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PREVIOUS CONFERENCES


The Group has organised a programme of conferences since 2012.  Papers have been given by people with a long-standing interest in the River Thames and the Port of London, many of them well-known.  The conferences take place over a whole day and have generally been well-attended.  Details of the previous conferences are set out below.






                                          The Sixth Symposium on Shipbuilding on the Thames


The nine papers included the following topics:  John Dudman and the Grove Street Dockyard, Deptford; Royal shipbuilding on the Thames 1509-1547; Charles II and shipbuilding at Deptford; J. M. W.Turner, the iron steamboat and the making of the British century; visiting Indian shipwrights in early Victorian London;  the London makers of tools for the sailmaking trades; Thomas Howard and the King and Queen Foundry Rotherhithe;  Dudgeons, Millwall shipbuilders 1860-1877; the SS Robin and her builders and he Bow Creek builders.





 Spring 2015


                                        London’s Port and Docklands in the First World War


The eight papers included the following topics:  the port and Docklands in the London context;  work and war, men and women on the Isle of Dogs; the plight of Germans in the East End; the Silvertown explosion of 1917; the impact of the war on port trade and business; London dockers at le Havre, France, October 1914; the dazzle ship paintings of John Everett; the effect of the war on the Port of London Authority’s works programme.     

 Spring 2014


                                        London and the Whaling Trade


This consisted of nine presentations including:  and overview of London’s whaling trades; and appreciation of A.G.E. Jones, whaling historian, archaeological whalebone from London; the Greenland dock, Rotherhithe, and the whaling trades; a London whaling miscellany; the London whalebone trade; scrimshaw and the South Sea whale fishery; the worlds of the Enderby family; the Bay Wharf whale and other Thames strandings.




 Spring 2013


                                        The Fifth Symposium on Shipbuilding on the Thames


This was the first symposium organised by the Docklands History Group and took over the running of a continuing series of symposia on shipbuilding in London the first of which had been organised by Stuart Rankin with the subsequent ones being organised by Roger Owen and Rif Winfield.  The Proceedings of this symposium have been published and copies are still available.  Please click here for further details.


                                      Before the Docks:  London River and Port in the Eighteenth Century


The nine papers included the following topics, London River and Sea, Picturing the Port,  Working the 18th Century Port, From Tyne to Thames, the life of an Eighteenth Century Merchant, The London world of the East India Company, Scientific instrument making in the Port, London and the Slave Trade, Women and Crime in the riverside parishes, The merchant trader Ann in port and beyond 1794-6.

Spring 2016



                    Thames River Crossings


The nine papers in this conference included Roman and Prehistoric Bridges, Old London Bridge and the Pool of London, frost fairs, Thames watermen, wherries and ferries, some eighteenth century Thames crossings and the shape of London, John Rennie’s Thames bridges, Waterloo Bridge and its impact on London, the LCC tunnels and the temporary bridge between Gravesend and Tilbury during WW1.

Spring 2017

                       New Researches Seminar


This all-day seminar was organised by a group of post-graduate researchers and covered a range of subjects.  These were grouped into three sessions with the themes “Law and disorder”, “Networks and Organisations” and “The Cultural Thames”.  The papers included:  The London Sailor’s Strike of 1768; The Zinc Oxide Strike of 1948; Shipwrights, Patronage and the Thames Royal Dockyards; The Creation of the Port of London Authority in 1909;  London’s Coastal Shipping 1650-1830; Convicts and the Public Imagination 1776-1857; The Loyal London and the Poetics of the Shipyard; Marketing the Thames: Leisure and the River in the long Eighteenth Century.

November 2017



                                         Shipbuilding on the Thames


This was the seventh in a successful series of symposia looking at the much neglected subject of shipbuilding on the Thames..  Up until the end of the nineteenth century, the Thames was a very important shipbuilding centre.  In the first half of the nineteenth century it led the way with iron shipbuilding and the development of steam powered ships.  The papers in this symposium included a review of the previous symposia, the Deptford Master Shipwright’s secrets, ship-owners and the maritime service industry in 18th Century London sailor town, the launch of HMS Albion, early steamship building on the Thames, the Millwall Ironworks, the life and times of a shipyard engineer, the story of a Yarrow steam yacht and the archaeology of shipbreaking on the Thames  foreshore.

Spring 2018

                      

                                          The Medieval Port of London



This conference looked at the development of the  Medieval Port of London.  It had a wide range of papers covering many aspects of its history.  The subjects covered included merchants and overseas trade, ships and boats of the medieval port, medieval waterfront buildings, the Hanseatic Steelyard, language and London Bridge,  whether the Thames was a rubbish tip, accident black spot or sacred river or all three  and fishing on the Thames.

Spring 2019

  

                                   London’s Sailortowns:  

People Communities and the Thames

  

The local communities along the tidal Thames and the Port of London were the subject for the 2022 conference.  This included the histories of the districts of St Katharine’s (prior to the docks being built there), Deptford, Greenwich and the Ratcliffe Highway . There were other more general talks such as the women of London’s Edwardian sailortowns and migration  and literacy in respect of  the 17th Century  Thames shoreline.

Spring 2022