Mercantile London in 1900: The Docks

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of commercial London in Imperial London, published in 1901, with this look at the Docks:

But for a few models of steamers in the windows of the shipping offices in Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street, there was little in the City in 1900 to remind one that London was a great seaport.

Unlike those at Liverpool, the docks and warehouses were some distance from the business quarters of the City, whose boundaries were almost reached before any sign appeared of the big brick buildings wherein were stored, as in mystic Babylon, "all manner of merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet...and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat."

Just a century had elapsed since the construction of public docks was begun in London, though the Brunswick at Blackwall, a private concern for East Indiamen, was in existence ten years earlier.

There was also on the Surrey side the Howland Great West Dock (now the Commercial), dating back to 1660, and enlarged during Queen Anne's reign.

This dock absorbed most of the Greenland and Baltic trade.

London Docks were now represented by the St. Katherine's, designed by Telford and opened in 1828; the London Docks, by Rennie, opened in 1805; the Limehouse Dock; the East and West India Docks; the Millwall; the Victoria and Albert Docks; the Tilbury, twenty-six miles from London Bridge; and on the Surrey side of the river by the St. Saviour's, the Grand Surrey and the Commercial Docks.

In 1863 the London and St. Katherine's amalgamated with a combined capital of eleven millions, and these had recently joined the East and West India Docks with a total capital of seventeen millions.

The entire capital invested in the docks of the Port of London was something like twenty-four millions sterling.

It must have been pretty lively up and down the river from the Tower to Greenwich in the pre-docking days; ships, big and little, had to anchor anywhere between Gravesend and Blackwall, and their cargoes had to be discharged into lighters and dropped here and there at the different wharves, as far up as London Bridge.

Thus an enormous amount of valuable property was always afloat without adequate protection or supervision.

The temptation to "sample" it was too strong, and consequently the organized plundering was prodigious.

Nothing could put a stop to it; the lightermen, and watermen, and even the officers and crews of the vessels unloading, were all in collusion with the receivers of the stolen property, to rob the rightful owners, who were, no doubt, regarded as mere abstractions, or very much in the light of the Crown, a perfectly legitimate object to defraud, and against whom, in the matter of excise duty, every man's hand was turned.

Profits had need to be high in those good old days, to recoup the merchant for his outlay and incessant anxiety.

In addition to usual perils of waters, winds, and rocks, and of the enemy when the country was at war - and this was nearly always - there were pirates in every sea, and privateers almost at the mouth of the Thames.

But when all these dangers had been overcome, and costly cargo of East and West Indian or Chinese produce was safe in port, the native "land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves" swooped down upon their prey, levying toll on so large a scale that it is a wonder anything worth taking was left.

Loss of time in discharging cargo, and of interest on capital employed, also helped to swell the cost of West Indian and Eastern produce; the round voyage out and home occupied months and months; and weeks were spent in unloading, where now, days or even hours would suffice.

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that, apart from the exorbitant customs duty, the average price of tea was 16s. per lb; sugar, coffee, spices, silks, etc, proportionately dear.

By 1900 the docks were surrounded by warehouses vigilantly guarded day and night, and there was such an efficient system of water-police, that the plundering of a ship's cargo was an impossibility.

A sum of £170,000,000 represented the total value of the goods annually entering the Port of London, the bulk of which passed through the docks, so that the prize would truly be great if they could be "raided" and their contents sold - wines and spirits and pipes, tobacco and cigars in tens of thousands of hogsheads and chests, enough, one would think, to supply all the smokers in Europe; millions of pounds of tea, coffee, and cocoa; rare drugs, rich spices, ivory, silk, wool, and other valuables, sufficient to satisfy the cravings of a regiment of Marshal Bluchers.

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To stroll through miles of narrow alleys in these vast storerooms, between chests, half-chests, and boxes of tea from India, China, and Ceylon, arranged as closely together as they could be, the atmosphere heavy with the peculiar odour from their wrappers; to be shown floor after floor, covered with upright bags of fragrant cinnamon and packages of nutmegs, mace, and cloves, was pleasant; and, with a "tasting order," to explore the labyrinths of the great wine-vaults, could produce an exhilarating effect; but by far the most interesting sight in these regions was the ivory warehouse at the London Docks.

Just prior to one of the four annual sales, were arranged in orderly lots on the floor of a great room, with alley-ways between them, rough ivory of every shape and size - whole elephant-tusks, ponderous but symmetrical; others sawn in two pieces, the larger halves stacked like drain-pipes one upon the other; and Siberian ivory from extinct hairy mammoths that for centuries had lain perdu beneath the frozen earth.

Here were the solid teeth of numerous hippopotami, and in special lots were many gracefully curved tusks of the walrus, a creature around which so many Norse legends have gathered, and to which Longfellow refers in The Discoverer of the North Cape:

"And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale and the seal;
Ha! 'twas a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel."

Occasionally, such trifling curiosities as narwhal horns, whales' teeth, and the deadly weapons of monstrous wild boars, were on view, but were regarded more as curios than as trade ivory.

Next: Mercantile London in 1900 - London Dockers