“Visit of Colonial guests to The P. & O. Company's Fleet, Albert Docks” and “Angling Tournament at Orleans House, Twickenham” from “The Graphic” (12 June 1886)

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“Visit of Colonial guests to The P. & O. Company's Fleet, Albert Docks” and “Angling Tournament at Orleans House, Twickenham” — Double-handed Fly-casting by Professionals

12 June 1886

wood-engraving

32 cm high by 22.3 cm wide — 11 ⅞ inches by 8 ⅞ inches

Illustration for The Graphic, p. 621.

[Click on the image to enlarge it. See below for historical note, and mouse over the text for links.]

Industrial architecture

Nineteenth-Century Ships, Boats, and Naval Architecture and Engineering

Fishing

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Historical Note

The Albert Dock was part of the East End's busy docklands at the Port of London. It came a few years later than another famous Albert Dock — the one in Liverpool, which had been opened by Prince Albert himself to great fanfare in 1846.

First planned in 1874, London's Albert Dock was completed in 1880. It was much larger than the Liverpool one, greatly extending the capacity of the London Dockland's already operational Victoria Dock. It could accommodate "the largest vessels afloat, except the SS Great Eastern; the entrance lock was 800ft. long and 80ft. wide, and with a depth of 30ft. on the sills below Trinity high water" ("Royal Albert Dock"). At the time of this feature in the Graphic, the Gallions entrance to the dock had only just been completed; it was very much a showpiece, suitable for boasting about to guests at the Colonial and Indian Exposition which had opened in London on 6 May 1886, in a ceremony featured in an earlier issue of the Graphic.

All these docks only acquired the "Royal" prefix later on: London's Victoria and Albert Docks in 1921, as a group with the new King George V Dock when that was added; and Liverpool's only quite recently, in 2018.

The angling tournament paired with the Docks scene on this Graphic cover took place on the Thames in Middlesex — to be precise, on the part of the river that flows past the house where the exiled Duke of Orleans had once lived, and where the Orleans House Gallery is now, close to the parish church of Twickenham, St Mary's. It was reported in the periodical Forest and Stream later in June that the weather had been fine and that there had been "over 100 competitors from all parts of the country" (432). Both boating and angling were (and still are) very popular pastimes on the Thames. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Bibliography

"English Fly-Casting." Forest and Stream. Vol. 26 (24 June 1886): 432. Google Books. Free ebook.

Royal Albert Dock. Grace's Guide to British Industrial History. Web. 6 April 2025.

"The Royal Docks London." A History of the Royal Docks." https://www.royaldocks.london/articles/a-history-of-the-royal-docks

“Visit of Colonial guests to The P. & O. Company's Fleet, Albert Docks” and “Angling Tournament at Orleans House, Twickenham” — double-handed Fly-casting by Professionals. The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, No. 863, Vol. 33 (12 June 1886): 621.

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