London harbor
 
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Location of the Port of London in Greater London |
The Port of London lies along the banks of the Thames between London and the North Sea . Once the largest port in the world, it is now the UK's second largest port after Grimsby & Immingham . The port is managed by the Port of London Authority (PLA), a public company founded in 1908. Their area of influence extends to the part of the Thames influenced by the tides .
This port can cruise ships , ro-ro ferries and cargo ships of all kinds, including those for wood, paper, vehicles, machinery, crude oil, petroleum products, liquefied petroleum gas, coal, metals, grains and other liquid or bulk materials, to create. In 2008, 53 million tonnes of goods (up to 52.7 million tonnes in 2007), including 2,007,000 containers and 20.5 million tonnes of mineral oil and mineral oil products, were handled through the Port of London .
The harbor is not located at a specific point, but extends along the tidal part of the Thames into the city center of London and has many individual berths, docks and docks that have emerged over the centuries. As with many other historic ports in Europe, such as For example, in the port of Rotterdam , the majority of activities moved further and further downstream towards the open sea, because the ships got bigger and other city interests took up more and more land near the city center.
history
The Port of London has played a central role in London's economy since the city was founded in the 1st century AD and has been a major contributor to the city's growth and success. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was the busiest port in the world, with anchorages stretching 17.7 km along the river without interruption, and over 1,500 cranes loading and unloading 60,000 ships per year. In World War II it was an important target for the Luftwaffe during the "Blitz" war .
Roman time
construction
The first signs of significant trade in London were seen between AD 50 and AD 270 when the Romans built the original port. The constructions consisted of wooden frames that were filled with earth and thus fortified the banks. When these were installed, the jetties were built in four stages downstream from London Bridge . The port grew rapidly and prospered in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but was then abandoned in the early 5th century when trading activity subsided. The changes on the banks in the area of the Roman harbor were so profound and persistent that it was difficult to say where the natural bank really began.
use
London became a very important trading center for the Romans and reached its peak in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The port city grew and expanded quickly. The lavish handling of goods shaped the extravagant lifestyle of the citizens and the city flourished and prospered under Roman rule. The Roman expansion of the port facilities and the administration are the basis of the port of London to this day.
Closed docks
In the late 18th century, Willey Reveley suggested straightening the Thames between Wapping and Woolwich by building a new canal through the Rotherhithe , Isle of Dogs and Greenwich peninsulas . The three big river loops were to be separated with locks as huge harbor basins. This plan was not carried out, but a much smaller canal was later built, the City Canal, through the Isle of Dogs.
In the 19th century, a number of docks, which were surrounded by high walls, were built to protect the goods from river piracy. These were e.g. B. the Surrey Commercial Docks (built 1807, emerged from the Greenland Dock of 1696), the West India Docks (1802), the East India Docks (1803, emerged from the Brunswick Dock of 1790), the London Docks (1805), the St. Katharine Docks (1828), the Royal Victoria Dock (1855), the Milwall Dock (1868), the Royal Albert Dock (1880) and the Tilbury Dock (1886).
The docks were built by various competing private companies, e.g. B. East & West India Docks Company (owned by East India Docks, West India Docks and Tilbury Docks), Surrey Commercial Docks Company and London & St. Katharine Docks Company (owned by London Docks, St Katharine Docks and the Royal Docks). At the beginning of the 20th century, competitive pressure and strikes forced the companies to merge. A royal commission resulted in the establishment of the Port of London Authority (PLA) in 1908. In 1909 the PLA took over all the docks from Tower Bridge to Tilbury, with the exception of a few smaller facilities such as Poplar Dock , which continued to be operated by British Railways has been. The PLA headquarters in Trinity Square Gardens was built by John Mowlem & Co. and completed in 1919.
The PLA dug a deep water canal, built the King George V Dock (1920) and improved several other docks in the first two thirds of the 20th century. This development culminated in the expansion of Tilbury in the late 1960s, which turned this port into a container port (the largest in the UK in the early 1970s), the construction of a large grain terminal on the banks of the Thames, and machinery for loading and unloading timber . Under the aegis of the PLA, trade in the Port of London grew to 60 million tonnes annually by 1939 (38% of total trade in the UK) but was relocated mainly to the Clyde and Liverpool during World War II . After the port of London had recovered from the aftermath of the war, the 60 million tons of cargo throughput were reached again in the 1960s.
Ship repairs
The amount of ships frequenting the Port of London also led to the growth of the shipbuilding industry . In 1864, when London was a major center for shipbuilding and most ships had wooden hulls and sails, there were 33 dry docks for ship repair. The largest of these was Langley's Lower Dock in Deptford Green , which was 140 meters long. While shipbuilding with the closure of Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd. in Leamouth went in 1912 to an end, ship repair continues to flourish. In 1930 there were only 16 larger dry docks left, but these were heavily mechanized and equipped for the repair of iron and steel ships.
Port industry
Many industrial companies that have survived to this day have settled along the harbor basin. B. Sugar factories , oil mills and submarine cable manufacturers. Other industries included iron and steel making, lead smelting, brass and bronze foundry, shipbuilding, woodworking, grain processing, cement making, papermaking, arms making, automobile manufacturing, etc. For centuries London was the main center of shipbuilding in the United Kingdom (and perhaps the world over ), but then pale in the mid-19th century compared to the Clyde and other shipyard centers; the last large warship, the HMS Thunderer , left the shipyard in 1911. This also hampered Henry Bessemer's attempt to build a steel industry on the Greenwich Peninsula in the 1860s .
There were also many power and gas works on the Thames and the canals connected to it. Large gas works on the Thames were in Beckton and on the Greenwich Peninsula, the main power plants were in Brimsdown , Hackney and West Ham on Lea and Kingston , Fulham , Lots Road , Wandworth , Battersea , Bankside , Stepnea , Deptford , Greenwich , Blackwall Point , Brunswick Wharf , Woolwich , Barking , Belvedere , Littlebrook , West Thurrock , Northfleet , Tilbury and Grain on the Thames.
The coal requirements of the power and gas works made up a large part of the handling in the port of London after the war. In 1959, a Times article stated: “About two-thirds of the 20 million tonnes of coal shipped across the Thames is used by 9 gasworks and 17 power plants. The Beckton gas works process around 4500 tons of coal daily, the largest power station burns around 3000 tons of coal on a winter day. (...) Three more power plants, Belvedere (oil firing), Northfleet and West Thurrock (coal firing) will be built. "
This coal was handled directly at the coal ports on the shore and not in the docks. The Beckton Gas Works had two large piers where both the coal it needed landed and where coal for other gas works was transferred to barges .
A large part of the decline in freight volumes in the Port of London since 1960 is due to the discontinuation of coal transport, as the gas works were demolished after the North Sea gas was discovered and coal is no longer used for domestic fires , but instead gas and electricity. All coal power stations above Tilbury were also demolished.
The move downstream
With the introduction of larger (container) ships, the importance of the port facilities further upstream decreased steadily from the mid-1960s. The docks further up the Thames lost cargo volume and were gradually closed between the late 1960s and early 1980s. The trade in the private moorings on the river lasted longer, e.g. B. container handling at Victoria Deep Water Terminal on the Greenwich Peninsula until the 1990s and paper handling at Convoys Wharf in Deptford until 2000. The other seaports continued to be an important trade and industrial center with oil refineries and terminals in Coryton , Shell Haven and Canvey in Essex and the Isle of Grain in Kent. A 1992 government privatization initiative turned Tilbury into a free port . The PLA gave up its activity as a port operator and is now only responsible for shipping traffic on the Thames.
Much of the land that is no longer needed up the Thames, London Docklands , was built on with residential buildings and developed into a second London financial center (in Canary Wharf ).
The port today
The port of London today consists of over seventy terminals and port facilities in private hands, which employ around 30,000 people. The most important are in Purfleet (with the world's largest margarine plants), Thurrock , Tilbury (main container port), Coryton and Canvey Island in Essex, Dartford and Northfleet in Kent and Greenwich , Silvertown , Barking , Dagenham and Erith in Greater London.
In 2007 the port of London was the second largest in the United Kingdom with a handling volume of 52.7 million t (after Grimsby & Immingham with 66.3 million t). Tees & Hartlepool was in third place in 2007 with the same handling volume as London (2006 handling volume in Tees & Hartlepool was slightly higher than in London). The port of London, however, has the largest handling volume (excluding fuel) of all ports in the United Kingdom (33.2 million tons in 2007). Other major competitors for the Port of London are Felixstowe and Southampton , which have the largest and second largest volume of containers in the UK.
The number of sea containers handled in the Port of London exceeded the 2 million mark for the first time in the history of the port in 2007 and this development continued in 2008. The port's ability to handle large, modern container ships has increased since the new deep-water container port, London Gateway, went into operation in November 2013, up to 3.5 million TEU per year when it was completed there.
With 12,500 merchant ship movements annually, the Port of London handled around 10% of all merchant shipping in the UK by 2010 and contributed £ 8.5 million to the UK's economic output. In addition to the merchant ships, 37 cruise lines visited the Port of London in 2008.
Although the BP Refinery in Kent and the Shell Refinery in Shell Haven closed in 1982 and 1999, respectively, the Coryton facilities will continue to operate. A number of berths on the Upper Thames also remained operational. In Silvertown z. B. Tate & Lyle operates the world's largest cane sugar refinery, which was originally supplied via the West India Docks , but now has its own freight terminal. To the west, upstream berths such as in Fulham , barges are used to transship goods, which establish the connection to the berths of the ocean-going vessels located further down the river. The riverside areas in London are under tremendous pressure to transform into elegant residential or business districts, so the Greater London Authority, in partnership with the PLA, has worked out a plan to rescue fifty docks within Greater London , half above and half below the Thames Barrier .
Traffic between ports
In recent years, the Thames has been used again to transport goods between the individual terminals in the Port of London. This is mainly due to the environmental benefits of ship transport over transport on the capital's congested roads and railways. Local authorities contribute to the increase in this traffic between port facilities by transporting rubbish and rubble on barges. Before the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the Thames was used for the transport of building materials and spoil during the construction of the Olympic Park and Crossrail . The Crossrail project alone requires the transport of 5 million tons of material (mostly clean soil as excavation) downstream through the port from places like Canary Wharf to new nature reserves in the Thames estuary.
In 2008, 1.9 million tonnes of goods were transported between the ports, making the Thames the UK's busiest inland waterway.
London Gateway deep water port and further expansion
In terms of containers handled, the Port of London is currently third in the UK after Southampton and Felixstowe. This will likely change when the expansion of Shell Haven , the London Gateway container terminal, which has been under construction for the container terminal operator Dubai Ports World ( DP World ) since 2010 , is completed. In 2007 the government approved the development of 607 hectares of wasteland on the north bank of the Thames, which includes 3.2 km of shoreline.
At the 2,700 m long container quay with six berths - the first of which was opened on November 7, 2013 - and a handling capacity of 3.5 million TEU per year (in the final stage), the 400 m long container ships of the 18,000 TEU class can also be handled . The second berth has been in operation since 2014, and a third berth was put into operation in 2017. The container terminal is connected to the railway network. A 300 hectare “logistics and business park” is connected to the container terminal. This may restore the importance of the Port of London as originally intended by the PLA in the 1960s, as a deep water port is included at the Maplin Sands northeast of Southend-on-Sea as part of another London airport site ( Thames Estuary Airport ).
Port Police
The Port of London once had its own police force - the Port of London Authority Police - but today there are different police forces in the port area. These are the Home Office (UK Home Office ) local police force for the areas through which the Thames flows (the Metropolitan Police , the City of London Police , the Essex and Kent Police departments ) and the Port of Tilbury Police , which emerged in 1992 from the remaining members of the PLA Police. The Metropolitan Police have a special water protection unit called the Thames Division that patrol the Thames in Greater London. After the London Gateway has gone into operation , a sixth police unit will probably be introduced to monitor it.
Web links
- Port of London - the website of the Port of London Authority
- PortCities London Home
- The Port of London 1819
- Port of Tilbury
- DP World London Gateway
- Planning the London Gateway
swell
- Trevor Brigham: The Port of Roman London . In: B. Watson (editor): Roman London Recent Archeological Work , chapters 23–34. Lecture at The Museum of London . Cushing-Malloy Inc. Paper, Michigan (November 16, 1998)
- Jenny Hall, Ralph Merrifield: Roman London . HMSO Publications, London 1986
- Gustav Milne, Nic Bateman .: A Roman Harbor in London; Excavations and Observations near Pudding Lane, City of London 1979–1982 . Britannia 14: 207-226 (1983)
- Gustav Milne: The Port of Roman London . BT Batsford, London 1985
- Thomas Wägener: London Gateway opened . In: Hansa , issue 12/2013, p. 60, Schiffahrts-Verlag Hansa, Hamburg 2013, ISSN 0017-7504
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Port of London Annual Review 2008 (PDF file; 3.02 MB)
- ^ H. Cloud (editor): The Times London History Atlas . Times Books, London 1994, ISBN 0-7230-0342-4
- ↑ Chris Ellmers & Alex Werner: Dockland Life: A Pictorial History of London's Docks 1860-1970 . Mainstream Publishing Company, Edinburgh 1995, ISBN 1-85158-364-5
- ↑ Bessemer's autobiography, Chapter 21 (English) ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Special Corrospondent: Industries along the Riverside . The Times, News of the Day, March 16, 1959
- ^ Port of London Economic Impact Study . Port of London Authority (English) ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ London Implementation Report: Safeguarded Wharves on the River Thames , Mayor's Office of London (2005)
- ↑ Crossrail wants to move 5m tonnes via the river . ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PLA news
- ↑ Michael Meyer: London Gateway deep water port opened . In: Daily port report from November 8, 2013, p. 1/13
- ^ Eckhard-Herbert Arndt: London Gateway is being expanded . In: Daily port report of March 12, 2015, p. 13
- ↑ London Gateway overview , accessed February 28, 2018
- ↑ P&O press release on the decision on the London Gateway (English) ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
