The sailor has always been a creature distinct from his fellow-man. It would seem, from such scanty notice as we can get, that the London craftsman had never any great love for the sea; the sailor came from Dover, Sandwich, Hythe, Dartmouth, and other places, but not from London. In later years a riverside population grew up from the Tower as far as the Isle of Dogs, and eventually these people were connected with shipping. Among them was a whole multitude of sailors, together with those who lived by working among and for the ships in the Pool. There are glimpses of this invisible population within the walls of the City, especially below the Bridge and near the Tower. To this day the courts and lanes in which they lived remain. They are narrow, dark, and noisome. Only the lowest craftsmen could live in such courts; they contained drinking places for the sailors, native and foreign, sleeping dens for them, fighting places for them, but not decent living houses. In such a narrow street, where the houses were built of wood and closely packed with people, broke out the Great Fire of London. Chaucer’s sailor was a Dartmouth man. There were plenty like him standing about on the quay and drinking in the taverns. Your true seafaring man never does anything while he is on shore except stand about on the quays, lean against a post, or carouse in a tavern. Many a fight took place along these quays and in these narrow courts: fights between Genoese and Venetian; between Englishman and Frenchman; between Englishman and Fleming; fights with knife and dagger; fights which began with a duello and ended in a _mêlée_, all begun, carried on, and ended in a few minutes, leaving a man dying and half a dozen wounded; fights between a man of Dover and a man of Yarmouth; fights over the reckoning at the tavern; fights over Doll and Moll and Poll. Always the riverside of London has been a place remarkable for its life, and vividness, its riot and noise, the cheerful cry of battle, the inspiriting song of the tippler, and the dulcet voice of love.