Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is one of the great figures of English literature in the early 18th century. He is best known for his novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, but he wrote many other books and hundreds of pamphlets. His varied life included two spells in prison and bankruptcy.
A Journal of the Plague Year
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 Daniel Defoe (1660-1731). © NMM | Published in 1722, this seems to be a memoir of the Great Plague of London in 1665. Told in the first person, this is a vivid description of the City in the grip of the fearful epidemic. However, the Journal is a work of historical fiction rather than a genuine memoir, as Defoe was only five years old at the time of the Great Plague. Even so, Defoe's painstaking research into the course of the epidemic lends this work an air of authenticity. Several passages describe the effect of the epidemic on the port districts.
The collapse of the port
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| A man in a wherry handling barrels, by Willem Van de Velde, the Younger. © NMM | Defoe vividly describes how the plague destroyed London's sea-borne trade, and showed a deep understanding of just how many people depended on that trade for their livelihoods.
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As merchandising was at a full stop, for very few ships ventured to come up the river and none at all went out, so all the extraordinary officers of the customs, likewise the watermen, carmen, porters, and all the poor whose labour depended upon the
merchants, were at once dismissed and put out of business... |
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As navigation was at a stop, our ships neither coming in or going out as before, so the seamen were all out of employment, and many of them in the last and lowest degree of distress; and with the seamen were all the several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon the building and fitting out of ships, such as ship-carpenters, caulkers, ropemakers, dry coopers, sailmakers, anchorsmiths, and other smiths;
blockmakers, carvers, gunsmiths, ship-chandlers, ship-carvers and the like... |
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Add to these that the river was in a manner without boats, and all or most part of the watermen, lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-
builders in like manner idle and laid by... |
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The Thames viewed from Greenwich
The narrator persuades a waterman to take him out to Greenwich, from where he surveys the shipping on the Thames...
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He carried me to Greenwich... I walked up to the top of the hill under which the town stands... to get a prospect of the river. But it was a surprising sight to see the number of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some places two or three lines in the breadth of the river...
I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must be several hundreds of sail...
The distress of the people at this seafaring end of the
town was very deplorable...
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A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain
This work, published in 1726, was part travelogue, part social and economic observation. Defoe understood trade, and always made valuable comments on what he saw.
The Pool
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That part of the river of Thames which is properly the harbour, and where the ships usually deliver or unload their cargoes, is called the Pool, and begins at the turning of the river out of Limehouse Reach,
and extends to the Custom-House-Keys. |
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In this compass I have had the curiosity to count the ships as well as I could... and have found above two thousand sail of all sorts, not reckoning
bargers, lighters or pleasure-boats, and yachts... |
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| A model of the Pool of London. © NMM | |
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In the river... there are from Battle-Bridge on the Southwark side, and the Hermitage-Bridge on the city-side, reckoning to Black-Wall...
Three wet docks for laying up;
Twenty-two dry docks for repairing merchant ships
Thirty-three yards for building merchant ships
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| The Howland Great Dock near Deptford, by J Badslade. © NMM | |
The City wharves
The quays, or wharfs, next the river, fronting not the Custom House only, but the whole space from the Tower stairs, or dock, to the bridge... are a testimony of the vast trade carried on in it... The revenue, or income, brought in by these wharfs... is said to amount to a prodigious sum... [An] abundance of porters, watchmen, wharfingers, and
other officers, are maintained here by the business of the wharfs...
Greenwich
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I took boat at Tower-Wharf, sending my horses to meet me at Greenwich... which is the most delightful spot of ground in Great-Britain; pleasant by situation, those pleasures increased by art, and all made completely agreeable by the accident of fine buildings, the continual passing of fleets of ships up and down the most beautiful river in Europe; the best air, best
prospect, and the best conversation in England. |
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| Greenwich from One Tree Hill, by Johannes Vorsterman. © NMM | |
Woolwich
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Here, when the business of the royal navy increased, and Queen Elizabeth built larger and greater ships of war than were usually employed before, new docks, and launches were erected, and places prepared for the building and repairing ships
of the largest size... |
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| A view of His Majesty's Dock Yard at Woolwich, by John Clevely Junior. © NMM | |
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Besides the building yards, here is a large rope-walk where the biggest cables are made for the men of war; and on the east or lower part of the town in the gun-yard... commonly called the Park, or Gun Park; where there is a prodigious quantity of all manner of ordnance-stores, such as are fit for sea-service, that is to say, cannon of all sorts ... and mortars
of all sorts and sizes... |
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| Woolwich Dockyard, by Nicholas Pocock. © NMM | |
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