1800-1856

Chaos on the river

The British Empire was expanding. Steam power had arrived. All this meant more trade. It also meant pandemonium on the river. Collisions were frequent and plundering was rife. The Port of London was in chaos and there was a desperate need for more docks with wider and deeper shores. First to be built were the East and West India Docks which helped relieve for a while the pressure on cargo berths for London. But it was not enough. The growing city needed a radical solution.

It was then that a group of entrepreneurs, spearheaded by George Parker Bidder, hatched an incredibly ambitious plan – to build docks that were bigger and deeper than anything that had gone before that could ensure London could be supplied for a century or more. What’s more their plan was to dig these docks out of the marshland, known as ‘Lands End’, further east than the other docks in what was to become an incredible feat of engineering.

Its hard to imagine, in Royal Docks history quite how many men and machines were required in the early part of the 19th century to undertake such a task. But the project was delivered on time and in 1855 Victoria Dock was opened. Some 13 metres deep and serviced by a giant ship lock the dock featured the latest technology in dockside cranes and services and more importantly could handle multiple numbers of the new large ironclad steamships that were servicing the empire.

At the same time, the demand for land for factories had also exploded, the first of which arrived in 1852 – Samuel Silver’s waterproof clothing works, which gave it’s name to the Silvertown district. By the 1880’s, the docks were one of London’s biggest bases for the cargo industry.

1880

Growth and Innovation

No sooner was Victoria Dock opened that it became clear that more wharf space was required and plans for another dock were developed. Longer than Victoria dock, these new docks would feature some unique innovations – railway lines that went straight to the dock edge, refrigerated warehousing to store perishable goods – even electric lighting would follow. Named Albert Dock this new addition was opened in 1880.