it was in time past the shipbuilding area. Here were situated the great Thames Ironworks, carrying on a more or less futile endeavour to compete with the Clyde and other shipbuilding districts.

This district is, to a large extent, the coal-importing area. Coal is the largest individual import of the Port of London, as much as eight million tons entering in the course of a year. The chief articles of commerce with which the Royal Albert and Victoria Docks are concerned are: Tobacco, frozen meat, and Japanese productions.

Vast, indeed, have been the revenues drawn from the various docks. You see, goods are not entered or dispatched except on payment of various dues and tolls, and these amount up tremendously. So that the Dock Companies get so much money from the thirty miles of dockside quays and riverside wharves that they scarcely know what to do with it, for the amount they can pay away in dividends to their shareholders is strictly limited by Act of Parliament. In one year, for instance, so large a profit was made by the owners of the East and West India Docks that they used up an enormous sum of money in roofing their warehouses with sheet copper.

In concluding our rapid tour through dockland, it is impossible to omit a reference to the Customs Officers—those cheery young men who work in such an atmosphere of unsuspected romance. To spend a morning on the River with one of them, as he goes his round of inspection of the various vessels berthed out in the stream, is a revelation. To visit first this ship and then the other; to see the amazing variety of the cargoes, the number of different nationalities represented, both in ships and men; to come into close touch with that strange and little-understood section of the community, the lightermen, whose work is the loading of the barges that cluster so thickly round the great hulls—is to move in a world of dreams. But to go back to the Customs Offices and see the huge piles of documents relating to each single ship that enters the port, and to be informed that on an average two hundred ocean-going ships enter each week, is to experience a rude awakening from dreams, and a sharp return to the very real matters of commercial life.

Home From the Indies. A Giant Liner warping into the George V^th_. Dock.

Nor must we forget the River Police, who patrol the River from Dartford Creek up as far as Teddington. As we see them in their launches, passing up and down the stream, we may regard their work as easy; but it is anything but that—especially at night-time. Then it is that the river-thieves get to work at their nefarious task of plundering the valuable cargoes of improperly attended lighters. The River Police must be ever on the alert, moving about constantly and silently, lurking in the shadows ready to dash out on the unscrupulous and dangerous marauders. The headquarters of the River Police are at Wapping, but there are other stations at Erith, Blackwall, Waterloo, and Barnes.

In 1903 the question of establishing one supreme authority to deal with all the difficulties of dockland and take control of practically the whole of the Port of London was discussed in Parliament, and a Bill was introduced, but owing to great opposition was not proceeded with. However, the question recurred from time to time, and in 1908 the Port of London Act was at length passed.

This established the Port of London Authority, for the purpose of administering, preserving, and improving the Port of London. The limits of the Authority’s power extend from

Teddington down both sides of the River to a line just east of the Nore lightship. At its inception the Authority took over all the duties, rights, and privileges of the Thames Conservancy in the whole of this area.

BOOK II

Reproduced from photographs by permission of Airco Aerials, Ltd.

THE GREAT CITY WHICH THE RIVER MADE