Some account of the
PORT OF LONDON

According to official returns, about 2700 ships, of the collective burden of 573,000 tons, now belong to London, exclusive of the immense number of craft and other unregistered vessels previously enumerated.

Of the value and extent of the fishing-trade, the following interesting particulars have been given in the Encyclopedia Britannica:—" No city in the world is better and more plentifully supplied with fish, than London. Turbot and brill are carried there from the coast of Holland; salmon from the rivers in Scotland and Ireland,—a few, however, are caught in the Thames,—at the mouth of which, mackerel and cod-fish are taken.

In 1828, the following calculation was made of the quantity of fish sold at Billingsgate.

"To supply the actual demands of the people with this food, it required 3827 vessels; the number of fishermen, therefore, exclusively devoted to this particular business, and subservient to that metropolis alone, is truly immense.

The Customs-duty collected in the port of London, amounts to more than half the entire customs of the United Kingdom—exceeding ten millions annually. In a recent publication, it has been calculated that "above 40,000 waggons, and other carriages, including their repeated journeys, arrive and depart from the metropolis, laden in both instances with articles of domestic or foreign merchandise; occasioning a transit, including cattle and provisions sent for the consumption of the inhabitants, of more than 50,000,000l. worth of goods, to and from the inland markets; making with the imports, a sum of 120,000,000l. worth of property annually moving to and from the metropolis."

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