Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

LONDON’S DOCKS. 187 Photo: Cassell &• Co., Ltd. AT THE LONDON DOCKS: BUYERS SAMPLING WOOL. annually. Each bale contains the shearings of sixty sheep. There are over twenty-eight miles of gangways in the wine vaults, which, as already stated, have accommodation for 105,000 pipes of wine, being principally port, sherry, and Madeira. Visitors inspecting the vaults are supplied with a small oil lamp on the end of a stick, which serves to light their way and at the same time to denote to the vault-keeper how many visitors are present in the vaults. .The temperature of the latter is 6o° F'ahrenheit, and varies very little summer or winter. There are also brandy vaults, and a bottling department. In the latter wines and spirits are drawn off from the cask, and bottled for exportation in bond. We next come to the West India Docks, situated on the northern part of the Isle of Dogs. They occupy 244 acres, 105 being water, and consist of three parallel sets of docks, each about half a mile long. There is warehouse room for storing 150,000 tons of goods, and the principal articles received are rum, frozen meat, and various kinds of wood. A new entrance has now been added, 480 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. In the import dock nearly the largest vessels coming into the Port of London can be received. The warehouse for the reception of frozen meat has accommodation for 100,000 carcases of sheep. The temperature is 13° below freezing point. The wood depart- ment covers an area of thirty acres, a large portion of which is under sheds. Cranes and electric travellers are used to remove the huge logs from place to place. Some of the logs of mahogany will realise as much as from ^250 to ^300 each. The largest ever received at the dock was 60 feet 6 inches long, 40 inches in breadth, 37 inches deep, and weighed 11 tons 18 cwt. On the north side of the dock is a large building containing the powerful machinery for pumping water into the dock to make up the losses caused by the ingress and egress of vessels. The water is, of course, always kept at one level in docks. A sight which nobody interested in the subject should fail to see is the docking or undocking of a vessel. The pumps at this dock are capable of raising 7,500,000 gallons of water an hour, equal to five and a half inches over the area of sixty-one acres which they feed. In the rum department 40,000 puncheons of the value of ^2,000,000 can be stored. The vaults of groined brickwork are 1,040 feet long