London’s seasonal foreign trade reflected its access to northern and continental Europe and the City’s association with the East and West Indies, but coal and other coastal trades dominated daily port activity. London was a tidal river port centred below London Bridge, with waterfront industry spread more widely. Organisationally, it was complex, with many different interests. As foreign trade increased, legal restrictions on landing places for foreign produce were blamed by merchants for congestion. A campaign by mercantile interests for the introduction of docks followed. The author examines the motives here. For leading West India merchants, specialised dock facilities would enable them to control and discipline a directly employed labour force, reducing theft. The eventual outcome, the construction of docks by joint-stock companies, owed much to State support. Its involvement went beyond the introduction of docks. For the government, this was an element of a warehousing scheme designed to develop London as an entrepôt. General port efficiency would be promoted by appointing the Corporation of London as harbour authority.

The East India Dock Company followed and by 1810, there were also three on the south bank. Investment came predominantly from the capital’s wealthy mercantile and shipping communities, with slave trade interests strongly represented in both the West India and London companies. Wartime conditions failed to affect investment or impede the capital’s remarkable dock boom. The design for the downriver West and East India systems presented few problems, unlike the constricted setting of the London Docks. Labour shortages, bad weather and material scarcity affected construction by generally experienced contractors, but all docks were operating by 1806. The final costs exceeded estimates but only in the case of the London Docks by a large margin. Clearing housing and industries in Wapping burdened it with long-term debt. All the north bank companies chose a hierarchical employment structure. In contrast to strict supervision in the West India Docks, London replicated the traditional system on the quays, allowing its managers considerable autonomy. In their new regulated workplace, labourers faced restrictions, discipline and the loss of traditional perks.

At mid-century, the north bank companies faced two main problems: wharf competition and the failure of earnings to keep pace with an increase in the shipping and cargoes handled. Adding to these challenges from the 1860s was accommodating steam shipping by investment in facilities, including new docks, and in the 1880s, a resurgence of fierce rivalry between themselves and a financial crisis created by the new Tilbury dock resulted in effective amalgamation. Their common response to diminishing profitability was the introduction of sub-contracting – to the detriment of the lives and livelihoods of a resistant workforce. Skilled port workers were unionised, unskilled generally not, but strikes by particular groups were not uncommon. Port-wide action by dock workers in the 1850s failed but stoppages in the early 1870s achieved wage rises, as also did the port-wide 1889 Great Dock Strike.

The 1866 banking crisis effectively ended London’s iron shipbuilding industry. Few companies survived, so destitution faced many shipyard workers. Processing industries also changed. Beet sugar replaced cane, soft sugar hard ‘baked’ sugar and production became concentrated in two firms. In contrast, boosted by foreign grain imports, London’s milling industry expanded. South bank maritime communities maintained established industrial patterns. Shipbuilding proved resilient and traditional employment systems persisted in the Rotherhithe docks, but settlements of waterfront wharf labourers, many of Irish origin, were desperately poor. Poverty was also a hallmark of the north bank. Less socially mixed than in the past, mythic undifferentiated images of ‘Outcast London’ obscured the East End’s continuing maritime connections, including the presence of skilled workers and their organisations. Sailors ashore, the subject of State intervention, were an exception.

Compensation was paid to river interests adversely affected, including some waterfront labourers, the State became owner of the Legal Quays until the 1830s, the Corporation built a canal across the Isle of Dogs, and a new London Bridge eventually replaced the Old. All this depended to some degree on State support; in the case of compensation payments, a Treasury loan was repaid by a tax on shipping. River port prosperity was largely unaffected by the introduction of docks, although their warehousing privileges deprived waterfront wharves of potential business. Coastal and low-duty European imports continued, boosted by the introduction of steamship services. Vessels carrying coal, grain, timber and provisions competed with passenger steamers and river traffic for water space, leading to conflict between users and with the Corporation as Harbour Authority.

The transition from sail to steam shipping shaped the later-nineteenth-century Port of London. When limited to river trade and traffic, steamers had little effect on facilities. Once improvements in technology extended the economic viability of steamers on ever more distant passages, larger and deeper docks were needed. This led to existing facility improvements and downstream docks. The new steam port, served by major shipping lines, depended on barge transhipment of cargoes to waterfront wharves, which flourished as a result. Trade volumes responded to metropolitan population growth, but the national share remained stable or fell. Wool and grain replaced sugar as leading trades. Re-export business declined. The capital’s relationship with the port changed. In the 1860s, its perceived importance led to the rejection of an eastern Thames embankment. In the 1880s, Tower Bridge went ahead.