is silent no longer, bearing the chattering
company thither on its bosom. "The prince,
princess, duke, much nobility, and much mob
besides, are there." My Lord Chesterfield is so
fond of it, that he has ordered all his letters to
be directed thither. Dr. Arne composes the
music for a concert; fireworks and a mimic
Etna are introduced. A mask taps Sir Roger
de Coverley on the shoulder, and begs to drink
a bottle of mead with him; and Dr. Johnson—
surly Sam himself—delivers that "the coup
d'Å“il is the finest thing he has ever seen." The
Silent Highway itself is broad, and clear, and
wholesome, covered by gay wherries manned by
jolly young watermen, all of whom are "first
oars" with those fine City ladies who go to
Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and all of whom row so
neat and scull so steadily (albeit thinking of
nothing at all), that the maidens all flock to their
boats, and they are never in want of a fare.

But the prompter's bell sounds, and through
the Venetian pavilion, already half faded, I
see the outline of Hungerford pier, with the
ticket-sellers' boxes and the advertisement
hoarding; in place of the trees and the allées
verts, are the black or chequered funnels of
steamers, mincing conversation of beaux and
belles is drowned in a roar of "Grinnidge,
Woollidge—this way for Nine Ellums!" The
rapidly decomposing heads and dresses of the jolly
young watermen dwindle down into the small
whole-length of a wiry boy, who, with his eye
on the captain's pantomimic finger, shrieks out
with preternatural shrillness, "Turn a' starn!"

Yes! this is what it has all come to! The
ancient Britons and their coracles, the middle
ages and their romance of black boats and
halberdiers and prisoners, and torches and
Traitor's Gate, the Queen Anne times of hoops
and powder, periwigs and cocked-hats, rapiers
and Ranelagh, all come down to a pea-soup
atmosphere, a tidal sewer edged with bone-boiling
and tallow-melting premises, and lashed into
dull yellow foam by the revolving paddles of the
iron steam-boats of the Waterman and Citizen
Companies, plying every three minutes. The
jolly young waterman, who used to row along
thinking of nothing at all, is now compelled to
think a good deal of the management of his
craft, lest she should come in contact with
others, or with bridge piers, and be incontinently
sunk. Enormous barges, so helpless and
unwieldy that one doubts the possibility of their
ever being got home, still cumber Thames's broad
bosom; light skiffs dot the surface from Putney
to Twickenham; pretty yachts dodge about the
Erith and Greenhithe reaches; snorting little
tugs struggle frantically as they drag big East
Indiamen down to the Nore; but still the real
Silent Highwaymen, now-a-days, are the
passenger steamers.

The river steam-boat traffic may be divided
into the above and below bridge; for, though
some of the Greenwich boats proceed as high as
Hungerford, the chief portion of their trade lies
between London-bridge and their point of
destination, while none of the Chelsea boats are seen
south of London-bridge. The above bridge
traffic is conducted by the boats of the Citizen
and the Iron Steam-boat Company, working in
harmony and sharing "times." Their management is,
I believe, excellent, but in this paper I
shall confine myself to speaking of the Waterman
Company's fleet, which is the largest and
the longest established on the river. Forty
years ago, when the inhabitants of Greenwich
had occasion to visit London, they were
conveyed to and fro in boats with covered awnings,
rowed by a pair of oars, in which, at a charge
of sixpence each, they were brought to Tower
stairs: those going by land had the privilege of
paying eighteenpence for a ride in a slow and
very stuffy omnibus, while Woolwich residents
had to get to Greenwich as best they could, and
thence proceed either by land or water conveyance.
As Greenwich extended and the power
of steam became known, the watermen of Greenwich
formed themselves into a company, and
started one or two steam-boats, one opposition
company did the same, a fraternity at Woolwich
followed in the track, and the opposition
became tremendous. All these boats started
from the same piers at the same time, and the
happy captain was he who could cleverly cut
into his adversary, knock off her paddle-box,
and thus disable her for several days' trip. This
state of things could not last long, the Greenwich
Company "caved in," the Waterman and
the Woolwich Company entered into amicable
arrangement, and thenceforward ran in concord.

These two companies own thirteen boats each;
the total number of river steam-boats plying on
the Thames between Gravesend and Richmond
being about sixty. The boats belonging to the
Waterman's Company average about ninety tons
each, each measures about a hundred and
sixteen feet in length, fourteen feet in width, and
eight feet in depth. All are built of iron,
manufactured in the company's own yard at
Woolwich, where about seventy artificers are in
constant employment: in addition to which force,
the company has about sixty men afloat, and
eighteen collectors of tickets or supervisors.
Each boat has a crew consisting of a captain, a
mate, two men, a call-boy, an engineer, and a
stoker. With the exception of the engineers
and stokers, all these men must be free watermen
(an act of parliament accords to the Waterman's
Company the privilege of demanding that
all the crews of passenger-carrying vessels must
be watermen), and all work up, in regular rotation,
from the post of call-boy to that of captain.
This alone secures that intimate knowledge of
the river, and that incessant vigilance, which
is absolutely necessary for the protection of
life; the call-boy is apprenticed to the captain
generally, and rises by gradual steps from the
bottom of the paddle-box to the top of it, from
watching the captain's fingers and explaining
his pantomime to the engineer, to twiddling his
own fingers and commanding the boat.
Everywhere, except in the engine-room, the captain
is supreme, and even the engineer is bound
implicitly to obey the captain's orders as to the