Dockland Life

Book excerpt: With a workforce of over 100,000 men, women and children, and reaching out to all four corners of the earth, London's Docklands, formerly the Port of London, at one time formed the largest and most comprehensive system of docks the word has ever known. The Museum of Dockland, an independent branch of the Museum of Lodnon, is devoted to keeing its memory alive and has now produced this lavishly illustrated volume. DOCKLAND LIFE examines every aspect of the port: the working river and its various docks; where the ship repairs took place; the warehousing and construction; the quaysides and the dock trades. The text is comprehensive and definitive, but above all it is the stunning sequence of images, drawn from a library of over 25,000 photographs, which conveys the human drama of life and work in the port of the Empire. This new edition examines the redevelopment of the Docklands which includes the construction of the Millenium Dome.