Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/432

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Patrick Colquhoun, in his remarkable treatise on the commerce and police of the River Thames. Increased accommodation for the number of ships frequenting the river had now become equally necessary, the trade of London with distant nations requiring in 1796 no less than three thousand five hundred and three small craft of different sorts to discharge or load the merchant vessels which lay in the stream.

London, therefore, from the extent of its trade, and the disproportionate space allotted on the surface of the water for the accommodation of vessels frequenting the port, and on land for the collection and stowage of their cargoes, at that time afforded numerous and greatly increased facilities for the secret disposal of merchandise and property of every kind. A wide and lucrative field was thus opened for the depredations of a host of plunderers of every sort, trained in their nefarious arts with all the regularity and system of a disciplined body. Their numbers and stratagems of course increased with the augmentation of the commerce of the river; and especially with the practice of sending cargoes in lighters to wharves at the distance of several miles from the discharging vessels, or from the wharves on board the loading vessels, the necessary result of the overcrowded state of the harbour. The great numbers of lumpers, watermen, lightermen, coopers, and labourers employed upon the wharves, as well as the seamen and petty officers of too many vessels, in league with the lower classes of revenue officers, now formed a large and dangerous band of conspirators against the property of the merchants and the revenues of the Crown. Mates of merchantmen then claimed by