Few people can have loved London's river as much as Albert Gravely Linney (1873–1936). He was a writer and journalist, a creditable cricketer in his youth, and a keen amateur photographer. As a young man he trained as a teacher and then took passage on a small barque from the West India Docks to Australia. When he failed to make his fortune there, he worked his passage back on an Orient liner. His sailing experience also included a trip to the far north of the Baltic.
In 1925 he became the first editor of the new Port of London Authority Monthly Magazine and it was in this capacity that he was able to fully explore the working Thames and its riverbanks. Permitted access to the enclosed docks, he also rode frequently on the Harbour Service patrol boats as they went about their daily business. And wherever he went, Linney took his camera. He also published a number of books, most noticeably Peepshow of the Port of London (1929) and The Lure and Lore of London's River (1930), both of which offered a eulogistic portrait of the Thames and the port.
What distinguished Linney was his intense fascination with the Thames riverscape in all its variety. With its docks and wharves, dockyards, oil tankages, power stations, rubbish dumps and gravel pits. From the lonely marshland of the estuary to the close-packed docks in Rotherhithe and the Isle of Dogs, though he also found the latter "sombrely depressing" and doubted that a walk round the perimeter "offers much attraction to the walker".
He savoured the different flavour of each of the enclosed docks "…each individual dock has an atmosphere and special individuality of its own, and there is the widest variation between impressions received in little, old-fashioned St. Katharine, in huge and rather lonesome Surrey, or in impressive and business-like King George. Naturally the nature of the traffic reaching each dock and the character of the craft seen differ also…" .
He was also particularly sensitive to the presence of the past in the river environment and this sometimes brought out an almost mystical quality in his observation. "I sat in the doorway gazing over to the Isle of Dogs, and it seemed that around me were shadowy others staring out at a river of the past." Walking towards the estuary this sense often increased. "…I confess that this stretch of bank of Erith Reach has an uncanny and eerie feel to it." - a feeling which was strengthened by abandoned chairs, furniture lost from ships, all set up along the shore looking to seaward. "From those solitary "ghost chairs" among the twitch grass and the pools what pale eyes scan the traffic of the River…?"
Other parts of the river provided charm: "I find an excellent soul tonic in a walk round Lavender Pond within Surrey Commercial Docks, Rotherhithe…the region has a spaciousness and an atmosphere such as no other London dock area can equal." Though his favourite location for watching the coming and going of the Thames was undoubtedly the garden of the Tilbury Hotel "On a spring morning when the long path of the garden running parallel to the water is gay with flowers and the blossom is on the trees I know no more delightful spot for lingering."