Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/446

 loading from the landing scale, weighing or gauging, and furnishing landing weights, and tales or gauge accounts of the strength of spirits as ascertained by the Customs.

Before the West India Docks were opened another company had applied for and obtained an Act of Parliament for constructing docks on a much more extensive scale in the parishes of St. George's in the East, Wapping, and Shadwell, which were principally intended for the reception of tobacco, rice, wine, and brandy. These, the London Docks, were opened for business in 1805, and all vessels laden with the articles we have just named were bound for a period of twenty-one years to discharge in them, except such as arrived from the East or West Indies. The premises of this Company, which are surrounded with high walls, cover an area of about one hundred acres, and the stock of the Company amounts to upwards of five millions sterling, a very considerable portion of it having been appropriated to the purchase of the land and the houses which occupied the site of the Docks.

The western dock has a water area of more than twenty acres; that of the eastern covers about seven acres, and the tobacco dock, confined exclusively to