Port of London

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Port of London Authority Building, Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill
Port of London Authority Building, Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill
Port of London Authority building on Charterhouse Street
Port of London Authority building on Charterhouse Street

The Port of London lies along the banks of the River Thames from London, England to the North Sea.

The Port of London is governed by the Port of London Authority (PLA) (est. 1908) whose responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames from Margate on the south coast, and Clacton-on-Sea on the north, through to Teddington, a total of around 95 miles (150 km). The PLA has its headquarters at London River House in Gravesend, Kent. From the City of London via the Thames Conservancy, the PLA has inherited ownership of the bed of the river and foreshore from Teddington to the Yantlet Line between Southend and Grain.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

The Port of London was central to the economy of London from Saxon times. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was the busiest port in the World, with wharves extending continuously along the Thames for 11 miles, and over 1,500 cranes handling 60,000 ships per year. In World War II it was a prime target for the Luftwaffe during The Blitz.

[edit] Enclosed dock systems

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.[2] This was not realised, though a much smaller channel, the City Canal was subsequently cut across the Isle of Dogs.

Throughout the 19th Century a series of enclosed dock systems was built, surrounded by high walls to protect cargoes from river piracy. These included Surrey Commercial Docks (1807, originating from the Howland Great Wet Dock of 1696), West India Docks (1802), East India Docks (1803, originating from the Brunswick Dock of 1790), London Docks (1805), St Katharine Docks (1828), Royal Victoria Dock (1855), Millwall Dock (1868), Royal Albert Dock (1880), and Tilbury Docks (1886).

The London docks in 1882. The King George V Dock had not yet been built.
The London docks in 1882. The King George V Dock had not yet been built.
Tilbury in 1946, before major expansion as a container port.
Tilbury in 1946, before major expansion as a container port.

The enclosed docks were built by several rival private companies, notably the East & West India Docks Company (owners of the East India, West India and Tilbury docks), Surrey Commercial Docks Company and London & St Katharine Docks Company (owners of the London, St Katharine and Royal docks). 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 (PLA) 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. 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 (1920) 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 (the UK's largest in the early 1970s), 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 (38% of UK trade) 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.

[edit] Port Industries

Alongside the docks many port industries developed, some of which (notably sugar refining, edible oil processing and cable manufacture), survive today. Other industries have included iron working, lead smelting, casting of brass and bronze, shipbuilding, timber, grain, cement and paper milling, armament manufacture, vehicle manufacture, etc. London was the major centre of shipbuilding in Britain (and perhaps in the world) for centuries, but declined relative to the Clyde and other centres from the mid 19th Century, with the large major warship, HMS Thunderer, being launched in 1911. This also affected an attempt by Henry Bessemer to establish steel-making on the Greenwich Peninsula in the 1860s.[3]

There were also numerous power stations and gas works on the Thames and its tributaries and canals. Major Thames-side gasworks were located at Beckton and the Greenwich Peninsula, with power stations including Brimsdown, Hackney and West Ham on the Lea and Kingston, Fulham, Lots Road, Wandsworth, Battersea, Bankside, Narrow Street Stepney, Deptford, Greenwich, Blackwall Point, Brunswick Wharf, Woolwich, Barking, Belvedere, Littlebrook, West Thurrock, Northfleet, Tilbury and Grain on the Thames.

The coal requirements of power stations and gas works constituted a large proportion of London's post-war trade. A 1959 Times article [4] states:

About two-thirds of the 20 million tons of coal entering the Thames each year is consumed in nine gas works and 17 generating stations. Beckton Gas Works carbonises an average of 4,500 tons of coal every day; the largest power stations burn about 3,000 tons during a winter day.. .. Three more power stations, at Belvedere (Oil-firing), and Northfleet and West Thurrock (coal-firing), are being built.

This coal was handled directly by riverside coal handling facilities, rather than the docks. For example Beckton Gas Works had two large piers which dealt with both its own requirements and with the transfer of coal to lighters for delivery to other gasworks.

[edit] The move down stream

With the use of larger ships and containerisation, the importance of the upstream port declined rapidly from the mid-1960s. The enclosed docks further up river declined and closed progressively between the end of the 1960s and the early 1980s. Trade at privately owned wharves on the open river continued for longer, for example with container handling at the Victoria Deep Water Terminal on the Greenwich Peninsula into the 1990s, and bulk paper import at Convoy's Wharf in Deptford until 2000. The wider port continued to be a major centre for trade and industry, with oil refineries and terminals at Coryton, Shell Haven and Canvey in Essex and the Isle of Grain in Kent. In 1992 Government privatisation policy led to Tilbury becoming a freeport. The PLA ceased to be a port operator, retaining the role of managing the Thames.

Much of the disused land of the upstream London Docklands is in the process of being developed for housing and as a second financial district for London.

[edit] The Port today

The Port of London today comprises over 70 independently owned terminals and port facilities, directly employing over 30,000 people.[5] These are mainly concentrated at Purfleet (with the world's largest margarine works), Thurrock, Tilbury, Coryton and Canvey Island in Essex, Dartford and Northfleet in Kent, and Greenwich, Silvertown, Barking, Dagenham and Erith in Greater London. In 2006 London remained one of the three largest ports in the United Kingdom by tonnage handled (51.9 million), after Grimsby & Immingham (64 million) and Tees & Hartlepool (53.3 million).[6] In 2001 (when total tonnage was much the same) this was primarily crude oil and oil products (18 million tons), containers (11 million tons) and aggregates (8.6 million tons).[7] In terms of imports (43.26 million tons), London dropped from first to second in importance in 2006. The port statistics do not include the 1.3 million tons of cargo handled by London Heathrow Airport.[8]

A considerable proportion of the drop in London's trade since the 1960s is accounted for by loss of the coal trade, the gas works having closed following discovery of North Sea Gas, domestic use of coal for heating being largely replaced by gas and electricity, and closure of all the coal-burning power stations above Tilbury.

With around 12,500 commercial shipping movements annually, the Port of London handles around 10% of the UK commercial shipping trade, and contributes 8.5 billion pounds to the UK's economy.

Although the Kent (BP) and Shell Haven (Shell) refineries closed in 1982 and 1999, Coryton remains in production. A number of upstream wharves remain in use. At Silvertown for example Tate & Lyle continues to operate the world's largest cane sugar refinery, originally served by the West India Docks but now with its own cargo handling facilities. Many wharves as far upstream as Fulham are used for the handling of aggregates brought by barge from facilities down river. Riverside sites in London are under intense pressure for prestige housing or office development, and as a consequence the Greater London Authority in consultation with the PLA has implemented a plan to safeguard 50 wharves within Greater London, half above and half below the Thames Barrier.[9]

[edit] Proposed expansion

In terms of number of containers, London currently ranks third in the UK after Southampton and Felixstowe. This is likely to change in future if plans for a major new facility at the Shell Haven refinery site (P&O's London Gateway) come to fruition. Government approval was given in May 2007 for the redevelopment of this 607 hectare (1,500 acre) brownfield site, which has a two mile river frontage. The developers plan a port capable of handling the largest deep-sea container ships, including a 2,300 metre long container quay with a capacity of 3.5 million standard container units a year. The development would also include a 300 hectare (700 acre) 'logistics and business park', with direct links to the rail network.[10] This would re-establish London's pre-eminence as originally intended by the PLA in the 1960s with its proposed development of a deep-sea port at Maplin Sands as part of the proposed third London airport site.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ London Assembly standard letter re access to the River Thames - PDF (view as HTML)
  2. ^ Clout, H. (Ed) 1994, The Times London History Atlas,Times Books,ISBN 0-7230-0342-4
  3. ^ Bessemer's autobiography Chapter 21
  4. ^ Industries along the Riverside, Special Correspondent (news) The Times, Mon, Mar 16 1959; pg. xi; Issue 54410; col A
  5. ^ Port of London Economic Impact Study, quoted on PLA website
  6. ^ Department for Transport - Provisional Port Statistics 2006
  7. ^ [1] PortCities London - What the port handles
  8. ^ Cargo Traffic 2006 FINAL. Airports Council International. Retrieved on 2008-01-22.
  9. ^ Safeguarded Wharves on the River Thames London Plan Implementation Report, GLA 2005
  10. ^ P&O London Gateway decision press release

[edit] External links

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