page_title: Port of London
section_title: Port industries
hierarchical_section_title: Port of London / History / Port industries
caption_attribution_description: English: Scanned from a 35mm slide, this shows the Upper Pool from London Bridge at a time when ocean-going ships from all over the world discharged their cargoes in the heart of the City. The refrigerated cargo ship Kitala in the foreground was built in 1957 and belonged to the French shipping company Compagnie Maritime des Chargeurs Réunis.
context_page_description: The Port of London is that part of the River Thames in England lying between Teddington Lock and the defined boundary with the North Sea and including any associated docks. Once the largest port in the world, it is the United Kingdom's second largest port, after Grimsby & Immingham as of 2012. Usage is largely governed by the Port of London Authority, a public trust established in 1908; while mainly responsible for coordination and enforcement of activities it also has some minor operations of its own.
  The port can handle cruise liners, roll-on roll-off ferries and cargo of all types at the larger facilities in its eastern extent. As with many similar historic European ports, such as Antwerp and Rotterdam, many activities have steadily moved downstream towards the open sea as ships have grown larger and the land upriver taken over for other uses.
context_section_description: Alongside the docks many port industries developed, some of which (notably sugar refining, edible oil processing, vehicle manufacture and lead smelting) survive today. Other industries have included iron working, casting of brass and bronze, shipbuilding, timber, grain, cement and paper milling, armament manufacture, etc. London dominated the world submarine communication cable industry for decades with works at Greenwich, Silvertown, North Woolwich, Woolwich and Erith.
  For centuries London was the major centre of shipbuilding in Britain (for example at Blackwall Yard, London Yard, Samuda Yard, Millwall Iron Works, Thames Ironworks, Greenwich, and Deptford and Woolwich dockyards), but declined relative to the Clyde and other centres from the mid-19th century. This also affected an attempt by Henry Bessemer to establish steel-making on the Greenwich Peninsula in the 1860s. The last major warship, HMS Thunderer, was launched in 1911.
  The volume of shipping in the Port of London supported a very extensive ship repairing industry. In 1864, when most ships coming in were built of wood and powered by sail, there were 33 ship-repairing dry docks. The largest of these was Langley's Lower Dock at Deptford Green, which was 460 ft (140 m) in length. While the building of large ships ceased with the closure of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Leamouth in 1912, the ship repairing trade continued to flourish. Although by 1930 the number of major dry docks had been reduced to 16, highly mechanised and geared to the repair of iron and steel-hulled ships.
  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 East Greenwich, with power stations including Brimsdown, Hackney and West Ham on the River Lea and Kingston, Fulham, Lots Road,  Wandsworth, Battersea, Bankside, 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  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.
  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. In 2011, when Tilbury Power Station switched fully to burning biomass, London's coal imports fell to zero.
caption: A ship berths in the busy Upper Pool in 1962
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