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.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO DOCKS.]
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.
[Illustration: "I DON'T THINK IT WILL HURT ME."]
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.