The Pool of London
For many centuries the heart of London’s shipping was the stretch of the Thames below London Bridge known as the Pool of London. Ships moored in the river, often several abreast, and cargo was carried between ship and shore in lighters, the open barges worked on the tide. Merchants and customs officers preferred this compact arrangement, since goods could be inspected and taxed at a limited number of places.
In 1558 an Act of Parliament designated a small number of wharves on the north bank as legal quays, where dutiable cargo was supposed to be landed. The system made enforcement easier but concentrated trade in a short length of waterfront. As trade grew, the congestion became severe. Ships waited for berths, cargo was handled many times, and goods were exposed to theft and weather. Observers in the late eighteenth century complained of the losses to pilferage, a problem that merchants and ship owners came to see as intolerable.
The case for enclosed docks
The solution that emerged was the enclosed wet dock: a large basin entered through a lock, where ships could float at a constant level, unload directly to warehouses, and be guarded by walls and gates. Such docks already existed elsewhere, and Liverpool had opened one in 1715. London had earlier built some basins for fitting out and repair, but the first big commercial schemes belong to the early nineteenth century.
Building a dock was an immense investment, and companies were formed by Act of Parliament to raise the money. These companies were granted periods of monopoly over particular trades, which helped them recover the cost.
The great docks
The West India Docks, on the Isle of Dogs, opened in 1802, mainly for the sugar, rum and other produce of the Caribbean trade. They were followed by the London Docks at Wapping, opened in 1805 and used for a wide range of cargoes including wine, tobacco and wool, and by the East India Docks at Blackwall, opened in 1806 for the ships of the East India Company, whose large merchant vessels, the East Indiaman type, had previously unloaded in the river.
Later additions included the Surrey Commercial Docks on the south bank, specialised in timber and grain, and Millwall Dock, opened in 1868. Downstream on the Essex marshes, the Royal Docks were created in stages: the Royal Victoria Dock in 1855, the Royal Albert Dock in 1880 and the King George V Dock in 1921. Further downstream still, Tilbury Docks opened in 1886 to take larger steamers closer to the open estuary.
The result was a vast system of basins, warehouses, cranes, rail links and cuttings across east London. The docks were walled to prevent pilferage, and specialised in different trades.
Adapting to steam
The docks had barely been built when steam transformed shipping. Early steamers were small enough for the existing basins, but by the later nineteenth century ships had become larger, and the entrances and depths of the older docks became limiting. The Royal Docks and Tilbury were built to answer this change, and their design reflected the demands of the steamship era. Meanwhile, the river did not cease to matter. Lighters, towed by steam tugs, continued to carry goods between ships moored in the stream and wharves along the banks, and the harbour tugboat became part of the daily scene. The Thames sailing barges, with their distinctive tanned sails, carried bulk cargoes such as bricks, grain and straw around the estuary and into the port.
Workers and goods
The docks employed many thousands of people in the stevedoring work covered under dock labour, in warehouses, in lighterage and in ship repair. The area’s communities, from Wapping to Canning Town, were shaped by this employment. The wool, tea, sugar, timber and frozen meat that passed through became part of the household economy of the whole country, and the Port of London was for much of the nineteenth century among the busiest in the world.
Decline and redevelopment
After the Second World War, the upper docks suffered from the same pressures as other old ports. Ships grew larger than the old entrances could take, and the arrival of container shipping required deep water and a great deal of space for stacking. The docks upstream could not offer either. London’s cargo handling moved progressively downstream, with Tilbury taking on much of the work, and the closure of the older docks followed: the East India Docks closed in 1967, the London Docks in 1969, and the West India and Millwall Docks in 1980. The Royal Docks closed in 1981.
The aftermath left large areas of derelict land and unemployment in nearby communities, and in 1981 the London Docklands Development Corporation was established to oversee redevelopment. Over the following decades the former docks were converted to offices, housing, a business district at Canary Wharf and an airport in the Royal Docks. Some historic warehouses and dock walls remain, and the Museum of London Docklands now occupies a warehouse built for the West India Docks. The Cutty Sark, preserved in dry dock at Greenwich, stands as a reminder of the older age of the port, though she was not a London dock ship in the strict sense.
The history of the Port of London shows a repeated pattern: a harbour that can no longer cope with the ships it serves is either rebuilt or replaced. The wet docks answered the problem of the crowded river, and in time were themselves superseded.