2. Building the Docks
The Builders

Engineers, architects, surveyors and, of course, labourers formed the teams who built London's docks.

It was the chief engineer's job to design the dock and make sure it was built satisfactorily. Some of the most famous nineteenth-century engineers were involved in building the docks.

John Rennie acted as consultant on the West India and East India Docks as well as being in charge of engineering at the London Docks.

Thomas Telford, the famous road and bridge builder, acted as engineer for the St Katharine Dock.

Architects were employed by some dock companies to give style to their buildings. The St Katharine Dock company employed Sir Philip Hardwick to design their warehouses.

Although mechanical methods were used from the outset, dock construction always involved a large force of labourers. Men had to be brought in from outside London, many coming from agricultural areas in England and from Ireland.

B: 'I frequently witnessed a thousand men and several hundred horses employed in the operations, besides several powerful steam-engines.

At the beginning of the works wheel-barrows were employed to carry away the earth, but as the excavations proceeded and became deeper iron railways and steam engines were substituted. The earth was conveyed into barges.'

Captain Carlsrund, a Swedish engineer, talking about the construction of the St Katharine Dock, 1828.

C: 'In clearing the ground for this magnificent speculation 1, 250 houses and tenements were purchased and pulled down - no less than 11,300 inhabitants having to seek accommodation elsewhere - thus improving areas previously lying waste in the eastern part of the Metropolis (City) and giving additional impetus (push) to industry and enterprise among other capitalists, as well as the employment offered to an indefinite (large) number of the humbler classes of society.'

The Times Newspaper 1828, writing about the St Katharine Dock

Opposition to the Docks

Not everybody supported the building of the docks. Some had 'vested interests' in keeping things as they were.

The wharf owners were worried that much of their trade, and their profits, would go to the docks.

The lightermen thought they would lose their livelihood as there would be little work for them if cargoes were unloaded directly on to dock quays.

The Brotherhood of Porters objected as they thought the porters who worked on the riverside quays would lose their jobs.