The Act also provided that the firemen should be placed under command of an officer, to be called the Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Fire-Brigade; and a gentleman was appointed who had had experience of similar duties at Belfast, and who was for long to be popularly known in London as Captain Shaw. And on the very day when the new arrangements came in force a great fire occurred, as if to roughly remind the organization of its responsibilities and test its powers. CHAPTER VIII. A PERILOUS SITUATION. CAPTAIN SHAW. IMPROVEMENTS OF THE METROPOLITAN BOARD AND OF THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL. "The dock is on fire!" On New Year's Day, 1866, some hours after St. Katherine's Dock had been opened for work, several persons came running to the gates from the adjoining streets, crying loudly, "The dock is on fire!" At first the policemen would not believe the report. "We can see nothing," said they. "But flames are bursting from the roof! Look! look!" And before long the policemen were convinced that a serious fire was, indeed, in progress. It was in the upper floors of a division of a block of warehouses named F, six stories high, and by eleven o'clock they were blazing fast. "Fire! Fire!" The alarming cry rang through the dock, and superintendents, dock managers, and policemen hurried to the spot; while gangs of dock labourers were taken off their work, and set to quench the fire with buckets. The conditions were somewhat similar to those of the great Tooley Street fire of five years or so before. The fire broke out on a floor where bales of jute and coir fibre were stored; and a huge heap of these goods was seen to be burning, and sending forth such a suffocating and blinding smoke, that the men were compelled to retreat. "Shut the iron doors!" shouted the officers; and one after another the iron doors between the different warehouses were closed, though with one exception. This was the door connecting the fifth floor of F Warehouse with the fifth floor of H Warehouse. It was open wide, and one man after another endeavoured to close it by crawling towards it on the floor. But the smoke was so suffocating that the men had to be dragged back almost unconscious before they could reach the door. Meantime, the dock fire-engines and hydrants had been got to work, and the dock engineer was able to turn on full pressure, so that soon powerful jets of water were thrown on the flames. A hydrant is, briefly, an elbow-shaped metal pipe, permanently fixed to a main water-pipe; and when the fireman attaches his hose to it, he can get at once a stream of water through the hose at about the same pressure as the water in the main. The flames were spreading furiously, and the two upper floors of F Warehouse were blazing fast, throwing out such dense clouds of smoke, that the neighbourhood was darkened as by a thick fog.