I came within view of the river, and looked along Woolwich Reach, but saw no signs of such a ship as the _Childe Harold_ approaching. The hulks floated huge and motionless off the Dockyard and Arsenal. White clouds of fog were creeping over the flats of Plaistow, and the river streamed cold and yellow into the bleak gray haze of Bugsby’s Reach. A waterman approached and bade me good morning. I looked at the man, and recognised him as one whose boat I had hired on several occasions. He told me he had come to settle on this side of the river, as the Calais steamers and the hoys were making business scarce for the likes of him down the Stairs, Tower and Wapping way. He asked me if I wanted a boat. I answered no; I was waiting to view a convict ship that I understood was to come alongside the _Warrior_ hulk that morning. ‘Ay, that’s right,’ said he. ‘You’ll be catching sight of her any minute. The convicts go aboard to-morrow, I believe. She’s the _Childe Harold_. Too fine a ship for such dirty service, to my mind.’ Whilst I stood waiting and conversing with this fellow, who was one of the civillest of his kind on the river, a handsome barque under a main-topgallantsail came rounding to abreast of us out of Galleon’s Reach, driven by the fresh south-easterly wind. She was painted green and cleanly sheathed; her canvas was white as a yacht’s, and the whiter for the contrast of the glare of it upon the sullen gloom of the atmosphere. Her stem, as though it were red-hot, boiled the water at her bows; the white swirl rushed past the ruddy gleam of the copper into a ribbon-like wake of yeast, short and melting quickly for the lack of brine, and the picture was one of exceeding beauty and of inspiriting warmth and colour. She swept into the haze of Bugsby’s Reach, and vanished with a gleam of her topmast canvas showing in a hovering sort of way for a breath or two over the land abreast of the East India Docks. The waterman at my side was loud in praise of her. ‘I haven’t seen a pootier barque in this here river since the _Arab Chief_ towed down some weeks since.’ I started and looked at him, and exclaimed: ‘The _Arab Chief_!’ ‘Ay, the _Arab Chief_, the pootiest little vessel out of any port of the country.’ ‘Is she not a Liverpool vessel?’ ‘That’s her, mum. She sailed from the Mersey and brought a cargo to the Thames. There was a difficulty. The captain as had her, ’tis said, has come into one of them hulks.’ ‘When did she sail from London?’ ‘I don’t know, but I could easily find out for ye.’ ‘Which docks did she load in?’ ‘I believe she hauled out of the London Docks,’ answered the man.