CHAPTER III.

THE DOCKS, SHIPPING, AND COMMERCE OF THE PORT OF LONDON.

IF you leave King William Street just at the foot of London Bridge, and turn to the left, you will find your way into a grouping of streets, narrow and steep, a few only of which admit of carriage and horse traffic.

This is the region of the world-renowned London Docks, the basins which hold the greatest commerce known to any city on the globe; a commerce before which the ancient traffic of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, and Sicily, the granary of the ancient world, was as nothing.

The lower stories of the houses in this district, which smell of tar, resin, and other merchantable commodities, are let out as offices, and the upper as warehouse floors; the pavement is narrow and the roads are as bad as broken staves and long neglect can make them; dirty boys in sailor's jackets play at leap frog over the street posts; legions of wheelbarrows encumber the broader part of these thoroughfares; packing cases stand at the doors of houses, and iron cranes and levers peep out from the upper stories.

No man, it has been said, could ever tell how much money lies hidden away in the vaults of the Bank of England, and it is about as difficult to count up the tons of produce which London exports and imports annually.

[Sidenote: CUSTOM HOUSE DUTIES OF LONDON.]

For instance, during one year, (1865), the number of cargoes entered and cleared coastwise, (which besides British ports includes the shores from the Elbe to Brest,) was 30,820, and their tonnage, 5,263,565.

As many as fifty thousand ships of all classes enter and leave the Thames in twelve months, or about seventy vessels per day, exclusive of all the innumerable kinds of miscellaneous small craft.

The entire French commercial navy consists of twelve thousand vessels, an aggregate of perhaps one million seven hundred thousand tons, a little more than a quarter of the number of ships and the same percentage of tonnage that enters and leaves this world metropolis of London.

If the ships that move to and fro on the bosom of the Thames be supposed to average one hundred and fifty feet in length one with another, they would reach, placed stem and stern together, upward of thirteen hundred miles, or nearly half way across the Atlantic.

The Custom House duties, with a very low tariff for the port of London, during one year amounts to sixty-eight millions of dollars in gold, and the declared real value of exports from London for the same time amounted to one hundred and seventy millions of dollars in gold. The declared real value of the imports registered at the huge granite custom house on the Thames, for the port of London, for 1869, from foreign and colonial ports, was four hundred millions of dollars in gold, or as much as the total value of the real estate on New York island in 1870.

Englishmen are very fond of coffee it seems, for they imported thirty million pounds of the fragrant berry in 1869. The choleric temper of the people may find an explanation in the six million pounds of pepper received in London. London also imported seven million gallons of rum, although it is supposed to be the great beer drinking city of the world. Eighty thousand gallons of gin, sixty million pounds of tea, thirty-eight million pounds of tobacco, nine million six hundred and fifty-seven thousand and thirty-four gallons of foreign wines, two million cwts. of raw sugar, and two million seven hundred sixty-two thousand two hundred and forty-eight gallons of brandy were imported in 1869. These articles of merchandise were all held in bond at the London Custom House, and from these figures my readers may form some idea of the magnitude of the commerce of this great city.

Russia sent one thousand three hundred vessels and received three hundred and ninety-one vessels, Sweden one thousand one hundred and twenty-one vessels and received five hundred and twenty vessels, France sent one thousand four hundred and sixteen vessels and received one thousand three hundred and eighty-two vessels, Holland sent nine hundred and twenty-four vessels and received seven hundred and fourteen vessels, Cuba sent three hundred and twelve vessels and received sixty-two vessels, United States sent four hundred and twelve vessels and received three hundred and seventeen vessels, China sent two hundred and eight vessels and received one hundred and thirty vessels in 1869.

I have not space here to enumerate all the petty nationalities, whose merchants trade with London, but the above table, obtained from the custom house authorities and therefore authentic, may serve to indicate what the trade of London is, and the vast interests which gather there. The United States does not figure so conspicuously as might be expected here, the Alabamas and Floridas perhaps have something to do with the paucity of American commerce with the commercial metropolis of England.

The most wonderful of all the London sights are the huge artificial basins, bound in masses of masonry and known as the London Docks. No other city in the world can boast of such magnificent artificial basins, where millions of tons of shipping can be accommodated. It is enough to make an American feel humiliated to pay a visit to these wonderful docks, and to be forced to compare them with the rotten wooden wharves which environ the great city of New York, and which are honored with the title of docks.

[Sidenote: THE COMMERCIAL AND LONDON DOCKS.]

The principal docks of London are those which I give below with their water areas, cost, and the number of vessels which they accommodate:

NO OF VESSELS WATER AREA. LAND AREA. ACC. COST.

Commercial Docks, 75 acres, 150 acres, 200 £610,000

London Docks, 40 " 100 " 320 900,000

West India Docks, 90 " 295 " 1104 1,600,000

East India Docks, 18 " 31 " 112 380,000

St. Catharine's Docks, 15 " 24 " 160 2,252,000

Surrey Docks and Canal, 71 " 40 " 300 423,000

Victoria Docks, 90 " 1/2 mile frontage, 400 1,072,871

Brentford Dock and Canal, 90 miles long, 16 acres, 2,000,000

Regent's Canal, 8-1/2 miles long, 300

The Commercial Dock is chiefly used by vessels in the oil, corn, timber, and tobacco trade; and there is floating space for fifty thousand loads of lumber, and the warehouses afford storage for one hundred and fifty thousand quarters of corn, while the yards of the company will hold four million pieces of deals, and staves without number. The lock in the South Commercial Dock is two hundred and twenty feet long by forty-eight feet wide, with a depth of twenty-two feet, and will admit vessels of twenty-six feet draught. Five hundred thousand tons of shipping have been received here in a year, representing about one thousand five hundred vessels of various tonnage.

The London Docks extend from East Smithfield to Shadwell and have twelve thousand four hundred and forty feet of wharf frontage, and are intended principally for the reception of vessels laden with wines, brandy, tobacco, and rice.

There are forty warehouses for the storage of merchandise of every description, convenient in arrangement, and magnificent in design and execution. The cubical capacity of the warehouses is two hundred and forty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty tons; two hundred and thirty-one thousand one hundred and forty-seven for dry goods, and eighteen thousand two hundred and eighty-three for wet goods.

The tobacco house in these docks sends its very strong odor all over the Thames, and it is as good as the flavor of a Havana cigar almost to smell this huge warehouse as you pass by on the river in a steamboat. This warehouse is the largest of its kind in the world, covering five acres of ground, and is rented by the government at fourteen thousand pounds a year of the company, for all the London Docks are owned by stock companies, and this perhaps explains the economy displayed in their construction, and their useful adaptability to the commerce of London.

The tobacco warehouse will contain twenty-four thousand hogsheads of tobacco, each hogshead holding one thousand two hundred pounds, the total capacity being equal to thirty thousand tons of general merchandise.

[Sidenote: THE WINE VAULTS, AND "TASTING PERMITS."]

Under the London Docks are the finest vaults in the world, vast catacombs of the precious vintages garnered from every famous vineyard in the globe. The vaults in the London docks cover an area of eighteen acres, and afford accommodation for eighty thousand pipes of wine. One of the vaults alone is seven acres in extent, and the tea warehouses will hold one hundred and twenty thousand chests of that fragrant herb.

To go into these vast wine vaults is indeed a treat. It is like entering a City of the dead, only that instead of the skeletons of human beings piled on top of each other, you find an Aceldama of casks, pipes, barrels, hogsheads, and butts, bonded and stored tier upon tier, until the eye becomes wearied, and a man wonders how all those costly vintages can ever be consumed.

There is no difference between night and day in these dim deep recesses under the London streets. The vaults are only separated from the bed of the Thames by a thick wall, and at noonday, gas has to be turned on to light the way to the enormous storehouses of wine and brandy. Passes are granted by the companies and the owners of liquors on bond, called "tasting permits," which gives the privilege to the visitor to ask an attendant for a sample of any wine, or wines and liquors that he may choose to taste.

Armed with one of these permits I visited the London docks one day with a friend, and we penetrated the gloomy cavern's entrance, and finally found our way to a part of the vaults where were stored thousands of pipes of the delicious golden brown vintage of Xeres de la Frontera.

My friend was one of those wandering Americans you are always sure to light upon abroad, who makes your acquaintance whether you like it or not, and who cries out frantically whenever he sees a foreign flag.

"By Gad--Sir, that flag is all good enough in its way--but I _tell you_ it does not come up to our flag of beauty and glory--now I'll put it to you--does it?"

A grimy looking cellar man who smelled like an old claret bottle that had long remained uncorked, wearing an apron and carrying a wooden hammer for tapping, came to us and said, politely, on presentation of our orders:

"The horders are werry correct, sir. Would you like to try a little old Sherry, sir, fine as a sovrin and sparkling as the sun?"

"Well, I don't care if I do take a little sherry--I don't think it will hurt me--do you think it will?" said my friend.

He then took about half a pint of fine golden sherry, and after taking it he seemed all at once to discover a new beauty in the architecture of the vaults, although he had condemned the place when he entered it, as a "chilly, stinking hole, not fit for a dog, by Gad, sir."

While he was delivering himself most eloquently on the merits of the sherry, I had an opportunity to look about me and examine the place.

Different parties were going from cask to cask, from hogshead to hogshead, like my friend, trying each vintage, and tasting brandies, and gins, and wines to their heart's content.

[Sidenote: HOISTING AND DISCHARGING CARGOES.]

I thought to myself, what a splendid boon these vaults would be to a New York corner loafer, without restriction and with full liberty to drink till he died like a soldier, contending to the last against the enemy which deprives a man of his brains. The attendants here never object to the amount called for, and a tasting permit admits to all the privileges.

We were now standing in an arched alcove devoted exclusively to the wines of Madeira, Teneriffe, and the Canary Islands. Some of these huge casks held as many as seven hundred gallons, and the rich, old, musty and fruity odors that came from them were truly revivifying to my friend, who was loquacious under the influence of the sherry.

"This ere sexshin is for the Madeery," said the bung starter. "Will you try a little Madeery, sir?" said he.

"Well I _don't_ care if I _do_ take a little Madeira--I don't think it will hurt me. Now I put it to you this way--I don't think it will hurt me if I am moderate?"

He seemed to relish this heavy and fruity wine very much, and before he left the alcove he had "tasted" a good deal of the Canary also smacking his lips lusciously.

There is considerable skill displayed in the building of the arches of the range of vaults, and with the dim lights of the sperm lamps, burning--as it is not deemed safe to have gas in the vaults where spirits are stored--the vaults very much resemble the crypts under the cloisters in Westminster Abbey, or the vaults under St. Paul's.

The method for hoisting cargoes from the holds of ships to the grading, which is level with the opening in the vaults is very perfect. The opening in the wall of the basin or docks is eighteen feet high, and large hogsheads can be hoisted and lowered at once into the vaults instead of being temporarily deposited on the quay.

In the old times before steam had been discovered and these magnificent docks had been built, an East Indiaman of eight hundred tons took a month to discharge her cargo, or if of one thousand two hundred tons, six weeks were required for the labor, and their goods had to be taken from Blackwall to London Bridge in lighters, when they were placed on the quay exposed to dock rats and river thieves as goods are in New York, where the private watchmen on the rotten wooden docks are generally to be found in league with the thieves.

At St. Katharine's Docks the time occupied on an average in discharging a vessel of three hundred tons is eight hours, and for one of six hundred tons two days and a half. In one instance one thousand one hundred casks of tallow were discharged in six hours, but of course this was unusually rapid work. One of the cranes in the St. Katharine's Docks cost about twenty-five thousand dollars, and will raise from forty to sixty tons at a time.

There is a wharf attached to the St. Katharine Docks, which Parliament compelled the company to construct at a cost of nearly a million of dollars, and the warehouses will contain one hundred and ten thousand tons of goods and merchandise. The depth of water in the St. Katharine's Docks is twenty-eight feet at spring tide, at dead tide twenty-four feet, and at low water ten feet, so that vessels of eight hundred tons register are docked and undocked without the slightest difficulty. There is a water frontage and quays of one thousand five hundred feet in the St. Katharine Docks. The wharfage of the London Docks is one thousand two hundred and sixty feet in length and nine hundred and sixty feet in breadth. The capital of the London Docks company is about twenty-five million dollars in gold, and as many as three thousand laborers are employed in the London Docks in a day.

The walls surrounding the London Docks cost sixty-five thousand pounds in construction, and all these walls are so high (nearly thirty feet,) that they present an impregnable barrier to thieves and depredators.

The receipts for one year in the London Docks were over three million dollars, currency; the salaries and wages amounted to about one million dollars, and the revenue customs paid about eleven hundred thousand dollars. These figures show that the company is in a prosperous state, and gives the municipal governments of our American Atlantic cities the best reasons, when others which I have already enumerated are combined, why New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Savannah and Charleston, should have stone docks to equal those of London and Liverpool in magnitude and solidity.

[Sidenote: THE WEST INDIA DOCKS.]

Having made a lengthened inspection of the London Docks I turned to leave and could not find my friend who had accompanied me. After some difficulty I discovered him afar off at the other end of the vaults discussing with the cellarman what liquor he was next to taste.

"Yer honor might just taste a little of the Hennesey Brandy of 1832--it is very fine and runs down like hile."

"By Gad, sir, the very thing--now that you mention it I will try a little, just a _leetle_ Hennesey brandy. I'll put it to you in this way--I don't think it can hurt me--and the cellarman says it's just like oil. Now I recollect that oil never intoxicates. I will take just the faintest tint."

He did take the "faintest tint," perhaps a good sized glass-full, and he became so jolly, and affectionate, and good natured, embracing me and also the cellarman, that the latter personage had at last to call a cab into which my friend was carried, and after being propped up he was driven to his hotel. The cellarman said to me:

"We've two agents as comes 'ere sober, bless 'em, and goes away drunk; but they hurts nobody but themselves, bless them."

I went from the London Docks to the West India Docks, about a mile and a half distant, at the Isle of Dogs, a small islet in the Thames near Blackwall. These numerous basins and warehouses occupy three times the space of the London Docks, or about two hundred and ninety-five acres, with a canal three quarters of a mile in length as a feeder. The Import Dock is five hundred and ten feet in length, and about the same measurement in width. The Export Dock is about the same length and is about four hundred feet wide. The docks and warehouse are enclosed by a wall of masonry five feet thick, that seems as if it would endure as long as the port of London is open to commerce and merchandise, and the value of twenty millions of pounds is here stored by its owners.

I gave an employee of the company a shilling to take me through, and he was not at all backward in showing me the treasures under the care of the company.

"These are the biggest docks in Lunnun, sir," said he: "say what they will on the other docks. We will hold two hundred million tons of merchandise here, sir, and we will not be crowded at all. Why, sir, I've seen as much as two hundred thousand casks of sugar, five hundred thousand bags of coffee, fifty thousand pipes of Jimaky rum, ten thousand pipes of Madeery, twenty-five thousand tons of logwood, and lots of other things here and we were not full.

"I've seen an acre of 'ogsheads of tibaccy, eight feet high, and piles of cinnamon, spices, pepper, indigo, salt pork, hides and leather, Hindian corn, mahogany, and sich like, and no one of us, sir, ever knows the walley of them, and I suppose Mr. Bright hiself would be more nor puzzled to tell the walley, and I've heard as how he has got a preshis head for figgers."

Formerly when steamers employed paddle wheels as a means of locomotion, the docks were very much crowded, but the use of the universal screw has given much more space for berthways. There is, however, great risks in these docks, of fire, from steam vessels, and I believe the rates are much higher for steam craft than for sailing vessels. Small offices and compact frame houses for the company's officers, revenue officers, warehousemen, clerks, engineers, coopers and other petty attachees, have been provided within the ground area of all these stone basins, and everything connected with the docks is done in a systematic and business like way that is truly wonderful. When I recollected that less than fifty years ago London had no inclosed docks at all, and no accommodation for shipping but a long and straggling line of private quays, under the management of firms who had no public interests to serve, (and in fact when the present system of docks was at first proposed it met with almost universal opposition, particularly from the interested parties,) I was amazed at the progress made in a half century.

There is not such a city in the world, perhaps, for the number of corporations, guilds, societies, and titled people, who derive and did derive emolument and income, of one kind or another, from these private quay and wharfage receipts.

[Sidenote: OPPOSITION TO THE NEW DOCK SYSTEM.]

Therefore when the citizens of London became thoroughly awakened to the possibility of substituting for these rotten old timber wharves and tumble down old stone piers, a thorough, efficient, and lasting system of dockage, the interested people began to clamor most hideously about their "vested rights." These two words have always stood in England as a safeguard to protect some oppressive or corporate interest.

The "Tackle House" and City Porter Companies complained that if the import and export business were removed beyond the city limits, their right to the exclusive privilege of unloading and delivering all merchandise imported into the city would be worthless. The carmen who enjoyed a similar privilege and monopoly made the same complaint, and they stated that Christ's Hospital, an institution much revered by all Londoners, derived an income of four thousand pounds a year from the licenses under which they held their monopoly; the watermen, who were then numbered by thousands, foretold that the establishment of docks would deprive one half of their number of bread; the lightermen stated that they had a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds invested in tackle and craft, employed to transport merchandise, which capital would be annihilated if ships were allowed to discharge their cargoes on quays within docks; the proprietors of the "legal quays" as they were called, and the "sufferance wharves," or wharves which held no legal title, all prophesied that the trade of London would be ruined at once if the new system of docks was established.

However these people differed in some details of their grievances, they all concurred in stating that unloading ships in closed docks would be more expensive than discharging them into lighters in the river.

On the other hand the advocates of the new system estimated on paper that the unloading of five hundred hogsheads of sugar from a vessel could be done in the new docks for about three hundred and fifty dollars of American money less than under the old lighterage and open quay system, to say nothing of the greater safety of the property thus enclosed in dock walls.

Finally, Parliament passed an act creating the new docks and granting a compensation of four hundred and eighty-six thousand and eighty-seven pounds to the proprietors of the legal quays in addition to the sum of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-one pounds which was paid to persons having "vested rights" in the mooring claims on the river. Altogether the cost of the different London Docks, including ground purchases, etc., was about thirty millions of dollars. The West India Docks were the first opened in 1802, and the citizens of London have, I am sure, no cause to regret the decision which gave them the finest and safest system of wharfage in the world.

The passenger traffic, by water, which transpires daily between London and Continental cities and towns is incalculable. This of course does not include the traffic almost as great between London and American and Colonial ports.

You can go from London to New York in a splendid stateroom with every comfort and luxury at sea, for about one hundred and thirty dollars, or you can take passage in a steerage, herding like a beast as best you may for about forty dollars, by steam.

I can safely recommend the Inman Line of Steamships which ply between New York and Liverpool, as the best afloat, the most punctual and the most comfortable. This line has nineteen fine steamers constantly plying between Europe and America.

[Sidenote: RATES OF FARES AND DOCK LABORERS.]

From London to Cork the fare, first class, is about twenty-three English shillings, and to Dublin twelve shillings. From London to Edinburgh, first class, by sea, fifteen shillings. London to Calais, by rail and sea, twenty-five shillings, to Havre, eleven shillings. London to Ostend, Belgium, fifteen shillings; to Antwerp, twenty shillings; to Hamburg, two pounds; to Rotterdam one pound; to Belfast, forty-five shillings; to Dundee, twenty shillings. London to Malta twelve pounds; to Maderia sixteen pounds sixteen shillings; to Oporto, eight pounds eight shillings; to Marseilles, twelve pounds ten shillings; to Rio Janeiro, thirty pounds; to St. Petersburg, six pounds six shillings; to Glasgow, twelve shillings; to Liverpool, twenty shillings; to Stockholm, eighty-four shillings; to Brussels, forty-eight shillings; to Genoa, twelve pounds; Leghorn, fifteen pounds; Naples, eighteen pounds; Christiana, Norway, eighty shillings, and Copenhagen, sixty-three shillings.

I give these fares as I believe it may be of some use to Americans, who design to travel, to know the correct rates of Continental travel. It is much pleasanter to travel to the continent by sea from London than by rail, the accommodations are better, the views of the best. There is no hurry, you may get your meals regularly, it is more healthful and certainly much cheaper, as the above fares are all for first class passages, and it is easy to obtain second or third class accommodations for a very great deal less money.

In concluding this chapter on the Port of London, I may say that it is almost impossible to name a place for which passage cannot be obtained, by sea from London, and vessels are leaving daily and hourly for their various destinations, from the many wharves and docks that line the Thames between London and Westminster bridges, a distance of two miles, on the river.

Thirty thousand men find employment, daily, as laborers, in the London Docks. Men who have been reduced by want, misfortune, or by drunkeness, find in these vast commercial reservoirs, a precarious means of subsistence, earning from eighteen pence to two shillings a day, half of which generally goes for beer, or potations of a heavier and more spirituous kind. This kind of labor is unskilled, and has for its propulsion mere manual strength, so that, when a man fails in everything else, he may possibly succeed as a dock laborer. The public houses frequented by the laborers are situated in the dark alleys and crowded courts near the river, and all of them partake of the brutal, low appearance which distinguishes the London coal heaver and dock lifter.