London did not have Manchester's machine-based mass-production model in the textile industry, but that did not mean London had no industrial machinery or major enterprises at all.
For centuries, the shipyards at the mouth of the River Thames had dominated Britain's shipbuilding industry. Though there were no large steelworks here, there were many processing and manufacturing businesses supplying quality iron castings to the city and the shipyards. But with the arrival of the steam age, ships grew ever larger, and the Thames's narrow channel could no longer berth them.
Yet a group of entrepreneurs refused to give up. They planned to build docks with greater capacity and deeper draughts than before, ensuring that London's docks could continue serving for another century or more. Their plan was to dredge out the marshland known as Land's End, something people at the time considered pure fantasy.
That place was now the site of Royal Victoria Dock, with London City Airport directly to its east. This dock had "once" been one of London's largest freight hubs, as it had adopted new technologies such as cranes and was connected to the railway. However, the docks' upgrades could not keep pace with the times. Barely twenty years after its completion, it had become too shallow for newer cargo ships.
A new expansion plan was soon put on the agenda again. This time, an even larger and longer Albert Dock, powered by electricity, would be built east of Victoria Dock. There were also refrigerated warehouses there for storing perishable goods.
Later, that warehouse district became a key target for German bombing during World War II. Because supplies were scarce at the time, London implemented rationing, and many British children born in 1940 had never even seen a banana.
Yet this did not provoke complaints, because after rationing