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32 TAE MARINE. REVIEW LONDON'S DOCKS The tower of London, gray and square, stands sentinel at the most romantic spot in the vast city of London. On one side are the offices, the banks, the exchanges, the shops, the squares and the great gorgeous residences of the rich, and on the other nothing but the roaring factories, the crowded ware- houses and the long, interminable slums of toilers. 'It is here, at this romantic parting of the ways, that the London docks begin. Across the swirl of the chafing Thames strides Tower Bridge, shutting out all hint of beautiful embankments, lux- urious hotels, stately Parliament houses and polite bridges for cabs and carriages. Everything that the eye beholds here is eloquent of London's commerce, and of that alone. An unbridged Thames, with monstrous warehouses, crowded wharves and a tangle of shipping. Towering chimneys, a pall of smoke and running down to the river narrow, cobbled streets, filled with wagons and drays. You look about you and forget the London of ease and luxury; forget, also, the London of hunger and misery; you are looking on the London of commercial supremacy, the London of universal trade, the market of the world. Something like 700 vessels pass up and down Gravesend in a single day, and in one year between 4,000 and 5,000 vessels, bearing nearly 9,000,000 tons, make their way to these London docks. The London & India Docks Co. rules over an estate of 1,700 acres, with over 20 miles of quay and 15,000,000 square feet of flooring for the handling and storage of. over 800,000 tons of goods. The largest ships of all the world enter England through the gates of the Thames and make their way to these London docks. You look along the quays and behold steamers from China and the East Indies, from South America and Canada, from Egypt and New Zealand, rigid there and quiet now, after long buffeting with stiff seas. Hundreds of London dockers swarm over them like egg-laden ants, while enormous engines rattle their swinging chains over them, and the scrapers get to work on the cracked and faded paint of their sloping sides. There is no idleness in the docks. The brown-faced men who have brought these steel monsters across the seas are smoking luxurious pipes at home, dancing children on their knees, taking their wives to music hall and theater, and, not a doubt of it, spinning yarns about the wonderful world down under; but here in the docks are shabby, pale- faced, thick-armed Londoners, running to and fro with packages on their bowed shoulders, sweating to empty the vessels that lie there; here, too, are engine drivers, steering their trains from dock to dock, and carriers driving away with vanloads of merchandise--everywhere Londoners waiting on these huge ships. The sailors are like gentlemen who have driven their equipage to the stable and left these grooms of the docks to clean up ready for their next excursion. You get some idea of London's trade by moving through the tall warehouses of the docks. Consider a few figures. Thirty-six thousand tons of tea are stored here in a single year. In the vaults, with their 28 miles of gangway, can be stored 100,000 pipes of wine. Two hundred and fifty thou- sand tons of wool, worth £20,000,000, arrive annually at the port of London. Twenty thousand tons of tobacco are here in bond, valued. at £9,000,000. There is accommodation in the cold storage warehouses for 864,000 sheep. Sixty thousand pounds of ostrich feathers have been stored here at one time, and several millions of bird skins arrive annually, too numez:- ous for computation. In addition, the London docks have accommodation for sugar, ivory, spices, bark, gums, metal, marble, drugs, dates, pepper, rice, coffee, cocoa, isinglass, coal, grain, furniture, wood, timber, carpets, butter, cheese, poultry, even for sea shells, sponges, musk, ambergris and beeswax. In a single room you may look at elephants' tusks worth nearly £100,000. The gardens and the factories of the world empty them- selves into this lap of London. There is hardly a little island set-in the midst of the seas which does not grow something or make something with brown fingers to send into the cold, gray port of London. As you walk through the warehouses your nostrils are filled with the scents of the earth--cinnamon, nutmeg, musk, vanilla, coffee, tea, tobacco--everything that once lived and drank the air in green and beautiful gardens across the seas. There at your feet lies the matting torn from tea packages on which some Chinaman set strange marks with brush and ink, and there are the red and green cases themselves, with the number and weight cut in their sides by a scribing iron. You look at even the nails in some strange package of goods out of the East, and picture to yourself the dark hands gripping them while the hammer struck home. All the hands and all the feet of the East seem to be going up and down the earth to keep the larder of London full. From San Francisco comes the extract of flowers for London's scent. DIVIDEND IN SHIP COMMON At a meeting of the board of directors of the Ameri- can Ship Building Co. on Wednesday, a dividend of 4 percent was declared upon the common stock of the com- pany, payable quarterly, the first payment to be made in September. The company has a great deal of work on hand and has enjoyed an unusually prosperous business, having according to its last annual statement, a surplus of nearly $4,000,000 in its treasury. RIVER NEWS The National Waterways congress will meet at Balti- more on July 27, this being the first convention of this body since the Baltimore meeting four years ago. The Ohio Valley Improvement association will be represented by Capt. W. B. Rodgers and George H. Henderson, of Pittsburg, and Capt. J. F. Ellison, of Cincinnati. Action will be taken looking towards increased appropriations from congress for the improvement of internal water- ways throughout the country and especially the Ohio valley. Major W. L. Sibert, United States engineer in charge of the Pittsburg harbor, Pittsburg, is receiving bids for two lock gates for each of the following flecks, Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5. The bids will be opened on: July 31. The libel suit in admiralty of James Baoker and others against the steamer Queen City of the Pittsburg & Cincinnati Packet Line, Pittsburg, was dismissed by Judge Buffington. The case involved the death of one of the crew who was alleged to have been thrown over- board by an officer. The court held that the testimony of some of the crew indicated that they were well treated and concluded that the desertion of the boat at Pittsburg by the plaintiffs was, as contended by the boat's officers, a plan to work their way north on lower river boats, and when the entire ten men were called before the court and an offer made to return them to Cincinnati, and thus ensure them against any cruelty, they all refused:to go. The steamer Harry Brown, owned by the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal & Coke Co., struck a rock while coming up the Ohio river at dock No. 2, Pittsburg, this week, and was sunk. The boat was bringing a fleet of empty barges to Pittsburg, a number of which were also sunk. The boat will be raised. The Marine Construction Co., Mariner's Harbor, N. Y., has been organized with a capital of $105,000. The incor- porators are Thomas Conyngton, Montclaire, N. J.; Theodore T. Lane, 170 Broadway, New York; Alfred T. De Forest, 56 Pine street, New York.