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