accommodation was found very inadequate in extent as well as difficult of access. There was also a regular system of plunder carried on in the conveyance of the merchandise from the ship's side to the warehouses, the account of which, given in Mr. Colquhoun's work on the Commerce and Police of the Thames,' affords a curious contrast to the security and regularity with which the shipping operations of the port are carried on at the present day. Lightermen, watermen, labourers, sailors, mates and captains occasionally, and even the officers of the revenue, were leagued together in a system of pilfering valuables from the open barges. The lightermen claimed as their right the perquisites of "wastage" and "leakage," and they took care that these two items should include as much as possible. There were regular establishments on shore for receiving and disposing of the stolen merchandise.' The Thames Police was established, in 1798, for the purpose of checking this system of wholesale depredation; but, so long as the goods were conveyed from the ship's side in open lighters, and the open quays formed the principal shore accommodation-sugar hogsheads, barrels, tubs, baskets, boxes, bales, and other packages, being piled up in confusion on every available foot of space-it was clear that mere police regulations would be unequal to meet the difficulty. It was also found that the confused manner in which the imports were brought ashore led

1 Mr. Colquhoun, the excellent Police Magistrate, estimated that, in 1798, the depredations on the foreign and coasting trade amounted to the almost incredible sum of 506,000l., and on the West India trade to 232,0007.-together 738,000Z. ! He stated the number of depredators-including mates, inferior officers, crews, revenue-officers, watermen, lightermen, watchmen, &c.-to be 10,850; and the number of opulent and inferior receivers, dealers in old iron, small chandlers, publicans, &c., in

terested in the plunder, to be 550! Colquhoun's book, and its descriptions of the lumpers, scuffle-hunters, long-apron men, bumboat men and women, river-pirates, light-horsemen, and other characters who worked at the water-side, with their skilful appendages of jiggers, bladders with nozzles, pouches, bags, sacks, pockets, &c., form a picture of life on the Thames sixty years since worthy to rank with Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor' of the present day.

to a vast amount of smuggling, by which the honest. merchant was placed at a disadvantage at the same time that the revenue was cheated. The Government, therefore, for the sake of its income, and the traders for the security of their merchandise, alike desired to provide an effectual remedy for these evils.

Mr. Rennie was consulted on the subject in 1798, and requested to devise a plan. Before that time various methods had been suggested, such as quays and warehouses, with jetties, along the river on both sides; but all these eventually gave place to that of floating docks or basins communicating with the river, surrounded with quays and warehouses, shut in by a lofty enclosurewall, so that the whole of the contained vessels and their merchandise should be placed, as it were, under lock and key. By such a method it was believed the goods could be loaded and unloaded with the greatest economy and despatch, whilst the Customs duties would be levied with facility, at the same time that the property of the merchants was effectually protected against depredation. At the beginning of the century a small dock had existed on the Thames, called the Greenland Dock; but it was of very limited capacity, and only used by whaling vessels. Docks had existed at Liverpool for a considerable period, which had been greatly extended of recent years; so that there was no novelty in the idea of providing accommodation of a similar kind on the Thames, though it is certainly remarkable that, with the extraordinary trade of the metropolis, the expedient should not have been adopted at a much earlier period.

The first of the modern floating docks actually constructed on the Thames was the West India, occupying the isthmus that formerly connected the Isle of Dogs with Poplar, and of which Mr. Jessop was the

Mr. William Jessop, C.E., was among the most eminent engineers of his day. His father was engaged

under Smeaton in the building of the Eddystone Lighthouse; and, dying in 1761, he left the guardianship of his

engineer. At the same period, in 1800, a company was formed by the London merchants for the purpose of constructing docks at a point as near the Exchange as might be practicable, for the accommodation of general merchandise, and of this scheme Mr. Rennie was appointed the engineer. He proposed several designs for consideration on a scale more or less extensive, adopting his usual course of submitting alternative plans, from which practical men might make a selection of the one most suitable for the purposes of their business; at the same time inviting suggestions, which he afterwards worked up into his more complete designs. As the future trade of London was an unknown quantity, he wisely provided for the extension of the docks as circumstances might afterwards require.

In carrying out the London Docks it was deemed advisable, in the first instance, to limit the access to the present Middle River Entrance at Bell Dock, 150 feet

family to that engineer, who adopted William as his pupil, and carefully brought him up to the same profes

sion. With Smeaton Jessop continued for ten years; and, after leaving him, he was engaged successively on the Aire and Calder, the Calder and Hebble, and the Trent Navigations.

He also executed the Cromford and the Nottingham Canals; the Loughborough and Leicester, and the Horncastle Navigations; but the most extensive and important of his works of this kind was the Grand Junction Canal, by which the whole of the north-western inland navigation of the kingdom was brought into direct connection with the metropolis. He was also employed as engineer for the Caledonian Canal, in which he was succeeded by Telford, who carried out the work. He was the engineer of the West India Docks (1800-2) and of the Bristol Docks (1803-8), both works of great importance. He was the first engineer who was employed to lay out and construct railroads as a branch of his profession; the Croydon and Merstham Railroad, worked by donkeys and mules, having been constructed by him as early as 1803. He also laid down short railways in connection with his canals in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire. During the later years of his life he was much afflicted by paralysis, and died in 1814.

long and 40 feet wide, with the cill laid five feet below low water of spring tides. The entrance lock communicated with a capacious entrance basin, called the Wapping Basin, covering a space of three acres, and this again with the great basin called the Western Dock, 1260 feet long and 960 feet wide, covering a surface of 20 acres. The bottom of the dock was laid 20 feet below the level of high water of an 18 feet tide. The quays next to the river were five feet above high water, increasing to nine feet at the Great Dock. From the east side of the latter, it was ultimately proposed to make two or more docks, communicating with each other and with a larger and deeper entrance lower down the river at Shadwell; all of which works have since been carried out.

As the site of the Docks was previously in a great measure occupied by houses, considerable time necessarily elapsed before these could be purchased and cleared away; so that the works were not commenced until the spring of 1801, when two steam-engines were erected, of 50 horse power each, for pumping the water,

and three minor engines for other purposes, such as grinding mortar, working the pile-engine, and landing materials from the jetty-an application of steam power as an economist of labour which Mr. Rennie was among the first to introduce in the execution of such works. The coffer-dam for the main entrance, and the excavation of the Docks, were begun in the spring of 1802;1 after which time the works were carried forward with great vigour until their completion on the 30th of January, 1805, when they were opened with considerable ceremony.

At a subsequent period Mr. Rennie designed the present westernmost or Hermitage entrance lock and basin, the former of which is 150 feet long and 38 feet wide, with the cill laid two feet below low water of spring tides; the basin and main dock covering a surface of

1 The locks were founded upon piles driven firmly into the soil, with rows of grooved and long-end sheeting piles in front of and behind the gates, in order to prevent the water from getting under them. The chamber between the lock-gates was formed by an inverted arch of masonry 2 feet 6 inches thick, strongly embedded in brickwork. The side-walls of the lock recesses and chamber were 7 feet thick, with strong counterfoots behind at the proper intervals. The whole of the locks and chambers were built of fine masonry, composed principally of hard blue sandstone from Dundee. All the retaining walls of the basins and docks were made curvilinear in the face, drawn from a radius of 80 feet, the centre being level with the top of the wall, and the bottom being inclined at the same angle as the radius. The wall was of a parallel thickness of 6 feet, except three or four footings at the back, where there were also counterfoots 3 feet 4 inches square, 15 feet asunder. The dock walls were founded generally upon a strong bed of gravel, which rendered piling unnecessary, and were built upon a

flooring of beech and elm plank 6 inches thick. Under the front and back of this flooring ran a strong cill 12 inches square, to which the planks were firmly spiked. The walls and counterfoots were built of brickwork, the front, for 14 inches inwards, being formed of vitrified pavier bricks, and the remainder of good hard burned stock, the joints being a quarter of an inch thick in front and three-eighths thick at the back; the whole well bedded in excellent mortar made by a mill. There were two through or binding courses of stone, 14 inches thick in front, increasing in thickness backwards according to the radius of the front of the wall. The whole of the locks were furnished with cast iron turning or swivel-bridges erected across them. The works were generally done by contract, but the locks, which required greater care, accuracy, and completeness, were executed by daywork, under the engineer's immediate direction. [For further particulars as to these docks see Sir John Rennie's able work on British and Foreign Harbours; Art. London Docks.]