Panoramic View of British Era Bombay Dock, 1914 Photo
An old 1914 photo with a panoramic view of a British-era Bombay Dock. This is possibly the Alexandra Dock or Victoria Dock in Bombay (now Mumbai). To meet the rising traffic in foreign trade, the city’s port facilities have been continually expanded and improved. The result is a string of wharves on Bombay’s harbour front.
From Sassoon Dock south of the Taj Mahal Hotel to Coal Bunder in the north. The reclamation of the Bombay Islands was completed around 1845. A spurt of development took place in the city after Henry Bartle Frere took over as the Governor. Bombay finally became a great city. From being a fort and dockyard, it developed into an industrial, commercial, and administrative hub of the empire.
Linked by road and rail to the interior of India and by new sea routes to England and Europe. Consequently, with the opening of the Suez Canal, the port and dockyards became more busier than ever. The first of the docks conceivably was the Sassoon Dock (1875), the next the Princes (1880) and Victoria (1888) Dockyards. However, these became insufficient for the large ship traffic that was taking place at the time of Mumbai’s cotton boom. Construction of a new yard with a larger capacity- the Alexandra dock was completed in 1914. Not many may know that the city even had a floating dock.
Did you know – in 1944 during the Second World War, a large part of the dock area was shattered by a devastating explosion, when an ammunition ship blew up. Had the ammunition dumps on the docks been ignited, half the city probably would have blown to pieces.
Past posts – Drawing Of The Hiding Of The Taj Mahal In WWII., Higginbothams Bookstore In Chennai – Old Postcard 1944.
