Named Albert Dock this new addition was opened in 1880.

Longer than Victoria dock, these new docks would feature some unique innovations – railway lines that went straight to the dock edge, refrigerated warehousing to store perishable goods – even electric lighting would follow. No sooner was Victoria Dock opened that it became clear that more wharf space was required and plans for another dock were developed. By the 1880’s, the docks were one of London’s biggest bases for the cargo industry.

Some 13 metres deep and serviced by a giant ship lock the dock featured the latest technology in dockside cranes and services and more importantly could handle multiple numbers of the new large ironclad steamships that were servicing the empire.Īt the same time, the demand for land for factories had also exploded, the first of which arrived in 1852 – Samuel Silver’s waterproof clothing works, which gave it’s name to the Silvertown district. But the project was delivered on time and in 1855 Victoria Dock was opened. Its hard to imagine, in Royal Docks history quite how many men and machines were required in the early part of the 19th century to undertake such a task. What’s more their plan was to dig these docks out of the marshland, known as ‘Lands End’, further east than the other docks in what was to become an incredible feat of engineering. It was then that a group of entrepreneurs, spearheaded by George Parker Bidder, hatched an incredibly ambitious plan – to build docks that were bigger and deeper than anything that had gone before that could ensure London could be supplied for a century or more. The growing city needed a radical solution. First to be built were the East and West India Docks which helped relieve for a while the pressure on cargo berths for London. The Port of London was in chaos and there was a desperate need for more docks with wider and deeper shores.

Collisions were frequent and plundering was rife.

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