Howland Great Wet Dock 1699-1807

Greenwich from One Tree Hill by Johannes Vorsterman

By the time of its closure in 1970, Rotherhithe was a dense mosaic of commercial docks and ponds, linked by a series of canals and channels, connected by locks to the Thames. Rotherhithe's dockland past evolved over nearly 250 of years. The body of water now called Greenland Dock is a much larger extension of the original Howland Great Wet Dock, which was built in the late 1600s.  The Thames already had a number of shipbuilding dry and wet docks, just large enough to fit a single ship, inserted along its banks.  These included the Royal Dockyards at Deptford and Woolwich, which were established between 1515 and 1520 by Henry VIII, and were responsible for building and repairing most of England's warships, including the Mary Rose.

A fascinating painting by Johannes Vorsterman dating to 1690 entitled “Greenwich from One Tree Hill” shows a view over Greenwich and Deptford towards Rotherhithe around 10 years before construction of the Howland Dock was completed. Henry VIII’s tiltyard is visible beyond Greenwich, but Rotherhithe is simply a flat green expanse with windmills dotted along the river bank. At this time Greenwich, Deptford and Rotherhithe were considerably separate from the City and town of London and were still partially rural, in spite of all the ship and barge building and repair work taking place along the banks of the Thames.

Portrait of Wriotheseley Russell and
Elizabeth Howland, 1695 by John Riley.
Source: London Borough of Lambeth.

In 1695 a parcel of land on Rotherhithe and a substantial financial settlement were given as a wedding gift by the Howland family of Streatham to their daughter Elizabeth (aged 13 ½) and her new husband Wriotheseley Russell, the Marquis of Tavistock and future Duke of Bedford (aged 14 ½).  Elizabeth was the daughter of an East India merchant and granddaughter of Sir Josiah Child, Chairman of the East India Company, whilst Wriotheley's father had been executed for treason.

Originally the plan was to use both the land and the financial settlement to create just a dry dock, but it became clear that a big open wet dock would offer far more benefits to its potential customers and its investors, so after the dry dock had been established, an application was made in 1695–6 for an Act of Parliament to open a large wet dock.  The names of the application were  the Duke of Bedford, his widowed daughter-in-law, Lady Rachel Russell, and Elizabeth Howland, the mother-in-law of the son of Lady Rachel, named Wriothesley Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock.  It was also partially financed by the John (1662-1702) and Richard Wells of a very successful Rotherhithe shipbuilding family, whose main shipyard is now partially occupied by the Surrey Docks Farm, who had built several East Indiamen for Wriotheseley's grandfather.   The reason for the decision to build a dock on this scale, a unique enterprise at the time, has been lost, but it is entirely likely that the Earl of Bedford, grandfather of Wriotheseley Russell, had input into the idea.  At his estates in Cambridgeshire he was involved in land reclamation schemes, the engineering of which was not dissimilar from that involved in dock construction.

The Howland Great Dock was completed in the early 1700s following the granting of an Act in its favour in 1696, and which was probably the largest dock in Europe at the time (about half the size of  Greenland Dock today).  The main responsibility for the dock's design is usually credited to John Wells, a local shipwright who was one of the dock's investors and managers, but it is also possible that a Rotherhithe carpenter, Thomas Steers was responsible or contributed to the design.  Steers had gained experience of engineering in the military, and in 1710 was hired to work on the development of Liverpool's earliest enclosed dock, implying that he had already gained some experience in this line of work.

Howland Great Wet Dock by John Kip

Howland Great Wet Dock was timber-lined and covered an area of 12.25 acres, measuring c.1000 x 500ft in area and it was 17ft deep. Its wooden lock was 150ft long by 44ft wide, and was also 17ft deep. The construction was supervised by Wells but the contractor for the construction work was a Stepney carpenter named William Ogbourne, who was responsible for lining the dock with timber and building the lock.  Although Rotherhithe had been the focus for ship work for many years Howland Great Wet Dock was the first of all of Rotherhithe's big enclosed bodies of water, with direct access out onto the Thames.  It could handle up to 120 ships.  The dock was managed on behalf of the Bedford family by John and Richard Wells, who had loaned money for the construction of the docks. The total cost of the dock was £12,000.

Unlike the later enclosed docks that eventually filled Rotherhithe peninsula, the purpose of the Howland dock was not for cargo handling but to provide protection against storms and to provide facilities for for ship refitting and repair.  Until Howland great Dock was opened ships were forced to moor on the river itself, where they were were vulnerable to gales, ice and river pirates. Piracy was a big problem for ship and cargo owners alike, especially when carried out with the collusion of crew members. Within the dock, 120 merchant ships could moor against the quay-sides either for shelter alone, or for refit work to be carried out. Rows of trees planted around the rectangular dock offered protection from the elements for the ships, and this is depicted in a 1705 etching by Kip (now housed in the National Maritime Museum, London).  It is believed that many of the ships that were moored here were those of the East India Company, which did long distance trips on an annual basis, receiving severe wear and tear in the process, and were laid up on their return for repairs, refits, ready for the new season.  The value of the dock to ship owners who used it was demonstrated during a particularly fierce and well documented storm in 1703. Ships moored on the Thames suffered serious damage and many were blown aground. Elsewhere 100s of people died and the Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed. But all of the boats in Howland Dock survived unharmed.  There were no cargo handling facilities, and no cargo was stored or moved in the dock.  There were no warehouses associated with the dock, but there were buildings that stored materials required for repair and refitting work.   

The mansion at the end of the dock

At the same time, the dry dock that was originally planned for was also constructed, and these were leased by some of Britain's top private ship builders for the construction of contracts for the Royal Navy and the East India Company.

A mansion was built at the west end, complete with ornamental gardens. This was probably intended for the Marquis of Tavistock and his young bride Elizabeth Howland but they never occupied the house, which was taken down in the early 1800s.  It would not have been a peaceful place to stay even when ships were using it to shelter, but when it later came into use for the processing of whale carcasses it would have been actively unpleasant.  Even so, there are records that it had various occupants, including members of the Wells family.

By the early 1700s the entrance to the dock was flanked by shipyards, clearly visible on Kip's illustration, above.   Two of these were of considerable size, capable of handling shipbuilding projects for the Navy and the East India Company.  To the north of the shipyards, upriver, more trees are shown, apparently forming an avenue, and these are associated with fairly substantial houses.  A carriage drawn by horses is shown heading out of the area, through a flat, rural area.

Rotherhithe in 1746

In 1725 a lease was taken out on the dock by South Sea Company and from this time Howland Dock began to be used for as a base for a whaling fleet and a processing plant for whale carcasses. Although the South Sea Company's venture failed, the dock remained in use for whaling for over 80 years, the area surrounding the dock becoming a busy hive of homes, shops and small businesses.

The map on the right shows what Rotherhithe looked like in 1746, during the period when the dock was in use for whale carcass processing, a thin band of ship and barge building and related activities on the western edge of Rotherhithe, a pattern of streams and drainage ditches dissecting the marshy interior and the Howland Great Wet Dock accessible by a road and just upriver of the Deptford Royal Docks.

In 1763 the dock was bought by a new generation of the Wells family, John (1761-1848) and William (1768-1847) Wells, for the sum of £18,000 from the fourth Duke of Bedford.  John and William were partners in the Blackwall ship building form Perry, Wells and Green.  It remains somewhat unclear if it was now renamed Greenland Dock or if this had happened earlier, in 1725. The dock was now wholly devoted to whaling with over 1000 tons of blubber processed and boiled there annually. John and William Wells sold Greenland Dock to William Ritchie, a Greenwich timber merchant, in 1806.  It was acquired by the Commercial Dock Co. in 1807.

For the whaling history of the dock see a later post:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/rotherhithe-heritage-3-whaling-at.html