Who's for a cheap ride on what a pleasant writer calls the 'silent
highway?'--silent no longer, since the steamers have taken to plying
above Bridge at a charge which has made the surface of the Thames,
where it runs through the heart of London, populous with life, and
noisy with the clash of paddles and the rush of steam, to say
nothing of the incessant chorus of captains, engine-boys, and
gangway-men--with their 'Ease her,' 'Stop her,' 'Back her,' 'Turn
ahead,' 'Turn astarn,' 'Now, marm, with the bundle, be alive,' 'Heave
ahead there, will you?' &c., all the day long.
Come this way, my friend; here we are opposite the Adelphi Theatre,
and this is the man who used to be a black man, or else it's another,
who does duty as talking finger-post, and shews you, if you are a
stranger, how you are to get at the half-penny boat. Come, we must
dive down this narrow lane, past the 'Fox under the Hill,' a rather
long and not very sightly, cleanly, smooth, or fragrant thoroughfare;
and here, in this shed-looking office, you must pay your half-penny,
which guarantees you a passage all the way to London Bridge. Look
alive! as the money-taker recommends--the _Bee_, you see, is already
discharging her living cargo, and others are hurrying on board. The
boat won't lose time in turning round--she goes backwards and forwards
as straight as a saw, and carries a rudder at her nose as well as one
at her tail. Never mind these jolting planks, you havn't time to
tumble down--on with you! That's it: here, on this floating-pier,
manufactured from old barges, we may rest a moment, while the boat
discharges her freight, and takes on board the return cargo. You see
the landing-stage or pier is divided into two equal portions; the
people who are leaving the boat have not yet paid their fare; they
will have to disburse their coppers at the office where we paid ours,
there being but one paying-place for the two termini.
'Tis a motley company, you see, which comes and goes by the half-penny
boat. Here is a Temple barrister, with his red-taped brief under his
arm, and at his heels follows a plasterer, and a tiler's labourer with
a six-foot chimney-pot upon his shoulders. There goes a
foreigner--foreigners like to have things cheap--with a bushy black
beard and a pale face, moustached and whiskered to the eyes, and
puffing a volume of smoke from his invisible mouth; and there is a
washer-woman, with a basket of clothes weighing a hundredweight.
Yonder young fellow, with the dripping sack on his back, is staggering
under a load of oysters from Billingsgate, and he has got to wash them
and sell them for three a penny, and see them swallowed one at a time,
before his work will be done for the day--and behind him is a comely
lassie, with a monster oil-glazed sarcophagus-looking milliner's
basket, carrying home a couple of bonnets to a customer. See! there is
lame Jack, who sweeps the crossing in the borough, followed by a lady
with her 'six years' darling of a pigmy size,' whom she calls 'Little
Popps,' both hurrying home to dinner after a morning's shopping. All
these, and a hundred others of equally varied description, go off on
the landing-stage, whence they will have to pay their obolus to the
Charon of the Thames ere they are swallowed up in the living tide that
rolls along the Strand from morn to night.
Now, if we mean to go, we had better get on board, for in another
minute the deck will be covered, and we shall not find room to stand.
That's right; make sure of a seat while you may! How they swarm on
board, and what a choice sample they present of the mixed multitude of
London! The deck is literally jammed with every variety of the
pedestrian population--red-breasted soldiers from the barracks,
glazed-hatted policemen from the station, Irish labourers and their
wives, errand-boys with notes and packages, orange-girls with empty
baskets, working-men out for a mouthful of air, and idle boys out for
a 'spree'--men with burdens to carry, and men with hardly a rag to
cover them; unctuous Jews, jabbering Frenchmen, and drowsy-looking
Germans--on they flock, squeezing through the gangway, or clambering
over the bulwarks, while the little vessel rolls and lurches till the
water laves the planks on which you stand. In three minutes from her
arrival she has discharged her old cargo, and is crammed to
overflowing with a new one. 'Back, there: overloaded already!' roars
the captain. 'Let go; turn ahead; go on!'--and fiz! away we go,
leaving full half of the intending voyagers to wait for the next boat,
which, however, will not be long in coming.
'Bless me, how we roll about from side to side!' says an anxious old
lady. 'Is anything the matter with the boat, that it wabbles so?'
'Only a little krank, marm; it's all right,' says the person
addressed.
'It's all right, of course,' says another, glancing at the nervous
lady, 'whether we goes up or whether we goes down, so long as we gets
along. The _Cricket_ blowed herself up, and the _Ant_ got tired on it,
and laid down to rest herself at the bottom t'other day. Howasever, a
steamer never blows up nor goes to the bottom but once, and, please
God, 't aint goin' to be this time.'
While the old lady, unsatisfied with this genuine specimen of Cockney
philosophy, is vowing that if she once gets safe on shore, she will
never again set foot in a half-penny boat, we are already at Waterloo
Bridge. Duck goes the funnel, and we dart under the noble arch, and
catch a passing view of Somerset House. The handsome structure runs
away in our rear; the Chinese Junk, with its tawdry flags, scuttles
after it; we catch a momentary glimpse of Temple Gardens, lying in the
sunlight, where half-a-dozen children are playing on the grass; then
comes Whitefriars, the old Alsatia, the sanctuary of blackguard
ruffianism in bygone times; then there is a smell of gas, and a vision
of enormous gasometers; and then down goes the funnel again, and
Blackfriars Bridge jumps over us. On we go, now at the top of our
speed, past the dingy brick warehouses that lie under the shadow of St
Paul's, whose black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then
Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, disdains
to return the slightest response to the fussy splashing we make, as we
shoot impudently through. Then come more wharfs and warehouses, as we
glide past, while our pace slackens, and we stop gently within a
stone's-throw of London Bridge, at Dyers' Hall, where we are bundled
out of the boat with as little ceremony as we were bundled in, and
with as little, indeed, as it has ever been the custom to use since
ceremony was invented--which, in matters of business, is a very
useless thing.
And now, my friend, you have accomplished a half-penny voyage; and
without being a conjuror, you can see how it is that this cheap
navigation is so much encouraged. In the first place, it is cheaper
than shoe-leather, leaving fatigue out of the question; it saves a
good two miles of walking, and that is no trifle, especially under a
heavy burden, or in slippery weather. In the second place, it may be
said to be often cheaper than dirt, seeing that the soil and injury to
clothing which it saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the
muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more than would the
cost of several journeys. These are considerations which the humbler
classes appreciate, and therefore they flock to the cheap boats, and
spend their halfpence to save their pence and their time. This latter
consideration of time-saving it is that brings another class of
customers to the boats. In order that it may be remunerative to the
projectors, every passage must be made with a regular and undeviating
rapidity; and this very necessity becomes in its turn a source of
profit, because it is a recommendation to a better class of business
men and commercial agents, to whom a saving of time is daily a matter
of the utmost importance. Hence the motley mixture of all ranks and
orders that crowd the deck.
Besides these half-penny boats, there are others which run at double
and quadruple fares; but they carry a different class of passengers,
and run greater distances, stopping at intermediate stations. They are
all remunerative speculations; and they may be said to have created
the traffic by which they thrive. They have driven the watermen's
wherries off the river almost as effectually as the railways have
driven the stage-coaches from the road; but, like them, they have
multiplied the passengers by the thousand, and have awakened the
public to a new sense of the value of the river as a means of transit
from place to place. The demand for safe, cheap, and speedy conveyance
to and from all parts of the river between London Bridge and
Battersea, and beyond, is becoming daily more urgent; and we hear that
it will shortly be met by the launching of a fleet of steam gondolas
constructed on an improved principle, combining accommodation for
enlarged numbers, with appliances calculated to insure at once
security and speed.