caught, and dressed by persons in constant
practice." All very nice; but what about
the Cabinet Ministers? They (the whitebait,
not the Ministers) are served up with cayenne
and lemon–juice, and eaten with brown bread
and butter; the savoury morsel being washed
down with iced punch. Still we do not see
the connexion. And if we take the view
topographical instead of the view ichthyological,
we are not certain of enlightenment; for we do
not see how the vicinity of ship–yards, chemical–
works, and iron–works, with a wafting of
pungent odours when the wind doth blow,
can improve the flavour of whitebait to a
legislative stomach. There seems evidently
to have been a rise of fashion in this matter;
for Pennant, after speaking of the whitebait
fishery, says, that it "occasions during the
season a vast resort of the lower order of
epicures to the taverns contiguous to the places
where they are taken." Lower order of
epicures, indeed!

Hemmed in by the whitebait taverns, is
Green's ship–yard. A notable old place this;
more so, than any other private ship–yard,
perhaps, in this country. It is no small
thing that, for a period of two hundred years,
there has been little if any cessation in the
making of foothooks and keelsons, bowsprits
and sternposts, ribs and beams, decks and
masts, in this identical spot; and all for and
by private owners. First, there was a Sir
Henry Johnson, who, in the time of Oliver
Cromwell, was owner of this yard, and who
seems to have been a great benefactor to
the neighbouring village of Poplar. Then,
throughout the reigns of Charles the Second,
James the Second, and William and Mary,
the ship–yard maintained its importance,
under the ownership, first of one Sir William
Johnson, and then of another. Strype tells us
about a horse which was owned by the elder
Sir William, and which was evidently a
knowing old blade. The horse, we are told,
was "wrought there thirty–four years, driven
by one man; and he grew to that experience,
that at the first sound of the bell for the men
in the yard to leave off work, he also
would cease labouring, and could not by any
means be brought to give one pull after it;
and when the bell rang to work, he would as
readily come forth again to his labour, which
was to draw planks and pieces of timber from
one part of the yard to another." Honour to
the tough old horse, who insisted on the
proposition, that "property has its duties as well
as its rights." Old Hob was his name; and
there was formerly a public–house in the
neighbourhood which derived its sign from this name
—nay, not merely was, but is, in Brunswick
Street, near the entrance to the yard. Old
Hob's master, and the next Sir William, are
said to have built no less than fifteen men–of–
war for the Government before the time of
Queen Anne. The second Sir William's
daughter married the Earl of Strafford; and
then occurs a blank in the annals of the yard
and its industry until a period about a century
ago, when Mr. Perry became the owner. In
the family of the Perrys the property remained
for half a century, during which many vessels
of war were built there for the Government.
Mr. Perry built within his estate the Brunswick
Dock, the first dock (we believe) which
London could boast. Here he had water–
space for thirty large ships and double that
number of smaller ones, cranes for landing
guns and heavy stores, conveniences for the
shipment of cavalry, warehouses for whalebone
and blubber from whale–ships, coppers
for boiling down the blubber, a mast–house to
aid in masting ships—the same venerable black
old ugly building which is still a wonderment
to those who view Blackwall from a distance.
But at the beginning of the present century the
merchants became dock mad; they built docks,
as thickly as we now build railways; and
Mr. Perry's Brunswick Dock was bought up
for, and enclosed by, and incorporated with,
the East India Docks. The ship–yard, however,
remained private property; and during the
long war the stocks and slips were constantly
occupied by war–ships being built for the
Government, as well as by East India ships
and other merchant ships of large size; for
this yard never, until late years, had an equal
in importance in any other part of the kingdom.
It is among the records of the yard
that no less than ten ships of war were
launched here during the single year 1813.
In the years of comparative peace which have
since followed, the names of Wigram and of
Green have been associated with the construction
of a vast number of fine vessels. It is
only by a little stretch of geography that the
Isle of Dogs can be said to contain this
Brunswick ship–yard; but, even if it were
for the sake of old Hob—that true–born
British horse—we will entice the yard into
our island.

At and around the point which may be
deemed the eastern "vanishing–point" of the
Isle of Dogs, is that strange congeries of
buildings, in which the Blackwall railway, the
Brunswick pier, the East India Dock, and
Green's ship–yard, all meet in brotherhood.
How the railway ferrets out a path for itself
is a marvel. You are conscious that it is near
at hand, for the locomotive–whistle betrays
it; but if you look at this point, there is the
lofty wall of the Docks; if at that, there is a
road leading to one of the whitebait taverns;
if at the other, there is one of Mr. Green's
ships poking its nose over the wall. There
is, in fact, a struggle for place, but a struggle
in which the railway wins, as it generally
does now–a–days. The metropolis here comes
to its last legs; here is the end of all things—
the "ultima Thule" is reached. Here, is the
tavern which forms the final stopping–place of
the Blackwall omnibuses, after having worked
their long and weary way from Knightsbridge.
Here, or hereabouts, are the last ship–yards
on the north bank of the Thames. Here, is