CHAPTER XXIII 
THE RIVER THAMES AND THE RAILWAY ENGINEERING 
SHOPS 
Noruing illustrates the importance of local conditions 
in the engineering trades more forcibly than the rise and 
fall of the shipbuilding and engineering works on the 
River Thames. In the Victorian period some of the 
principal British shipbuilders and engineers were running 
prosperous businesses at various points below London 
Bridge. Their names were better known than most of the 
North Country firms to whom reference has been made in 
preceding pages. Economic conditions in the present 
generation, however, have forced them out of existence. 
It is cheaper to use steel, iron and coal where it is produced 
than to bring it hundreds of miles by rail or water to the 
seat of manufacture. The skilled workman also prefers 
as a rule to live in that district where a great variety of work 
is carried on and where the conditions point to more constant 
employment and higher wages. 
The result of the growth of these industries in the 
North was to deprive the Thames of its pre-eminence. Of 
all the great firms which flourished fifty or sixty years ago, 
hardly any, except Gwynne & Co. of Hammersmith, whose 
capital account is being reconstructed, remain, unless they 
have migrated to some more suitable spot. The old 
Blackwall shipyard dated back to 1612, and was probably 
the longest-lived in this country. It was the cradle of the 
Orient Line, which was formed forty years ago, by the 
union of the two firms of Green and Anderson. Green's 
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