(Download) "Notes and Queries, Number 44, August 31, 1850" by Various Authors ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Notes and Queries, Number 44, August 31, 1850
- Author : Various Authors
- Release Date : January 01, 2012
- Genre: Study Aids,Books,Reference,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 58 KB
Description
This is a notes book. While so much has been said of coaches, in the early numbers of "Notes and Queries" and elsewhere, very little notice has been taken of another mode of conveyance which has now become very important. I think it may amuse some of your readers to compare a modern Gravesend boat and passage with the account given by Daniel Defoe, in the year 1724: and as it is contained in what I believe to be one of his least known works, it may probably be new to most of them. In his Great Law of Subordination, after describing the malpractices of hackney coachmen, he proceeds. 'The next are the watermen; and, indeed, the insolence of these, though they are under some limitations too, is yet such at this time, that it stands in greater need than any other, of severe laws, and those laws being put in speedy execution. 'Some years ago, one of these very people being steersman of a passage-boat between London and Gravesend, drown'd three-and-fifty people at one time. The boat was bound from Gravesend to London, was very full of passengers and goods, and deep loaden. The wind blew very hard at south-west, which being against them, obliged them to turn to windward, so the seamen call it, when they tack from side to side, to make their voyage against the wind by the help of the tide.