I need hardly remind you that in the absence of quays at which vessels could lay alongside and discharge, their freights had to be unshipped in the river and crafted ashore, and some arrangement existed as to those portions of the stream in which vessels from different parts took up their position for this purpose. Mooring chains extended from the Upper Pool to Limehouse, on both sides of the river. Each of these mooring chains was intended to afford anchorage for fourteen or sixteen vessels; but, sometimes, as many as thirty were moored to each. The moorings from London Bridge to the Tower were for the most part occupied by coasters; those at Blackwall were for East Indiamen; and West Indiamen and king’s ships moored off Deptford. Altogether there was mooring accommodation for 800 vessels, large and small. Now, as I have already shown, in the year 1794, 3,663 ships, British and foreign, with a tonnage of 620,845 tons; and 10,286 coasters, with a tonnage of upwards of 1,000,000 tons, competed for this limited anchorage. Of course, hundreds of vessels grounded with the tide, and in rough weather sometimes sustained more injury than accrued from two or three bad voyages. These figures will help to convey some impression of the crowded state of the river, although I am unable to say what number of vessels were, as a rule, in the river at one time. This condition of things was greatly aggravated by the exigencies of war, which, by throwing ships into large convoys, resulted in the river at times being completely blocked. To increase the confusion it would sometimes happen that as many as 300 colliers would come up the river at one time, and although a regulation existed that a fair way of 300 feet should always be preserved for vessels passing up and down the stream, the crowd of shipping has been so great that one might walk from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore over the decks of vessels. Here I may remark that, in the winter of 1794 coals reached the enormous price of six guineas the chaldron; for although there were hundreds of colliers in the river, the glut of shipping was so excessive that they could not be unloaded. Accidents and loss of life were matters of everyday occurrence: over 500 persons lost their life from drowning annually, three-fifths of these cases occurring in the Pool. But by far the most serious of the many evils arising out of this condition of things was the immorality which it generated amongst all classes of labour employed on the river. East Indiamen seldom came higher up the river than Blackwall, where they discharged their cargoes into decked lighters, or hoys, of from 50 to 100 tons; hence the pillage was, comparatively speaking, trifling. By far the greater bulk of the most costly and valuable merchandise, such as rum, sugar, wine, &c., was discharged into open lighters, punts, billyboys, lugger-boats; and, to say nothing of the plunder effected during discharge, and in the passage up the river to