Description: Neighbourhood of Bow Creek (master)

Scenes of shed crews loading and unloading crates from vessels, flatbed lorries and a warehouse using hoists, hand trolleys, mechanised trolleys and forklift trucks. The banana crates are tubular and slatted for ventilation, others are a more familiar box shape e.g Outspan oranges. Tally clerks track the goods using clipboards. A crate is measured by a shed tally clerk, and a pile of crates on the quayside is inspected by the loading stevedore, while crews wait. Interior of a large transit shed, with neat rows of crates, loading chassis and workers. Wooden crates are hoist into the sky, and in one case the operator's cabin of the crane comes into view. The crates are swung onto the ship, where men lean on the gunwale in a relaxed manner. A load is hoist from an open cargo hatch, watched by two supervising dockers. Another is winched over the side of a vessel, past crew members in the hold and a supervising docker on the messy, plank-strewn deck. A forklift truck picks up a load and reverses away, leaving pallets scattered around. Outside named loading bays, workers arrange small crates on an Invincible flatbed lorry marked "W.H Bowker Ltd" and "Liverpool-London", while another throws packages, somewhat carelessly, onto an Empress lorry beside it.

Four cornporters (colloquially "toe-rags") are in a vast grain hold - one gathering rope used to secure flexible suction pipes; while two sit on the grain, perhaps discussing the plan of action. A chute discharges grain onto a lighter from the London Harvester grain elevator, as men wait by the doorway. A cargo vessel is moored by the Central Granary in Millwall Docks, with the prow of another, the Tangistan, visible in the foreground. View along the Royal Victoria Dock front, past moored cargo ships (one attended by a floating steam-powered crane) to the Spillers Millennium Mill building. Panoramic views across the Royal Victoria Dock front, showing the CWS Millennium Mill building and lifting cranes on one side; a small grey steamboat on the other.

At the Royal Albert Dock, piles of muslin-wrapped carcasses are lowered from cargo ships, loaded onto motorised platform trolleys on the quay below and driven away by meat porters. A small barge, "Clyde. B", is visible. Views down the fire escape of the Cold Store at the Royal Albert Dock, one showing traffic on the road below including a semi-truck flatbed lorry, a grey 2-door Morris Minor and, I believe, a grey Ford Anglia 105E, together with a couple of cyclists and pedestrians.

At the entrance to St Katherine Docks, opposite the Transport and General Workers Union building on East Smithfield, a Port of London Authority (PLA) policeman checks the documents of a flatbed lorry loaded with bales of tobacco, while a brightly-dressed mother crosses the road with her toddler in a white stroller. A man in a black uniform unloads rolled bales of, I think, small feathers from the back of a PLA lorry to a porter with a trolley below, while pedestrians pass by. The porter smiles as he carries away three or four large bundles by hand, and another on his back.

A banana elevator unloads polythene wrapped stems onto a manned conveyor belt next to a railway line, perhaps at the Banana Berth, North Quay, West India Dock. Wrapped bananas travel along the conveyor belt outside the cargo carriage of a train, where an attendant worker wrestles with packing straw, a tally clerk passes by, and workers unload banana stems into the carriage. Two jackets hang by a wooden door marked "J Titley Newcastle Under-Lyme".

Dual scoop grab buckets are lowered into sand in the lower hold of a vessel and raised from the cargo hatch, while workers stand with spades in the tween deck cargo space, some shovelling sand downwards. On the deck a supervisor looks into the sand hold as the winch chain operates. Grab buckets full of sand are swung overboard, lowered down the outside of a vessel, unloaded into barges, and raised again.

In West India Docks, a bundle of sugar sacks is hoisted from a barge. They are taken away on the back of a platform trolley, revealing a view of the quayside. The manned trolley exits a transit shed into the North Quay of West India Docks, colloquially "Blood Alley", passing a "DANGER" sign and an empty platform trolley heading the other way, The driver stands by his trolley as a load of sacks is hoist up towards the warehouse.

In a warehouse, a smartly-dressed man examines flat bundles of leaves (perhaps tobacco) on an opened bale, then adds them to a pile which he takes for weighing, passing behind another similarly occupied worker. His colleague reties a bundle.

A man reverses a forklift truck loaded with rough timber into a transit shed where large piles are stored. The timber piles are shown in various ways - stacked on end; from the ground to the top of the pile; with views of the central aisle, a forklift truck and accompanying workers. Close-up of the forks trying to lift part of a timber stack, but failing until a worker adjusts the pile.

In a transit shed, a bale of wool - perhaps shoddy (recycled) - is picked up by the grabber on a manned motorised bale handler truck, carried past stacks of similar bales, many torn slightly open, and placed on a stack (various identification marks are visible, some which could be dates - "1956", "1958"). A bale handler truck picks up and adds bales of (I think) cotton, or possibly finer grade wool, to stacks in the same shed.

Views of steam tugs pulling various vessels. A manned river tugboat and the prow of a towed vessel stand by the open bridge (largely unseen) of the King George V Entrance Lock, with views of the decorative Edwardian bridge pavilion and plainer Customs House. Another panoramic view crosses from wharves on one bank of the river, possibly near Woolwich Reach, past a large brick warehouse building, and along a long white cargo vessel with two attendant tugs, to show smaller white-painted buildings on the other bank. A tugboat with two crew reverses away from a large white vessel. Elsewhere, maybe in the King George V dock, two men stand in the prow of a vessel, by the ship's searchlight: one, in senior merchant navy uniform (maybe the vessel's Captain), rests on the gunwale; while the other, perhaps a Pilot - looks out at the hazy dockside scene through binoculars.

A couple of dock and river scenes: a view over a timber barge (with possibly the bulging chimney of the Tate & Lyle Sugar refinery in the background); another panoramic scene of the industrial riverside, with loading cranes, gas containers, transit sheds and a couple of power stations & factories (again possibly the Tate and Lyle factory at Silvertown). Views of the Tower of London, taken from the southern approach to Tower Bridge, with the control cabin at the base of the bridge and a moored lighter barge in the foreground. Two of these, mirror-printed, show the top of Trinity House - the PLA HQ, the spire of St Hallows by the Tower and nearby buildings.

The PLA's steam-powered No.7 bucket ladder dredger, with accompanying dredging barge, operates in the Thames estuary, perhaps near the fake water tower at Coalhouse Point.

Men in suits sit on leather seats in a half-empty auditorium, probably a trading exchange, each examining a sales list or catalogue for an auction.

At the Thames Navigation Service (TNS) operations room in Gravesend, a man in a dark uniform and glasses amends a blackboard-style shipping wall map; on the glass barrier in the foreground, there is an out-of-focus handwritten notice, partly out of view, which includes "Acila - Shellhaven". Two men are working in the dark TNS operations room - the one in the foreground speaking on the telephone and making notes.

A Merchant Navy Officer lowers some kind of sampling equipment - it looks a bit like a tin-can and a metal pipe on a thin rope - over the edge of the quayside, near a hot water outlet. He later fills his sample bottle from the tin can. He walks along the quay carrying his equipment; parked behind him are (I believe) a black Austin Mini van and a red car (perhaps an Austin A40 Farina), as well as industrial structures - possibly the East Greenwich Gasworks and Oil Gasification Plant.

Five people are working in an office at the PLA HQ in Trinity House: two uniformed Merchant Navy Officers, two smartly dressed and coiffed women, and a young man in a suit, but with a "mop-top" hairstyle. One of the officers and one of the women are plotting ship's positions and taking measurements at a map table. The younger man operates a franking machine on a separate table loaded with rolled charts.

Views of the entrance lock to the King George V Dock, with the bridge and lock gates closed, opening and open (and views of the large cargo vessels behind). In the distance, two pedestrians cross the gates of the filled lock, below the bridge, and as it begins to open one is still crossing the lock gate.

A poster shows the PLA Coat of Arms, with the motto "Floreat Imperii Portus" (translation - "Let the Imperial Port Flourish"). Several slightly hazy PLA maps are shown, covering various areas between Kingston and seaward limit of the PLA in the Thames Estuary.