Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/447

 the reception of vessels laden with that article, occupies one acre of water space, while the warehouse for the reception and storage of tobacco, perhaps still the largest in the world, is capable of containing twenty-four thousand hogsheads, and covers no less than five acres of land. The other warehouses are upon an almost equally extensive scale, and, though in separate blocks, cover an area of nearly nineteen acres. Below them and the tobacco warehouses are vast arched vaults which can contain, exclusive of the gangways, sixty-six thousand pipes of wine and spirits. Hydraulic machinery is now in use in all parts of the docks for the purpose of discharging the cargoes of vessels and landing them on the quays or delivering them into the warehouses, and it is no uncommon thing to discharge from one ship a thousand tons of cargo in the course of twelve or fifteen hours. There are besides large basins for the reception of vessels at the Wapping and Shadwell entrances, the latter covering six acres of water space, with an entrance-lock of three hundred and fifty feet in length, and sixty feet in width, having at spring-tide a depth of twenty-eight feet of water over the sill of the dock-gates.

The St. Katharine's Docks, situated still farther up the river, incorporated by the Act of 6 George IV., cap. 105, were partially opened for traffic in October 1828. They lie immediately below the Tower of London, and though only occupying one-fourth of the space of the London Docks, cost upwards of two and a half million sterling in their construction, arising in a great measure from the increased cost of the land and the houses which had