The "Prospect"—and How She Panned Out: Schooner Days MLXXXIV (1084)

by C. H. J. Snider

IN WAPPING

Last Summer

THE YOUNG LADY wore a mask and mittens and slippers of white velvet, and a black velvet shield concealed her small provocative chin.

When I sought refreshment in the waterfront inn, in the course of my search for a unit of London's great and vanished fleet of sailing colliers, she sidled up and treated me like a long lost big brother; or even I shrink from suggesting this, like a sugar daddy.

I was not deceived by her mask and mittens and chin cap of velvet, nor her great soulful amber eyes, nor by her satiny black evening wrap of near-mink. Beneath it, when my fingers explored its surface in a purely platonic way, I could feel her little heart fluttering under her scantily lined ribs. She was just a hungry young cat, Billingsgate model, singing for her supper. Her make-believe mink was just cat's fur and her velvet chin shield was of the same.

No disrespect intended in "Billingsgate model." It so happened that the first black cat seen with white trim and black chin below a white face was at Billingsgate Market. They are not usual on the Toronto waterfront, but they are plentiful from Billingsgate to the Isle of Dogs-—whence, for some reason, they have vanished.

Black Chin was really on the up-up-up and never pretended that her swank wrap was anything but her birthday suit. And it was, lovely and soft and shiny. The wine steward fainted when I passed up his wares in favor of a pot of tea, and the waitress looked with disapproval at my self-invited table companion when she, The Nippy, brought me the best dinner I had in England, outside of a private home. (There was even enough butter.) I smuggled Black Chin under the white tablecloth and there fed her half my ample ration. She emerged at length purring like a bee hive.

"Before you go," said I, "tell me—

"Am I doing anything this evening? Of course I am," she mewed.

"I wasn't going to ask that," I growled, "But can you tell me where I can find an old sailing collier that seems to be moored somewhere on the north shore of the river, the Prospect of Whitby?"

"Sir," she said' politely, "you are there now. This is the Prospect of Whitby."

GO ON," I protested. "You couldn't fool me with that near-mink coat, and don't, think all these nautical doo-dahs and navigation lights and bottle models can make me believe I'm on shipboard."

"The customer is always right," she answered demurely, "but this is the Prospect of Whitby, 'mentioned in the fillum Gryte Hexpectations, which you have undoubtedly 'ave witnessed, and in the novel by Charles Dickens by the syme nyme. Excuse me talking this way. This part is only what I heard the barker say on the excursion boat.

"But I know the place is very old. Built about 1520, a roadhouse in the village of Wapping-on-the-Wose. Called the Devil's Tavern in records of 1563. Samuel Pepys would dine here when inspecting King Charles' navy. Afterwards the Ancient Society of Pepys used to come here to eat and drink by candlelight and read from the great Diary. There's some of their old pewter spoons and platters and ladles. Used to be kept downstairs below in what they call the Sea Chest.

"Lots more may have been kept down there that never paid duty. In this upstairs room they often had private bruising matches and cocking mains. But we're all correct and proper now and have been for a hundred years. Hanging Judge Jefferys, the Lord Chancellor—"

"But—"

"—used to sit drinking his mulled sack on the gallery there where he could comfortably watch victims of his Bloody Assizes dancing on air across at Execution Dock, and—"

"But—"

She purred on serenely. "For a hundred years this was the handiest place for sailors to hide from the pressgangs that combed the river, and the easiest place for press crews to do their searching, for the liquor was good. And another thing, this is where the first fuchsia plant was brought into England. A sailor brought a shoot from Holland in one horn and traded it for another horn, across the bar, and that one plant produced three hundred seedlings the first year. Didn't you see all the fuchsia's gleaming like loaded cherry trees as you came along Wapping Wall?"

"NO," I said, firmly uprooting the fuchsia. "Pardon my interruption, but what I am inquiring for is or was an old collier, named the Prospect of Whitby, a sailing ship that used to carry coal to London from Yorkshire, maybe 150 years ago."

"It was a hundred and seventy-five years ago," purred on Black Chin placidly. "Yes, that's how the inn got its present name. The Prospect of Whitby was a ship built at Whitby in Yorkshire—not your Lake Ontario Whitby—in 1777. She was one of the largest vessels in the sea coal trade, 373 tons register; square-rigged on all three masts, and owned by James Watty and John Lacy. She used to anchor off here, to wait for the tide to turn, or a fair wind. Or maybe to take on or put off cargo. To unload ten tons of coal a day was good work when they used only hands and buckets, so she might take a month to lighten. Four men on a staging hoisted the "chaldron," or cask containing 36 bushels of coal to the bulwarks, and tipped it into a wide chute. This poured the coal into a barge lying alongside, and the barge ferried it ashore, where it had to be loaded again into carts.

"I've an idea she carried more than coal. Perhaps rum, cognac or tobacco. Maybe she was a government transport at times. Anyway, being so large a vessel, she took a long time to load or unload, and had to wait long for wind and water that suited her. She was an easy target for the press crews. She was almost a fixture here. It was common slang on the river to call this the Prospect's moorings, and every sailor nabbed by the press gang would claim immunity as belonging to the Prospect of Whitby.

"Perhaps the better to get a license renewal, some new broom in the old inn registered it as the Prospect of Whitby then, and that's what it has been, called ever since. We've taken on a new lease of life since 1946, and we've a good clientele—the local trade, the army of artists who like to paint us, the tourists who hear about us, and the west-enders who come down to see how the east end lives, and to get a good meal.

So the collier Prospect of Whitby lives on in a waterfront inn, two hundred and fifty years old when the collier was launched. She is even in the four-volume London telephone directory.

"Speaking of good meals, if you'll excuse me I'll just go over and see if the fish they are serving at the table across the room is properly cooked."

"GOOD NIGHT," squawked Captain Flint, the Treasure Island parrot.

UNLOADING AT THE RATE OF 10 TONS A DAY.—Collier brig drawn by E. W, Cooke, 1829.