Mariners' Friend Society, 19, Old Gravel-lane, London-docks, E. - Objects: to promote the social, temporal, and spiritual welfare of seamen, watermen, lightermen, dock-labourers, and their families, by holding services on shore at the bethels; by conducting religious services afloat; by visiting ships and seamen's lodging-houses; by establishing Sunday-schools, bands of hope, and temperance societies; and by distributing the Bible and Testament to seamen in different languages.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames, 1881