Mercantile London in 1900: Shipping

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of mercantile London, in Imperial London, published in 1901, with this look at shipping:

But what kind of a shipping was it, so securely moored alongside the miles of quays within the docks?

Steamers were seldom in evidence in the smaller docks, the few there are being usually coasters.

The vessels seemed to be crowded together in disorder, but in reality they were systematically arranged, and when it was necessary to move one of them into the river, there was no confusion; she cast off her moorings, and was taken in charge by a fussy little tug, escorted to the dock-gates, and thence through the lock to the Thames.

But how the barges and lighters that covered every available piece of open water in the docks escaped being run down, is a mystery!

There was nearly every style of rig to be seen: three and four-masted ships of large tonnage, barques as big and bigger than many an old East Indiaman, brigantines, and graceful three-masted schooners; but of brigs never a one; for this fine class of rig seemed to have been abandoned, at any rate in Great Britain.

Lightness of hull, masts and yards, and multiplicity of these latter, were the leading impressions conveyed to a non-nautical person by a modern sailing-ship.

Here was a splendid specimen of a big four-master, so absolutely empty that her bulwarks reached to the eaves of the shed which had just received her thousands of bales of jute.

Her lower masts, her fore, main, cross jack and lower topsail yards were of iron, and so were her topgallant yards, towering high aloft; her shrouds, fore and aft stays, back-stays, and other standing rigging were of wire, set up so rigidly that the zephyr called forth from them the sweet sound of an Aeolian harp; but, "when the stormy winds do blow," there issued a wild and awful shriek most trying to the nerves.

Her fourth, or jiggermast, had no yards, but was of fore and aft rig.

(Some sailing-vessels had five masts, and there was a mighty schooner in existence with no less than six! To efficiently name them is somewhat puzzling; sometimes they are simply numbered; one system is to speak of the bow-mast, fore-mast, mainmast, and mizzen-mast, while another dubs them, fore-mast, first-mast, second-mast, and mizzen-mast.)

In the absence of sails, there was too much of the skeleton look about her for beauty.

But wait until she has put on all her apparel (some forty to fifty thousand square feet of canvas), and, with cargo well stowed, goes down Channel, the wind on her quarter, and you will endorse Mr. Ruskin's opinion, that a ship under full sail "is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the noblest."

Travellers in mail-steamers never failed to be greatly interested as their vessel rapidly "overhauled" some "sailer" which the watchful officer from his bridge fifty feet above the sea-level, had detected ahead.

Should it prove to be a full-rigged Australian liner, or, better still, the mighty five-masted German Potosi, of some 4000 tons register, the sight was a glorious one.

The little white patch on the sky-line, appearing and disappearing at intervals, had rapidly developed into a perfect pyramid of canvas; and for a few brief moments, as steamer and ship were side by side, there was ample opportunity for mutual admiration - the masculine element being represented by the steamer, the embodiment of hidden force and ability to defy opposing wind and wave.

The lines of the long black hull, the masts and funnels, straight and unyielding, were relieved only by the sparkle of glass in the skylights and side-ports, the flash of polished brass, and the gleaming white of the numerous awnings.

But the "sailer" was feminine throughout; everything about her - save her spars, masts, and standing rigging - was curved, rounded, symmetrical, and graceful.

When head-winds command, she has to obey; and, like a fashionable woman, her charm is in her varying appearance, for in the disposition and quantity of her nautical millinery aloft, she seldom looks quite the same for many hours together.

Further down the river were the West India Docks, the Millwall and the East India Docks, in each of which steamers of large tonnage outnumbered the ships, until at the Victoria and Albert Docks, and the Tilbury Docks - so distant as to necessitate quite a railway-journey - it was rare to come across anything not propelled by steam.

Here most of the great "liners" congregated.

In the docks one sometimes came across an old familiar friend -a ship that had been one's home for many a weary week.

Thus, in 1900, one recognized at a glance the old Aberdeen clipper, Sir John Laurence, in spite of the substitution of wire for her hemp rigging, and some slight alteration in the colour of her hull and masts.

She had just returned from Australia, and a smell of wool, hides, and tallow lingered about her hold.

It was easy to picture her lying at the Circular Quay, Sydney, under the cloudless sky of an Antipodean December, in company with many others from the old country, some discharging cargo, and others being loaded by the process of squeezing into their "'tween decks" with screw jack power, as many bales of wool as possible on the top of unwieldy pipes of tallow, and rolls of strong-smelling hides.

Noble specimens of the shipwright's craft in wood, were these traders who bore the red ensign over the wide seas to Australia in the "fifties" and "sixties," when all the adventurous of England's manhood were irresistibly attracted to the gold-fields of Victoria and New South Wales.

Some of these clippers easily reeled off their twelve knots in a strong breeze, and were advertised to do the voyage of over 14,000 miles in seventy-four days.

Such were the smart greyhounds of the sea; the Red Jacket, 2000 tons, and the Blue Jacket, 1447 tons, sailing from Liverpool to Melbourne, of the White Star Line.

From the same port, the Black Ball Line with their famous Champion of the Seas, 1946 tons, ran the White Star Line hard.

Green's Blackwall Line was always a favourite to travel by from London, their heavily-sparred ships resembling East Indiamen (as some of them had indeed been).

With their large ports, wide channels, square, galleried sterns, spacious poops, and boldly-rising topgallant forecastles, they looked what they were, models of stability and comfort, well found in every respect.

Old voyagers recollect with affection, the Blackwall, the Agincourt, the Alfred, the Swiftshire, and the Orwell, all of about 1000 to 1400 tons register.

Contemporaneously, Davitt and Moore's ships - amongst them the Duncan Dunbar, the Tiptree, and the La Hogue, 1300 to 1700 tons - were popular.

Their beam was rather narrow for their length, and their yards were remarkably "square."

They had flush decks, high bulwarks, and painted ports, and generally made very good passages.

The Duncan Dunbar must not be confounded with the Dunbar wrecked many years ago on the South Head, Sydney, just as she had reached the port, when out of a total of one hundred and twenty souls on board, only one human being - a man - came ashore alive.

The La Hogue, after running regularly between London and Sydney for several years, was lost on Las Roccas, some dangerous cays and islets off Cape St. Roque on the coast of Brazil.

Then there were Money Wigram's passenger-clippers, the Norfolk,the Suffolk, etc, 1100 tons each; George Thompson and Co.'s Aberdeen-built Centurion, Colonial Empire, Alfred the Great, Marquis of Argyll, Star of Peace, Strathdon, and the evergreen Damascus, 964 tons, whose outward voyages averaged from eighty-five to ninety-five days.

Some of these vessels were only 500 tons; others ranged up to 1400 tons.

Houlder Bros. were represented by the Nourmahal, the Agra, and others of about 900 tons each.

Lastly, there was the auxiliary steamer, the Great Britain, regarded as a wonder in the early sixties of last century, although she was then no longer young, having been launched in 1843.

She was big enough, but with her short clumsy masts and lack of "sheer," accentuated by her low bulwarks, she was ungraceful-looking; I recollect being altogether disappointed in her appearance as she slowly steamed up Port Phillip to her anchorage in Hobson's Bay, on what I believe was her last trip to Australia.

Wooden ships had all but vanished.

They represented an infinitesimal fraction of the total number of vessels built in the British Empire; the rest being chiefly of steel.

(By 1900, the employment of sailing-ships was rapidly declining. Lloyd's returns for the previous year indicate that during the period July - September no fewer than one hundred and seventy-one steamers were launched, but only six "sailers".)

Hemp, except for running rigging, had disappeared; and, as regards spars, in the place of a full-rigged ship carrying twelve yards on her three masts, a modern double-yarder, such as we came across in the London Docks, would, including sky-sails, carry twenty-one; enough to make an ancient "shell-back" turn in his grave, in ignorance of the fact that a steam-winch now does most of the heavy pulling and hauling on board, formerly effected by hand-power alone.

One sometimes wondered what the next hundred years may have in store for sea-loving mankind.

Sir William Armstrong glibly told Li Hung Chang that his firm was prepared to build a vessel of 50,000 tons, if required.

And at Liverpool a nautical expert stated his belief that steamers 1000 feet long would soon come to be built; while Southampton had a dry dock that could be enlarged to accommodate such monsters of the future.

Was there any reason why steamers that had gone on increasing in dimensions ever since their inception, should not continue to do so?

The William Fawcett, built in 1829, that pioneered the Peninsular and Oriental Company, was only 74 feet long, while the latest White Star liner, the Celtic, launched on January 14, 1899, was 700 feet in length, the largest ship on earth, and would almost fill up King William Street, City!

She wasthus nearly ten times longer than the William Fawcett, so that in exact ratio, by the year 1969, the mail-packet of the day may be 7000 feet long - a floating township!

What Lloyd's Register will then be like, who can predict?

Probably a small library in itself.

The general increase of our mercantile marine may be noted by comparing the small octavo volume of 1834 with the two fine quartos that gave in 1900 full particulars of the 11,143 steamers and sailing-vessels, representing 13,665,312 tons, that made up the fleet of the British Empire; and out of this gigantic total, deducting the portion belonging to the Colonies, no less than one-fifth was credited to the Port of London.

Next: The City of London in 1900: The Custom House