page_title: Greenland Dock
section_title: Expansion and decline
hierarchical_section_title: Greenland Dock / History / Expansion and decline
caption_attribution_description: English: Quayside scene at Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe, London, in 1927
context_page_description: Greenland Dock is the oldest of London's riverside wet docks, located in Rotherhithe in the area of the city now known as Docklands. It used to be part of the Surrey Commercial Docks, most of which have by now been filled in. Greenland Dock is now used purely for recreational purposes; it is one of only two functioning enclosed docks on the south bank of the River Thames, along with the smaller South Dock, Rotherhithe, to which it is connected by a channel now known as Greenland Cut.
context_section_description: Between 1895 and 1904 Greenland Dock was greatly expanded by being extended at a cost of £940,000 to the west in a project carried out under Sir John Wolfe-Barry, the engineer who built Tower Bridge. More than doubling in length and nearly doubling in depth, in its final form, it covered an area of 22 ¹⁄₂ acres (9.1 ha), with a depth of 31 feet (9.4 m) and a length of 2,250 feet (690 m), which cut straight across the old Grand Surrey Canal. It was also given a large lock, 550 feet (170 m) long, 80 feet (24 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep. This renovation enabled the dock to take large cargo ships and even ocean-going liners. Cunard Line A-class vessels of as much as 14,000 long tons (14,000 t), driven by large steam engines and carrying passengers and cargos in both directions, sailed regularly from Greenland Dock to the St. Lawrence River in Canada. They were considered huge ships for so far upstream and they had to be swung round in the river to enter the lock. 
  In 1909 the dock, along with all of the other London docks, was amalgamated into the Port of London under the management of the Port of London Authority.
  In the same era as the big steamships there were, by contrast, the barques and barquentines of less than a tenth the size that brought timber from Finland: survivors of the age of sail with three or more masts and representatives of the Baltic side of the timber trade. Finland Quay, Swedish Quay, Norway Dock and Russia Dock were some of the names arising from what had been the original part of Rotherhithe's timber trade.
  Greenland Dock suffered greatly during World War II, when many of the warehouses were razed by German bombing and the great lock was rendered unusable due to bomb damage. It soon recovered after the war and enjoyed a brief resurgence of prosperity. However, technological changes in the shipping industry soon pushed the dock into a spiral of decline. The deal porters' jobs were abolished from 1958 when timber started to be packaged. Not long afterwards, the shipping industry moved en masse to the system of containerization, which required bulk carriers far too large to be accommodated in the London docks. In 1970, the Surrey Commercial Docks were closed. Greenland Dock was sold to Southwark council.
caption: Unloading timber at Greenland Dock, 1927
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