Of barges, sailing colliers, and coasting traders, there were perhaps as many as now; but, of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part so many.
Here, were the Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside; here, were colliers by the score and score, with the coal-whippers plunging off stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges; here, at her moorings was to-morrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice; and here to-morrow's for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed.
Close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks--English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a multitude of filthy
colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
That Master Kirby is no first-rate in a boat; but he’ll tack a cart among the stumps, all the same as a Lon’on pilot will back and fill, through the
colliers in the Pool.”
While this was doing the master, seeing some light
colliers, who, not able to ride out the storm were obliged to slip and run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a signal of distress.
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of
colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.
From the accounts the poisonous effect begins with mental excitement; the rioting in Paris this morning is said to have been very violent, and the Welsh
colliers are in a state of uproar.
It was high water, blowing fresh with a drizzle; the double dock- gates were opened, and the steam
colliers were going in and out in the darkness with their lights burning bright, a great plashing of propellers, rattling of winches, and a lot of hailing on the pier-heads.
The case against crooked John
Collier, of Monks Kirby, between Coventry and Rugby, had repeatedly been delayed because of his health problems.
DUBLIN Airport Authority boss Declan
Collier quit as head of the board yesterday to move to London.
A judge told burglar Lee
Collier: "All she had in the world were two black plastic sacks and the handbag - and you took it."
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity, Paul
Collier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 271 pp., $24.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.
-- In April
Collier Drug Stores owner Mel
Collier announced his own economic stimulus package.
Collier's Powerful Welsh Cheddar was victorious at the home of Cheddar at the Bath and West Show in Somerset.
The 14 blasts echoed in the still night as bullets slammed into former Jacksonville Jaguars football team offensive tackle Richard
Collier.
