Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

I found him up to everything that is done in the contracting line

by Messrs. Peto and Brassey – cunning in the article of concrete –

mellow in the matter of iron – great on the subject of gunnery.

When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a

leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his

forbearance with me in my disabled state. While he thus

discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one distant

quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of

‘the Yard.’ Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought

me that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it

lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the windmills, as

if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and

sought to trouble no man. Taken with this modesty on the part of

the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard’s acquaintance.

My good opinion of the Yard’s retiring character was not dashed by

nearer approach. It resounded with the noise of hammers beating

upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty menof-

war are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the

opposite side of the river. For all that, however, the Yard made

no display, but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields,

hop-gardens, and orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet

– almost a lazy – air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great

Shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of

proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store

of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an innocent toy-like

appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over them was a

mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. As the hot sunlight

sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little man

who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead,

lead, lead.

Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of

chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had not

succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the very

street posts to be cannon, and the architectural ornaments to be

shells. And so I came to the Yard, which was shut up tight and

strong with great folded gates, like an enormous patent safe.

These gates devouring me, I became digested into the Yard; and it

had, at first, a clean-swept holiday air, as if it had given over

work until next war-time. Though indeed a quantity of hemp for

rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even there, which would

hardly be lying like so much hay on the white stones if the Yard

were as placid as it pretended.

Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG,

Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG! What on earth is this! This

is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve

hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on

stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without,

crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever

it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers,

measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights;

twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers,

bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the

rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the

perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the

full work is in hand for which this is but note of preparation –

the day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great, dry,

thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these busy figures

between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke and fire,

are as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another

kind in smoke and fire, that day. These steam-worked engines

alongside, helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting

tons of iron plates about, as though they were so many leaves of

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