This plan (_see_ Appendix G) represents a scheme for docks proposed by Mr. Spence, a maritime surveyor to the Admiralty. He proposed to divide the shipping of the port into twelve different classes, each class to have a separate dock for its accommodation. He proposed that six of these docks should be 600 feet square, the other six being 400 feet, connected with each other on the plan of the docks at Liverpool. As you will see by this plan, Mr. Spence suggested two alternative sites for these docks. There cannot be a doubt that, had the principle here indicated of localising the warehousing of the various classes of merchandise been more fully carried out, the working of goods would have been more efficient, more economical, and more satisfactory in every way to both merchant and Dock Company. In the monopolies granted to the earlier Dock Companies, the Government seem to have made an attempt in this direction; but it is to be feared that the spirit of competition and the morbid jealousy of anything tending to a monopoly will always be a barrier to any extended application of this principle, however much it might be the interest of the public to promote it. The docks proposed by Mr. Spence were estimated to cost £500,000. The last, but by no means the least interesting, of these rejected dock schemes to which I shall invite your attention, consists of four alternative plans proposed by Mr. Willey Reveley, an engineer and architect. You will observe by the plan before you (1), that Mr. Reveley proposed (_see_ Appendix H), by a bold stroke, at once to demolish the Isle of Dogs, as an impediment to the navigation of the river, by cutting a channel straight through it from Limehouse to Blackwall; leaving the long reach round the island as a magnificent dock of 434 acres, with flood-gates at each entrance to the new course of the river. Under the second scheme proposed by him (_see_ Appendix I), Mr. Reveley, as you will observe by this plan, suggested the cutting of a new channel for the river, inclining towards Woolwich Reach below Blackwall, so as to convert the upper bend of the river by Perry’s Dock into a second dock, thus securing for the two docks a water space of 524 acres. Under his third plan (_see_ Appendix J), Mr. Reveley proposed to conduct the new channel of the river straight from Wapping, intersecting the river so as to convert the three bends between Wapping and Woolwich into three docks, to be known respectively as the ‘Ratcliff,’ the ‘Blackwall,’ and the ‘Greenwich’ Docks, giving a total of 644 acres.