By 1800, London had spawned, along its Riverside east of the Tower, one of the world’s great industrial complexes. It built and furnished ships and equipped the men who sailed them to every known and unknown quarter of the earth.
The River’s north bank in particular was London’s Sailortown, a straggling bustling district quite different from any other part of the capital, yet known the world over by seafaring men. For long it was a district buried in obscurity and clouded by myth. But in recent years this part of the East End during its formative period has been expertly recovered for us in a revelatory multi-volume survey. The survey previously explored the parishes of Mile End Old Town, Whitechapel, and Wapping. It now completes the Riverside with Shadwell and the hamlet of Ratcliff.