Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462, page 19 by Various Authors
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, is the almost infinite number of new channels of trade they have opened, and are opening up. Ten years ago, one-half the vessels plying on the Clyde were built of timber, and all the larger ones, with a few solitary exceptions: at the present hour, one could not count ten in a fleet of sixty--the immense majority are of iron. The advertising columns of one newspaper gave notice recently, in a single day, of the establishment of three several routes of communication with foreign ports hitherto denied the means of direct intercourse with this country, all to be carried on by means of iron vessels. A sailing-vessel, constructed of this material, was announced at Lloyd's a few months ago, as having performed one of the speediest homeward passages from Eastern India yet recorded.
A rough estimate of the extent to which this branch of industrial skill is carried, may be formed from the number of separate establishments in active operation on the Clyde. There are five of these in the neighbourhood of Govan, about two miles below Glasgow Bridge; two at Renfrew; three at Dumbarton, which is, more correctly speaking, on the Leven, but generally falls to be reckoned in common with the other places mentioned as a Clyde port; two below Port Glasgow; and three at Greenock--in all, fifteen establishments, employing between 4000 and 5000 hands in the construction of iron hulls alone. This, of course, does not include the army of labourers dependent for their very existence upon the demand thus created for materials--such as iron-smelters, forgemen, rivet-makers, &c.; nor those artisans employed alike on vessels of iron and timber--such as painters, blacksmiths, blockmakers, riggers, and others. As from the laying of a keel to the launching of a ship a longer period than six months rarely elapses, some idea may be formed of the continued press of work necessary to keep these thousands in full employment, as well as the dispatch exercised in the completion of orders. From ten to a dozen ships have b