Walking by the docks

Text 1: A Stroll Through the Docks, by Frederick Ollerenshaw

An original travel writing written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

No visitor to the port should leave without a walk along the docks, for there the whole world comes to be unloaded. Within a single mile I passed a ship from Calcutta discharging tea, another from the West Indies smelling powerfully of sugar and rum, and a Norwegian barque stacked to her yards with timber. The air was a perfect museum of smells: tar, coffee, cinnamon, hides and the river itself, which contributed more than its share.

Sailors of every nation lounged upon the quays, Lascars in bright cotton, Swedes with yellow beards, a Chinese cook smoking a long pipe, and I heard more languages in an hour than I could name. The cranes swung, the porters ran, and the warehouses rose on every side like the walls of a fortress, each with its gilded name and its bales piled to the roof.

I came away with the impression that I had walked round the globe in an afternoon, and that this great port was the meeting place of every people under heaven.

Text 2: Grandad’s Docks, by Kwame Pellow

An original contemporary blog.

My grandad unloaded ships here in the 1960s, so on Sunday I finally walked the old docks with him. They look nothing like his stories. The warehouses are now flats and offices with glass balconies, the wharves have become a promenade, and the water that once held cargo ships now holds a few paddleboarders and a floating café.

But the world still comes here, just differently. In one walk we passed a Japanese noodle bar, a Lebanese bakery, a Brazilian coffee stall and a market selling street food from about fifteen countries. The air smelled of cardamom, charcoal grills and the river, which Grandad says has always smelled exactly the same. Office workers on their lunch break were chatting in Polish, Spanish, Hindi and Cantonese, and Grandad pointed out that the docks had always been like that.

A few of the old cranes have been kept, painted bright red, standing over the water like giant herons. Grandad stood under one for a long time. On the way home he said, “It was always where the world came in. It still is.”

Both writers describe walking along a city’s docks.

What are the similarities between the writers’ impressions of the docks?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.