ct.
Willington Quay and Howdon carry on the line of shipbuilding yards to
Northumberland Dock and the staithes of the Tyne Commissioners, where
the waggon ways from various collieries bring the coal to the water's
edge. Tyne Dock, just opposite, and the Albert Edward Dock near North.
Shields, provide abundance of shipping accommodation, besides what is
afforded by the river itself; and now the river flows between the steep
banks of North and South Shields. As the names declare, these two
growing and prosperous towns once consisted of a few fishermen's huts,
or "shielings"; but that was long ago, when the north shore of the Tyne
was owned by the Prior of Tynemouth, and the southern shore by the
Bishop of Durham, and the citizens of Newcastle complained to King
Edward I. that these two ecclesiastics had raised towns, "where no town
ought to be," and that "fishermen sold fish there which ought to be sold
at Newcastle, to the great injury of the whole borough, and in detriment
to the tolls of our Lord the King." These quarrels between Newcastle and
the other settlements on the Tyne continued with varying results, until
in the days of Cromwell, Ralph Gardiner of Chirton, a little village
close to North Shields, took up the cudgels for the growing towns; and
by dint of great perseverance, and in spite of much persecution and
ill-will, succeeded in getting most of the unjust privileges of their
stronger neighbour abolished.

There were salt-pans, too, on both sides of the mouth of the Tyne, which
were worked in connection with the monasteries from very early days; and
Daniel Defoe, when he visited the north in 1726, declared that he could
see from the top of the Cheviot "the smoke of the salt-pans at Sheals,
at the mouth of the Tyne, which was about forty miles south of this."

North Shields clings haphazard to the steep bank of the Tyne, and
spreads away up and beyond it, reaching out towards Wallsend on the
river shore and Tynemouth along by the sea, the older parts by the
river looking black and grimy to the last degree; but there is a silver
lining to this very black cloud--not visible, it is true, but distinctly
audible--in the great shipbuilding and repairing works known as Smith's
Dock, one of the largest concerns of the kind in Great Britain, where so
many hundreds of men earn their daily bread; and in the fishing
industry, which was the foundation of the town's prosperity, and bids
fair to be so for many years to com