Shipping

Surrounded by Monet's pictures of water lilies, experiencing a frogseye view of his garden at Giverny, I was at a Royal Academy exhibition, courtesy of an invention of fifty years ago: containerisation.

The quirky names of roads abutting Tower Hamlets council offices conjure the area's past: Nutmeg Lane, Rosemary Drive, Saffron Avenue.  All of London's exotic culinary needs, as well as wool, rubber, timber - in total a third of the UK's imports - once passed through the East End docks.  Appropriately, the Docklands museum is housed in a sugar warehouse; treading the very boards where sugar was stored, harvested by the slaves whose human traffic made London, Bristol and Liverpool wealthy, is always unsettling.

The packaging of imports reflected their variety: bales of jute, crates of tea, casks of chutney, boxes of fruit.  As anyone who has filled a supermarket carrier knows, different shapes and sizes are awkward to pack.  Space is wasted, contents spill.  How much more efficient if everything were the same, or, failing that, could be cloaked so as to appear the same.  Thus containerisation was born.  Anything, from computers to cars, could be placed inside identical metal boxes, which can be moved between ship and lorry with ease.  They could be stacked without detriment to their contents so economies of scale spawned ever larger vessels.  Hence new facilities were needed where land was cheap and specialist cranes could replace labouring stevedores.  Container terminals were constructed at Tilbury in the 1960s; within twenty years all of London's docks closed. For a decade, dereliction and unemployment were the legacy.  Famously, taxi drivers declined fares to the least savoury destinations.

Each evening I stroll around the Isle of Dogs.  The noisy, dirty, dangerous places where men queued each morning in the hope of a day's work are now peaceful and sanitised. The real estate is valued for its tranquillity; water views command a premium.  Many docks are populated with house boats, mainly converted Dutch barges, homes to those priced out of conventional accommodation.  Some are nature reserves, one a salt marsh, another a bird sanctuary hosting kingfishers, herons and dragonflies.  A sailing club in Millwall dock is the last tenuous maritime link.  One evening, a fellow novice remarked:

'I was here in the merchant navy.  We docked over there.  All along the quayside ships were unloading. It was cacophony.'

He was pointing towards a quiet waterside path planted with ornamental saplings and illuminated by decorative lamps.  Benches surrounded a tall, red-painted metal structure, more sculpture than machinery.  The surviving remnants of the industrial past are carefully curated: fossilised cranes, silent pumping stations, smokeless chimneys, objects which are venerated for the historical authenticity they bestow.

Behind, an apartment building was under construction.  It would be inhabited by asset managers or equity traders from the watchtowers of Canary Wharf.  The apartments would be sold through an estate agent, very likely the one which had, in the hope of being commissioned to market my Docklands flat, invited me to a private view at the Royal Academy.

© David Thompson 2016