ROMANTIC STORIES OF THE ROYAL RIVER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18072, 10 January 1921, Page 9

ROMANTIC STORIES OF THE ROYAL RIVER

WONDERS OF FOKTY-SIX MILES OF QUAYS AND WHARVES. No other river is so rich in legend and romance as London's silent highway, the Thames. The Mersey, its only commercial rival, cannot compare with it in thesq, particulars, and, but for the strangest instance of shortsightedness in the annals of shipping, London might have enjoyed the enormous revenue that the northern river brings to Liverpool. In the story there are some of the element sof a fairy tale. “Once upon a time” the City of London advanced to the Crown £367,897 3/, which was discharged by the conveyance to the Corporation of the fee simple of 300 manors and estates, including the lordship of Liverpool, with “all customs, anchorage, and tolls of the waters of the Mersey, and with all the manorial, seignorial, and regal rights” of the town and lordship of Liverpool. WHAT THE BRIDGES COST. What did the Corporation do with this lordship and these rights, from which an annual income of millions is now drawn? It actually sold them to Lord Maryport tor £450! Infinitely varied is the romance of the Thames. Who would think that by some its waters are associated with those of Babylon, by the side of which the Jews sat down and wept? Yet on the quay in front of the Customs House the Jews of London used to assemble on New Year’s morning to offer up prayers in remembrance of their forefathers’ sad captivity. No less strange is it that close at hand certain rights are exercised continuously, lest by the intermission of a moment they should lapse for ever. Those rights are enjoyed by broad-beamed boats which lie off Billingsgate. v Dutch schuyts, they bring eels from the canals of Holland to the London market. Centuries ago the ancestors of the Dutch fishermen were granted free anchor-

age, apd they cling so tenaciously to this right that at least one schuyt is always on th e spot. What huge revenues have been drawn from the thirty miles of dockquays and the sixteen miles of river wharves in the Port of London! One year the East and West India Docks made so big a profit that the owners, whose dividend was limited by the Act of Parliament, could not distribute the whole of it -among themselves’, and used up the balance by roofing , their warehouses with copper.

Without rights, however, a dock is valueless. There is actually one going a-begging. It is St. Saviour's, Bermondsey, which the Port of London Authority, the Borough Council, and the firms with wharves in the vicinity all disown. The reason is peculiar. At the top of the dock is a free landing-place—a place where merchandise may be landed without payment of any dues or tolls. Ther? Js a singular story, too, attached td bridge rights. Most of the bridges which span the Thames were built by private enterprise, and for their usy tolls were charged. In time this system became an anachronism, and it was necessary to buyout the proprietors—at a price! Hammersmith Bridge cost the Metropilitan Board of Works £112,000, and old Putney Bridge was acquired for £58,000. Still more expensive was Waterloo Bridge. One other romantic aspect of London’s river makes even the initiated wonder—the vast amount of unclaimed merchandise lying in the dock warehouses.