Port of London

The Port of London is that part of the River Thames in England lying between Teddington Lock and the defined boundary with the North Sea and including any associated docks. Once the largest port in the world, it was the United Kingdom's largest port as of 2020. Usage is largely governed by the Port of London Authority, a public trust established in 1908; while mainly responsible for coordination and enforcement of activities, it also has some minor operations of its own.
The port can handle cruise liners, roll-on roll-off ferries and cargo of all types at the larger facilities in its eastern extent. As with many similar historic European ports, such as Antwerp and Rotterdam, many activities have steadily moved downstream towards the open sea as ships have grown larger and the land upriver taken over for other uses.

History

The Port of London has been central to the economy of London since the founding of the city in the 1st century and was a major contributor to the growth and success of the city. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was the busiest port in the world, with wharves extending continuously along the Thames for, and over 1,500 cranes handling 60,000 ships per year. It was a prime target for Nazi German bomber aircraft during World War II.

The Roman port in London

The first evidence of a reasonable sized trading in London can be seen during Roman control of Britain, at which time the Romans built the original harbour. The construction involved expanding the waterfront using wooden frames filled with dirt. Once these were in place, the wharf was built in four stages moving downstream from London Bridge. The port began to rapidly grow and prosper during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and saw its final demise in the early 5th century with the decline in trade activity due to the Roman departure from Britain. The changes made to the banks along the port made by the Romans are so substantial and long-lasting that it was hard to tell where the natural waterfront really began. However, the harbour within the Roman town was already in decline at the end of the 2nd century AD. It seems likely that a proper port developed at about this time at Shadwell, about east of the Roman town
London became a very important trading port for the Romans at its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The harbour town grew and expanded quickly. The lavish nature of goods traded in London shaped the extravagant lifestyle of its citizens and the city flourished under Roman colonization. The Roman expansion of port facilities and organisation of the London harbour have remained as the base of the London harbour.

Pool of London

Until the beginning of the 19th century, shipping was handled entirely within the Pool of London on the stretch of the River Thames along Billingsgate on the south side of the City of London. All imported cargoes had to be delivered for inspection and assessment by Customs Officers, giving the area the name of "Legal Quays". The Pool saw a phenomenal increase in both overseas and coastal trade in the second half of the 18th century. Two-thirds of coastal vessels using the Pool were colliers meeting an increase in the demand for coal as the population of London rose. Coastal trade virtually doubled between 1750 and 1796 reaching 11,964 vessels in 1795. In overseas trade, in 1751 the pool handled 1,682 ships and 234,639 tons of goods. By 1794, this had risen to 3,663 ships and 620,845 tons. By this time, the river was lined with nearly continuous walls of wharves running for miles along both banks, and hundreds of ships moored in the river or alongside the quays. In the late 18th century, an ambitious scheme was proposed by Willey Reveley to straighten the Thames between Wapping and Woolwich Reach by cutting a new channel across the Rotherhithe, Isle of Dogs, and Greenwich peninsulas. The three great horseshoe bends would be cut off with locks, as huge wet docks. This was not realised, though a much smaller channel, the City Canal, was subsequently cut across the Isle of Dogs.

Enclosed dock systems

The enclosed docks had their origin in the lack of capacity in the Pool of London which particularly affected the West India trade. In 1799, the West India Dock Act allowed a new off-river dock to be built for produce from the West Indies, and the rest of Docklands followed as landowners built enclosed docks with better security and facilities than the Pool's wharves.
Throughout the 19th century, a series of enclosed dock systems was built, surrounded by high walls to protect cargoes from river piracy. These included West India Docks, East India Docks, London Docks, Surrey Commercial Docks, St Katharine Docks, Royal Victoria Dock, Millwall Dock, Royal Albert Dock, and Tilbury docks.
The enclosed docks were built by several rival private companies, notably the East & West India Docks Company, Surrey Commercial Docks Company and London & St Katharine Docks Company. By the beginning of the 20th century, competition and strikes led to pressure for amalgamation. A Royal Commission led to the setting up of the Port of London Authority in 1908. In 1909, the PLA took control of the enclosed docks from Tower Bridge to Tilbury, with a few minor exceptions such as Poplar Dock which remained as a railway company facility. It also took over control of the river between Teddington Lock and Yantlet Creek from the City corporation which had been responsible since the 13th century. The PLA head Office at Trinity Square Gardens was built by John Mowlem & Co and completed in 1919.
The PLA dredged a deep water channel, added the King George V Dock to the Royal group, and made continuous improvements to the other enclosed dock systems throughout the first two-thirds of the 20th century. This culminated in expansion of Tilbury in the late 1960s to become a major container port, together with a huge riverside grain terminal and mechanised facilities for timber handling. Under the PLA, London's annual trade had grown to 60 million tons by 1939, but was mainly transferred to the Clyde and Liverpool during World War 2. After the war, London recovered, again reaching 60 million tons in the 1960s.
Image:Thames river 1882.jpg|center|900px|The London docks in 1882. The King George V Dock had not yet been built.

Year	Name	Company	Area	Location name	Side of river	Approx. river distance below London Bridge	Comments
1802	West India Docks	E&WIDC	North Dock: ; Middle Dock:	Isle of Dogs	north
1803	East India Docks	E&WIDC		Blackwall	north		Originating from the Brunswick Dock of 1790
1805	London Docks	L&StKDC	Western Dock: ; Eastern Dock: ;	Wapping	north
1807	Surrey Commercial Docks	SCDC	17th-century original: ; eventually reached:	Rotherhithe	south		Originating from the Howland Great Wet Dock of 1696
1828	St Katharine Docks	L&StKDC		Tower Hamlets	north
1855	Royal Victoria Dock	L&StKDC	?	Plaistow Marshes today Silvertown	north
1860s	South West India Dock	E&WIDC	?	Isle of Dogs	north
1868	Millwall Dock	Millwall Dock Company	;	Millwall	north
1880	Royal Albert Dock	L&StKDC	?	Gallions Reach	north
1886	Tilbury Docks	E&WIDC	?	Tilbury	north
1912	King George V Dock	PLA		North Woolwich	north

Dockhands

By 1900, the wharves and docks were receiving about 7.5 million tons of cargo each; an inevitable result of the extending reach of the British Empire. Of course, because of its size and grandeur, the Port was a place of work for many labourers in late 19th and early 20th century London. While most of the dockers were casual labourers, there were skilled stevedores who loaded ships, and lightermen who unloaded cargo from moored boats via barges. While these specific dockhands found regular work, the average dockhand lived day to day, hoping he would be hired whenever a ship came in. Many times these workers would actually bribe simply for a day's work; and a day's work could be 24 hours of continuous labouring. In addition, the work itself was incredibly dangerous. A docker would suffer a fatal injury from falling cargo almost every week during 1900, and non-fatal injuries were even more frequent.
The London dockers handled exotic imports such as precious stones, African ivory, Indian spices, and Jamaican rum that they could never dream of purchasing themselves, and so robberies were very common on the London docks. Dockers would leave work with goods hidden under their clothes, and robbers would break into warehouses at night. While tobacco, pineapples, bearskins, and other goods were all targets of thievery, the most common transgression was stealing to drink. Many reports from the early 20th century detail dockers stealing bottles of brandy or gin and drinking rather than working. More often than not, the consequences were harsh. Five weeks of hard labour for one bottle of Hennessy brandy was not unheard of.
These conditions eventually spurred Ben Tillett to lead the London Dock strike of 1889. The workers asked for only a minuscule increase in payment, but foremen initially refused. Over time the strike grew and eventually helped to draw attention to the poor conditions of London dockhands. The strike also revitalized the British Trades Union movement, leading to the betterment of labourers across London.