o_199m9vauin7s89a1ibd1tc12gd4g.pdf

44 THE king's yard
built ships, and copying our plans. What need we
care ?
Foreigners could not build ships, and even if
they could, we should
certainly sooner or later go to
war and make prizes of the other nation's vessels.
And so, because we were indifferent as to who
came into the Dockyard, when you
gate just beyond
entered at the
the Ordnance wharf at the end of
the Yard, there was just a porter's lodge instead of a
police office.
The porter who sat in the lodge, provided the
person did not look like a thief, or was not well
known to him as one of the town rogues, would not
dream of stopping anyone from walking in — that is,
of course, during working hours, for at night there
were sentries from the garrison posted
all round the
Dock wall.
The master porter, in those days, was a
person of importance, and when, as sometimes was
the case, he held the
tap as well, he made something
like ;^8oo a year out of it, employing, you may
be sure, many subordinate porters,
who did all the
opening and shutting of gates.
When you entered the Yard, and got fairly inside
the gate, there, in front of you, were the mast-houses
and ponds, while on the right were neat rows of red
brick dwellings, where lived the master builder, the
clerk of the cheque, the clerk of the survey, the
master attendants, the master rigger, the master