Limehouse Basin
First dug in 1820 as the eastern terminus of the new Regent's Canal, its wet area was less than 5 acres (2 hectares) originally, but it was gradually enlarged in the Victorian era, reaching a maximum of double that size, when it was given its characteristic oblique entrance lock, big enough to admit 2,000-ton ships.
Cargoes handled were chiefly coal and timber, but also ice, and even circus animals, Russian oil and First World War submarines.
To warm their homes and cook their food Londoners at one time burned wood, but local woodlands, though managed as renewable resources, could not keep up with the rising demand.
They attracted "River-Pirates, Night-Plunderers, Lightermen, Burgemen, Watermen, Bumboatmen, and Peter-Boatmen", to the point that rivermen rarely paid for their coals, or so said Patrick Colquhoun, founder of the Thames River Police.
[7] Some inland towns depended on the English canal system for their coals, yet access from the Pool of London was difficult, the nearest Thames link being at Brentford.
It was not faced with stone or brick but, to save disposal of spoil, had earthen banks gradually sloping down to the bottom,[17][18] which was 18 feet (5.5 m) below Trinity High Water.
Traffic on Narrow Street crossed the canal by a swing bridge, which could pivot out to let vessels pass, driven by labourers who worked capstans (see artist's impression).
A nine-man gang was expected to unload 49 tons of a coal a day; more often, according to Henry Mayhew, they achieved double that amount — during which each rope man climbed a total distance of nearly 1 1⁄2 vertical miles — and sometimes more.
By 1830, twenty to fifty vessels were entering or leaving the basin on each tide, typical large users being the London gasworks companies.
The dock was enlarged several times (by 1848 the water area was 8 1⁄2 or 9 acres)[8] and, in 1849, to cope with increasing congestion, a second outlet to the river was made for barge traffic.
Energy was stored in hydraulic accumulators (a heavy weight on a water column driven up a tower by a steam engine), a cutting edge technology at the time.
[26] Alan H. Faulkner[44] wrote that in 1907 Limehouse Basin employed (amongst others) a dock master, six policemen, thirteen crane drivers, and a diver and his mate.
Before mechanical refrigeration was commonplace, Limehouse Basin was a centre for the importation of high grade ice, in demand by caterers, confectioners and hospitals.
Leaving on Saturday mornings, ships steamed round the west coast calling at Plymouth and Falmouth arriving in the Mersey on Wednesdays.
The ships were designed to pump out their cargo quickly, saving valuable docking time, but could not do so at Limehouse Basin, because there were no bulk storage facilities.
[63][64] After the First World War 25 German submarines were towed into Limehouse Basin and broken up by scrap merchants George Cohen & Sons, whose business was located between Commercial Road lock and the station.
[67] The ships can be seen in films of the silent era; a painting at the National Maritime Museum by Norman Janes shows three 3-masted sailing vessels there at the same time.
The dispute escalated to a London-wide dock strike, spreading to Liverpool, whereupon the Attlee government invoked emergency powers and ordered troops to unload food vessels.
The Greater London Council proposed to demolish part of the railway viaduct and replace it by a 4-lane dual carriageway;[32] an alternative route was between the Thames and the Basin, which would have cut through the exit lock.
[87] The answer to traffic congestion, said the London Docklands Development Corporation, was to run the Limehouse Link tunnel under the northern arc of the Basin.
[88] The top ground was first consolidated by removing silt with a floating dredger and replacing it with North Sea aggregate to reclaim a stretch of dry land.
[92] Further precautions were taken to weight the base slab — if the groundwater pressure is high enough, even a concrete tunnel will float — and also not to form a new hydraulic connection between the Basin and the aquifer in the lowest stratum of the Woolwich and Reading Beds.
Facilities alongside the Basin include a Gordon Ramsay gastropub, a tai chi academy, a gym, a kayak hire, a fine arts bronze foundry and gallery, and a cosmetic dental practice.
There are facilities appropriate to a marina, such as secure jetties, diesel supply, laundry, shower, chemical toilet disposal, a pump-out and a chandlery.
"According to several boating associations",[99] the Limehouse Basin is a vital ‘port of refuge’ for departing and visiting craft from further down the tidal Thames and the Continent, due to providing the only lock in central London with an adequate tidal window for barges travelling downstream from the non-tidal Thames and other moorings and basins.Of the berths, 75 are for permanent waterside living; others are for leisure use, wintering vessels, or visitors.
[98] At the Marina Office a plaque commemorates Stephen Maynard, a fireman who lost his life on 25 January 1980 putting out a ship fire in the dock: he was 26.
The River Thames, Regent's Canal and Limehouse Cut all meet here, each providing a green highway along which wildlife can move around the built up area.
Maidens' Trip (1948) by Emma Smith describes the wartime experiences of three "dainty young girls" who, as part of their national service, volunteered to load and navigate barges from Limehouse Basin to Birmingham and back — with only a bucket for a lavatory.
Recalled Smith:1944 was the year the doodle-bugs were being sent over from the Continent, and the job of taking the boats down to the docks for loading and away again was like an adrenalin-fuelled dash in and out of Tom Tiddler's ground.
)[105] The real canal boatmen travelled with their families, their wives giving birth on board; the babies (wrote Smith) were "little creatures who would pass their early days chained for safety to the chimney-pots".
