In the grey dawn liners from the Seven Seas slip into the docks of
London; and men and women gather there to meet friends. Some even
meet their sweethearts. They are the lucky ones. It was not yet
light. Dawn was a good hour away, and it was very cold. I was
travelling away from London towards Woolwich in a jangling, dirty
workman's train. On the platform at Fenchurch Street I had noticed
several other people obviously on their way to meet friends, but they
had been assimilated in the gloom of the long train; and I was glad,
for I was enjoying myself in a carriage full of dock workers: a
carriage that reeked of smoke and manly conversation. The train
ploughed wearily on through the darkness, stopping at stations....
Stepney East.... Burdett Road.... Bromley.... Canning Town....
Bleak, unfriendly places under their pale lights. More early
Londoners stormed the carriage at each station and split pleasantries
rather like roadmen hitting a spike:
"Goo' mornin', Bill...."
"It ain't a goo' mornin'. It's a blinkin' cold mornin'!"
The laughter could not have been louder if the retort had been made
by a judge or a king!
The conversation was both technical and sporting. The technical
discussion centred round the life and shortcomings of a certain
foreman, who, I gathered, although he knew less about a ship than a
---- ---- school-teacher, was, if not a man of iron, at least a man
of blood. So they said. Football and racing! They knew the
parentage, habits, and hobbies of every League player, also the
result of contests going right back to ancient times. They all had
"a bit" on the three-thirty.
* * *
North Woolwich! In the still air of dawn I could feel the nearness
of shipping. I could not see much, but I knew that I was surrounded
by ships. The docks were not awake. The steam winches were not
screaming, the hammers were stilled; yet over the dark docks lay the
presence of great ships home from sea....
I walked on past the shrouded cranes, standing in their straight
lines near the water's side. I came upon a tall ship looming up like
a cliff. I could make out a man leaning over her deck far above. I
asked him if this was the ship I wanted. He opened his mouth, and
there descended curious, unwilling sounds, like something trying hard
to escape from his throat and then changing its mind and trying to
get back again. I think he was talking Japanese.
So I walked along to the stern of the ship to read the name, and
there I met a man gazing upward, too. It turned out that we were
both looking for the same ship, so we walked on together.
"What an experience it is," he said. "I wonder how many people in
London have ever done this. I'm generally asleep at this time of the
morning. How early London wakes up. Think of those workmen's
trains...."
"Are you meeting a friend in the ----," I asked.
He coughed slightly and said, "Yes," and the way he said it told me
that it was going to be a romantic occasion.
Then dawn. If there is anything more wonderful in London than dawn
coming up over the tangled shipping of the docks I would like to know
of it. First a silvery light in the air, a chilly greyness, then a
flush in the east, and with startling suddenness every mast, every
funnel, every leaning crane is silhouetted jet-black against the
pearl-coloured sky.... Unreal ... still ... silent.
Gradually the docks awaken. Men walk along the wharfside, doors are
opened. In the depths of little ships men rise and become busy with
ropes; there is, from some, a smell of frying bacon; on tall ships
mast lights grow pale in the dawn light, men in swinging cradles yawn
and start painting a ship's hull, and from far off sounds the first
hammer of a new day.
As light grows one's sense of smell increases. This is strange. The
air is now full of a pungent smell of hemp and tow and tar, and even
distant docks, stored with their merchandise, seem to contribute
their part as the dawn wind blows.
High up in the sky there is a flush of pink cloud, such a delicate
flamingo pink that changes, spreads, and fades even as you look. It
becomes gold, and you know that at any moment the sun may rise up
like a tocsin and call all the world to work.
* * *
We found the ship. A mountain she was, towering up above us with
tiny holes in her side like the entrances to caves. She smelt of
fried fish, bacon and eggs and coffee....
Soon after I was aboard I had to look the other way for I had seen my
friend holding a girl in his arms and I had heard him say:
"And how are you, darling?"
"Splendid!" she cried. "Let me look at you! Come into the light."
So you see wonderful things happen to some people when tall ships
come out of the Seven Seas and find their way to London Town.