The origins of the docks that covered much of Rotherhithe lie in the ship-building and -supplying that became its principal function when England began to have a navy in the 1600s. Andie Byrnes has plotted the course of that early emergence of docks from the maritime industry in her post about the first dock in Rotherhithe: the Howland Great Wet Dock. It functioned 1699-1807 and formed the first incarnation of what we know today as Greenland Dock. Here is Andie’s post on this history from 2008.

Rotherhithe 1746

Rotherhithe 1746

Howland Great Wet Dock

http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/rotherhithe-heritage-2-howland-great.html