West India Docks, Unloading Sugar and Rum
Unloading sugar and rum on the West India Docks. Robert Milligan (1746-1809) was largely responsible for the construction of the West India Docks. Milligan was a wealthy West Indies merchant and shipowner, who returned to London having previously managed his family's Jamaica sugar plantations. Outraged at losses due to theft and delay at London's riverside wharves, Milligan headed a group of powerful businessmen, who promoted the creation of a wet dock circled by a high wall. The group planned and built West India Docks, lobbying Parliament to allow the creation of a West India Dock Company. Milligan served as both Deputy Chairman and Chairman of the West India Dock Company. The Docks were authorized by the West India Dock Act 1799 - the first parliamentary Act for dock building. The Docks design allowed a ship arriving from the West Indies to unload in the northern dock, sail round to the southern dock and load up with export cargo in a fraction of the time it had previously taken in the heavily congested and dangerous upper reaches of the Thames
