PORT OF LONDON

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 304, 17 September 1921, Page 13

PORT OF LONDON

LARGEST IN THE WORLD PRE-EMINENT IN VOLUME AND VARIETY OF IMPORTS "The King’s opening of London's now dock may bring home to some of London’s citizens the fact that London is ono of the great ports of the world," says the ''Westminster Gazette.” "That is a side of London oi which the average Londoner knows little, although tho greatness of his city depends almost wholly upon its position upon a river. To tell tho truth, the docks of London are London's most wonderful 'sight/ but they are little visited and little known except to those who have business with ships. What the King has done is to set his seal upon the work of the Port of London Authority, .to which was committed the modernising of the port. A great riverside wharf has arisen in the deeper waters of the lower Thames, and tho new dock, which is now completed after years of work, is the complement of that increase in the trading facilities of London. **Tho new dock, which lies to the south of the Albert Dock, has cost about •£4,000,000, and has taken nine years to complete," says the "Manchester Guardian." "It is the biggest undertaking yet carried out by the Port of London Authority, adding 64 acres to Londons dock space, and allowing the biggest ocean-going steamers to berth right in the port within half a dozen miles of St, Paul’s. Experts say that in size and equipment, the naw dock is one of the finest, if not the finest, in the world." , . , "This occasion should serve to remind Londoners how much they owe Thames," says the "Times. Before it became the capital, London was the chief port of tho country, and is still pre-eminent in tho volume and variety of its imports. There are 704 acres of water in its docks, and nearly 80 miles of quays. In 1908 the Port of London Act united the rival Dock Companies under a single authority, and tho new dock, actually an extension of the Royal Albert Dock, is the first accomplished step in a great scheme of improvement delayed by the war. Those who work or live west of the Tower Bridge may indeed admit the debt of London to the Thames, but think of its tidal waters as a region of grime and gloom, a dull underworld without tho romance of the open sea or the green beauty of the land. For them the aesthetic Thames begins above Richmond, where the idle river is congenial to patient fishermen, lovers, and gay youth. . . . Mr. E. V. Lucas takes a wider view. He hopes that the Royal pageant will recall many Boyal pageants of the past, and quicken the sense of Londoners to the opportunities they are neglecting. He would make the tidal Thames once moro a river of pleasure, and encourage the old rich and the now rich, civic authorities, and entrepreneurs, to deck it with swift and’painted motor launches. It is in complete sympathy with his aspiration that we drop an ugly little pebble into the shining pool of his imagination. Sewage, swirling in the water, K fouling the foreshores from Richmond to the end of the estuary, has repelled the salmon, made the royal sturgeon a rare visitor, and driven the better classes from the river banks and from the river itself.- London itself and the towns below it are robbing Londoners of their greatest natural amenity." “The King George V Dock is ready for the commerce of the world," says tho "Telegraph." "It can receive vessels up to 30,000 tons register, and those ships can be berthed almost as close to the heart and centre .of London’s population as the little Danish and Dutch sailing boats that used to discharge their cargoes at Billingsgate and Queenhithe. Tilbury Dock can only by courtesy bo included in the harbouF system of tho metropolis. It lies twenty-six miles down-stream, beyond the county area, far out among the fiats of Essex. But the King Georg® V extension is less than six and a half miles from tho offices of Mincing Lane and tho warehouses of Lower Thames Street. Carts and motorlorries can get at it without a long journey; it is really a London dock, as convenient of .access as its earliest predecessors, and, of course, provided with all tho best modern appurtenances and appliances. “Our latter-day engineering is accustomed to doing things on an imposing scale; the layman ia almost appalled, though scarcely surprised, to hear of three pairs of steel lock-gates, each leaf of which weighs 309 tons. That is tho sort of door you have to open to admit a little stranger, who may be 700 ft. long and draw 85ft. or 40ft. of water. Fourteen of such guests can bo hospitably entertained at one and tho same time, in the big wet dock, while their cargoes are being stowed in three-quarters of a mile of three-story concrete sheds, or taken from those nnrplo receptacles. These works are tho first-fruits of tho Fort Authority’s administration; others of scarcely less magnitude are begun, or contemplated. They show that tho Statutory Commission to which Parliament has entrusted tho management of London’s water-borne commerce is alive to its responsibilities.”