THE UPPER RIVER
THE CASTLE KEEP, OXFORD 236
THAMES HEAD 238
LECHLADE FROM THE FIRST LOCK 240
KELMSCOTT MANOR 242
MAGDALEN TOWER, OXFORD 252
ABINGDON 264
THE GATEHOUSE, READING ABBEY 273
SONNING 280
HENLEY 281
DIAGRAM OF THE THAMES VALLEY TERRACES 283
WINDSOR CASTLE 286
ETON COLLEGE 299
HAMPTON COURT, GARDEN FRONT 306
KINGSTON 322
TEDDINGTON WEIR 324
RICHMOND HILL FROM PETERSHAM MEADOWS 327
FROM THE TERRACE, RICHMOND 330
KEW GARDENS 334
PUTNEY TO MORTLAKE (CHAMPIONSHIP COURSE) 338
FULHAM PALACE 340
RANELAGH 341
THE POWER-STATION, CHELSEA 345
THE LOLLARDS’ TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE 346
CHART OF THE THAMES FROM WINDSOR TO THE NORE _Back end-papers_
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Illustration: 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:
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.”
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration:
LIMEHOUSE HOLE.]
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration:
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
[Illustration:
_Reproduced from photographs by permission of Airco Aerials, Ltd._]
[Illustration: THE GREAT CITY WHICH THE RIVER MADE
_Reproduced from photographs by permission of Airco Aerials, Ltd._]
[Illustration: THE LONDON COUNTY HALL.]
THE GREAT CITY WHICH THE RIVER MADE
CHAPTER ONE
_How the River founded the City_
England at the time when London first came into being was a very
different place from the well-cultivated country which we know so
well. Where now stretch hundreds of square miles of orderly green
meadows and ploughed fields, divided from each other by trim hedges,
or pretty little copses, or well-kept roads, there was then a vast
dense forest, wherein roamed wolves and other wild animals, and into
which man scarcely dared to penetrate. This stretched from sea to sea,
covering hill and valley alike. Just here and there could be found the
tiny settlements of the native Britons, and in some few cases these
settlements were joined by rough woodland tracks.
The only real breaks in this widespread covering of green occurred
where the rivers flowed seawards along the valleys. These rivers for
the most part ran their courses in practically the same directions
as at present, but in appearance they were very different from the
rivers we know to-day. No man-made embankments kept them in place in
those days; instead they wandered through great stretches of marsh
and fenland, and spread out into wide, shallow pools here and there
in their courses, so that to cross them was a matter of the greatest
difficulty.
Such was the Thames when the first “Londoners” formed their tiny
settlement. From the mouth of the River inland for many miles stretched
widespread, impassable marshes; but at one spot—where now stands St.
Paul’s Cathedral—there was a firm gravel bank and a little hill (or
rather two little hills with a stream between), which stood out from
the encompassing wastes. In front of this small eminence stretched a
great lagoon formed by the over-flowing of the River at high tide. This
covered the ground on which have since been built
Southwark and Lambeth, and stretched southwards as far as the heights
of Sydenham. West of the little hill, running down a deep ravine,
where now is the street called Farringdon Street, was a tributary
river, afterwards known as the Fleet; and beyond that yet another great
marshland stretched away over Westminster, Belgravia, Chelsea, and
Fulham. To the north was the pathless forest.
This then appealed to the intelligence of a few Ancient Britons as an
ideal spot for a settlement, and so sprang into existence _Llyndin_,
the lake-fortress.
But that, of course, did not make LONDON, did not raise London to the
position of pre-eminence which it gradually attained, and which it has
held almost without contest through so many centuries.
Between the time of the formation of this little collection of huts
with its slight protecting stockade and the coming of the Romans much
happened. The Ancient Britons learned to make roads—primitive ones, of
course—and in all probability they learned to make embankments to the
River. Their greatest trade naturally was with Gaul—France, that is—and
also, equally naturally, practically all such trade had to come through
the one most suitable way, the spot which has always, through all the
ages, been the gateway into England—Dover. In the days when sea-going
craft had not reached a high stage of perfection it was necessary to
choose the shortest passage across the channel, and, though no doubt
other ports were used, undoubtedly the bulk of the merchandise came
across the narrow Straits. This meant, without a doubt, an important
road going north-westwards towards the centre of England.
Now right across the country, from west to east, stretched the great
natural barrier, the River, effectively cutting off all intercourse
between the south of England and the Midlands and north; and at some
place or other this road (afterwards known as Watling Street) had to
cross the barrier. It was inevitable that the spot where this crossing
was effected should be, both from a military and a commercial point
of view, a place of the very greatest importance. In the earliest
days the road skirted the south side of the marshes facing Llyndin,
and passed on to the ford (or ferry) at Westminster, and thence on to
Tyburn. But Llyndin was growing in strength, and the need of a lower
crossing was probably soon felt by the inhabitants of the little hill.
Now lower crossings of the River were by no means simple. As we said
just now, right from the mouth westwards till we reach the spot where
London now stands there was simply a great collection of marshes and
fens. Here and there, on both banks, tiny patches of firmer soil jutted
out from the impassable wastes—the spots where Purfleet and Grays now
stand on the north side, the sites of Gravesend, Greenhithe, Erith,
Woolwich, and Greenwich, on the south side; but in each of these cases
the little gravel bed or chalky bank was faced on the opposite shore by
the dreary flats (an ordinary natural happening caused by the washing
away of the banks, to be seen in any little stream that winds in and
out), so that never was there any possibility of linking up north and
south.
Only when the little hill at the junction of the River Thames with the
River Lea, somewhere about sixty miles from the open sea, was reached
could any such crossing be made. We said that in the earliest days of
London there was, facing the hill, a great flat which at high tide
became a wide lagoon, stretching southwards to Sydenham. Now this was
quite shallow; moreover, a long tongue of fairly firm gravel ran right
out northwards from the firmer ground till it came to a point nearly
opposite the Llyndin Hill. This firm bed enabled the Britons to lay
down, across the marsh, some sort of a road or causeway joining up with
the main Kent road, and so gave them another lower and practicable
crossing of the River, which, of course, meant a shorter road to the
Midlands and the north.
This crossing—in all probability a ferry—laid the foundation-stone of
the prosperity of London town, and the building of the first bridge
cemented that foundation.