One fine summer day a friend agreed with me to go down the river.
Sheerness was fixed on, not on account of its beauty, for that part near
the harbour is by no means attractive, and like most of our naval and
military stations it is full of low public-houses, which by no means add
to its attractions, but simply on account of the fact that the place
could be reached and the return journey made in the course of a day; that
we could be on the water all the while, and that we should have a
pleasant breathing space in the midst of a life more or less necessarily
of toil. For people who cannot get away for a few weeks, who cannot rush
off to Brighton, or Margate, or Scarborough, or Scotland for a month, it
is a great treat to be able to go down to Sheerness and back for a day in
a luxurious steamer, where everyone has elbow-room. And on the day in
question it was a treat to us all in many respects; the day was fine, the
boat in which we sailed was that favourite one the _Princess Alice_—now,
alas! a name which sends a thrill of tragic horror through the land. To
us and the public at that time she was known merely as the safest, and
fastest, and pleasantest vessel of her class.
We had beautiful views of marshes well filled with cattle, and of fields
waving with yellow corn, and with hills and green parks, and gentlemen’s
seats and churches afar off; the river with its craft great and small
going up or coming down is always a source of interesting study; and as
the fine fresh air, to be encountered below Gravesend, gave us an
appetite, we had a good dinner on board, well served and at a very
moderate price; tea and shrimps at a later period of the day were equally
acceptable; and many were the ladies and gentlemen who had come and found
what they sought, a pleasant outing. There were also many little
children who enjoyed themselves much, and the sight of whose pleasure was
an unmitigated enjoyment to old stagers, like myself and my friend.
Altogether it was a very agreeable day so far as the outward passage was
concerned. It was true that there was an unnecessary demand for beer,
even from the moderate drinker’s point of view, before the dinner hour.
Bottled ale and stout may not be taken with impunity on an empty stomach;
smoking may also be carried to excess, and as there are many persons who
dislike the very smell of it, the mixture in the atmosphere was certainly
far more than was desirable; but on a holiday on a Thames excursion boat
one must give and take, and not be too prone to find fault. People often
act differently abroad to what they do at home; we must allow for a
little wildness on such an occasion on the part of the general public.
It is not every day a man takes a holiday. It is not everyone who knows
how to use it when he has it. To many of us a holiday rarely comes more
than once a year, and gentlemen of my profession, alas! often do not get
that.
Altogether we must have had at the least some seven or eight hundred
people on board. They swarmed everywhere; indeed, at times there was
little more than comfortable standing room, and the only locomotion
possible seemed to be that directed towards the cabins fore and aft in
pursuit of bottled beer.
In the morning we were not so crowded, but in the evening we began to
experience inconvenience of another kind. It was at half-past ten A.M.
that we left the lower side of London Bridge; it was nine o’clock in the
evening when we arrived there again. All that time we had been on board
the steamer, with the exception of an hour and a half spent at Sheerness,
and all that time the demand for beer had been incessant. I never in all
my life saw such a consumption. I remarked to a friend enough beer had
been drunk to have floated apparently the _Princess Alice_ herself.
Everybody was drinking beer or porter, and the bottles were imperial
pints and held a good deal. Of course there were music and dancing; and
the girls, flushed and excited, drank freely of the proffered beverage,
each moment getting wilder and noisier. Old ladies and old gentlemen
complacently sipped their glass. It seemed to do them no harm. Their
passions had long been extinct. They had long outlived the heyday of
youth. All that the beer seemed to do for them was to give them a bit of
a headache, or to make them feel a little more tired or sleepy, that was
all. On the deck was a party of thirty or forty men who had come for a
day’s outing; decent mechanics evidently, very respectably dressed. They
kept themselves to themselves, had dined on board together, had taken tea
together, and now sat singing all the way home, in dreadfully melancholy
tones, all the old songs of our grandfathers’ days about “Remembering
those out,” “The Maids of merry, merry England,” and then came a yell in
the way of a chorus which would have frightened a Red Indian or a Zulu
Kaffir. After every song there was a whip round for some more beer, till
the seats underneath seemed to be choked up with empty bottles. They
were all a little under the influence of liquor, not unpleasantly so, but
placidly and stupidly; and as they listened with the utmost gravity while
one or another of the party was singing, you would have thought they were
all being tried for manslaughter at least. It is true they had a comic
man in the party, with a green necktie and a billycock hat, and a
shillalagh, who did his best under the circumstances, but he had to fight
at tremendous odds, as hilarity was not the order of the day on that part
of the deck.
I went down into the cabin in search of it there, but was equally
unsuccessful. Every table was crammed with bottles of beer. Opposite me
was a picture indeed; a respectable-looking man had drunk himself into a
maudlin state, from which his friends were in vain endeavouring to arouse
him. He was a widower, and was muttering something unpleasant about
_her_ grave, which did not seem to accord with the ideas of two
gaily-dressed females—one of them with a baby in her arms—who hovered
around him, as if desirous to win him back to life and love and duty, his
male friends apparently having got tired of the hopeless task of making
him understand that he had been brought out with a view to being
agreeable, and to spending a happy day, and that he had no right to
finish up in so unreasonable a manner. Now and then he appealed to me,
declaring that he had no friends, or promising in reply to the playful
appeal of his female friends to be a good boy and not to give them any
more trouble, that it was no use trying. It was the women who stuck to
him alone, now and then suggesting lemonade, and then forcing him up on
deck with a view to a dance or a promenade. Some of the passengers
around, as tipsy as himself, interfered; one of them, evidently a
respectable tradesman, with his wife and children around, requesting the
widower to sing “John Barleycorn,” assuring him that as he had lost his
teeth it would have to be sung with a _false set oh_, a joke which the
widower could not see, and the explanation of which at one time seemed
about to end in a serious misunderstanding. Other parties besides
interfered, and the confusion became hopeless and inexplicable. It ended
in the weeping widower wildly embracing the female with the baby, and
then making a mad rush on deck with a view to jump over—a feat, however,
which he was easily prevented from accomplishing; and as I landed I saw
the would-be suicide with his male and female friends contemplating a
visit to the nearest public-house. It was really a melancholy spectacle,
and one that ought not to have been permitted in the cabin of a saloon
steamer. Quite as pitiable in its way was the sight of a couple who had
unwarrantably intruded into that part of the steamer which is presumed to
be kept solely for the use of those who pay first-class fares. One of
them was indeed a study; he had been out for a day’s pleasure, and he
showed in his person traces of very severe enjoyment; his clothes had
been damaged in the process, and an eye had been brought into close
contact with some very hard substance, such as a man’s fist, and the
consequence was it was completely closed, and the skin around discoloured
and swollen. He had never, so he said, been so insulted in his life, and
once or twice he reascended the stairs with a short pipe in his hand, a
picture of tipsy gravity, in order that he might recognise the ticket
collector, with a view apparently to summon him before the Lord Mayor.
His companion was a more blackguard-looking object still. A couple of
the officers attached to the ship soon sent him forward, to mingle with a
lot of men as disgusting in appearance and as foul in language as
himself, but who had sense enough not to intrude where they had no right,
and to keep their proper places. And thus the hours passed, and the sun
sank lower in the horizon, and we rushed up the mighty river past
outward-bound steamers on their way to all quarters of the globe, and
found ourselves once more in town. The day had been a pleasant one had
it not been for the indulgence in bottled beer, which seems to be the
special need of all Londoners when they go up or down the river. If this
state of things is to be allowed, no decent person will be enabled to
take a passage on a river steamer on a St. Monday or a Saturday,
especially if he has ladies or children with him. It does seem hard that
people on board river steamers may drink to excess, and thus prove a
nuisance to all who are not as beery as themselves. It may be, however,
that the steam-packet companies promote this sale of intoxicating liquor
in order to promote the cause of true temperance; if so, one can
understand the unlimited activity of the ship stewards, as it becomes at
once apparent to the most superficial observer that he who tastes the
charmed cup has
Lost his upright shape,
And downwards falls into a grovelling swine.
If anyone doubts this let him proceed to Sheerness in a river steamer on
a people’s day.