Enderby Wharf was named for the Enderby family who used the area for a rope and canvass factory over 30 or so years in the mid-19th century. A lot has been written about them and their ownership of vessels engaged in the mass slaughter of whales but the role of the family in Greenwich social and political life, and also their later role in the exploration of Antarctica is often overlooked. So who were they?
Samuel Enderby had bought a house in Greenwich in 1758 but his home was in the City of London and his business was probably in the Borough. His family may have owned a Bermondsey tannery but later he was an 'oil and white lead' with a works in Loman Street. As someone in the 'oil and Russia' trade, he may have been processing oil for street lighting or soap and thus obtained mutton fat from the Baltic and oil from whales slaughtered at sea. He married an Elizabeth Buxton daughter of oil merchant with whom he went into partnership,
Elizabeth’s family were ship owners and initially they took goods to America colonists and returned with whale oil. As the business prospered the family moved to more upmarket accommodation in Greenwich. He may have been involved in the transport of convicts to Australia and as whales were hunted almost to extinction he was involved in the Southern Whale Fishery where they were still plentiful. By 1790 he was a rich man with sixty-eight whaling ships.
Samuel’s sons Charles, Samuel and George all became partners and they continued with the business after his death in 1797. They all lived around the area in the nicer bits of Greenwich and Blackheath.
In the 1790s his son, Samuel, Jnr. lived in a large and impressive house on Crooms Hill. His mother lived on Blackheath and family members were active in local good causes, commissioners and trustees for local services, and maybe tried not to think too much about the dirty trade on which their wealth depended. One daughter married a Henry Gordon, and her son Charles George was to become famous as General Gordon of Khartoum. Samuel, the last of the brothers, died in 1829 and he left the business to his three sons Charles, George and Henry.
It was these sons - the grandsons of Samuel Enderby - who bought the Greenwich riverside site including the rope walk, maybe in an attempt to change the nature of the trade. It was all about rope and canvass.
The factory consisted of two large waterside buildings where spinning machinery and looms were used to make canvas. On site were rooms to spin hemp and a flax mill. Outside was a building for a steam engine and boiler, houses for the foremen, stables, a smithy, and joinery. There was a 'pitch house' and the brothers negotiated seven-year contracts with the gas companies for a supply of tar. There was also a project with the City of London Gas Company for making 'composition,' usually a coal tar based mortar used by the cheaper end of the building trade. In 1837 Michael Faraday himself gave a lecture in 1837 on the use of naphtha as a solvent for rubber and how it could be applied to new types of rope and cable. Their most famous ship was the 'Samuel Enderby. For her first voyage an experimental rot proofing was used. This was Kyan’s extremely poisonous sublimate solution, more usually used as a treatment for syphilis. As a result there were some problems with nausea. Such uses of chemical products still under development in the 1830s shows how open the Enderby brothers were to innovation and the new ideas about chemistry and its development.
In 1837 William Cooke, who was the early pioneer of the telegraph asked Enderby Brothers to help develop insulated ropes for telegraph cables. In the same year he set up the first experimental telegraph signalling system on the railway at Camden Town. It is not known if his request for help from Enderbys was ever developed - but it was the shape of things to come.
This younger generation of Enderbys had money and leisure and many ideas beyond rope and canvas manufacture. Charles Enderby was one of the founders of the Royal Geographical. Enderby crews went to the Southern Oceans and in the course of their travels made many important discoveries. Their ships became identified with Antarctic exploration and the stories of the explorers with their, sometimes harrowing, adventures make exciting reading. They named the new lands which they discovered 'Adelaide Island' after Queen Adelaide, 'Mount William’, after William IV - and, of course, ‘Enderby Land’.
Nevertheless the business was gradually failing
On 8 March 1845, a devastating fire at Enderby Wharf put an end to the family’s involvement in the sail and rope-making business. The factory's own fire engine fought the blaze joined by two from the Parish, another from the Royal Dockyard and one from the London Fire Brigade Establishment. A detachment of Royal Marines was sent to help but there was never very much hope of saving the ropewalk. By the next morning all that remained were the 'lofty walls' of the factory - and they were blown down by the high winds in the next few days. It was said in the Kentish Mercury that the fire was either 'spontaneous combustion' or that it was ‘wilfully raised by some incendiary'.
A small house which may have been on the riverside was also destroyed and by June 1845, building work began on a new riverside house for Charles Enderby possibly on the foundations of the old house. The new house incorporated an unusual ‘Octagon Room’ on the first floor of the north-west corner with an angled bay window and river views. This building is Enderby House which still stands on the river bank. Charles entertained the rich and famous here. He had a number of 'curiosities' including a Tudor bedstead (which may perhaps be the bedstead now in Glasgow’s’ Burrell collection) and a stuffed 'parson bird' from New Zealand, which, when alive, had been a pet.
The Enderbys were part of that circle of merchants with strong government and establishment links - the same people who ran Morden College and the East India Company. Exploration was an expensive business: in theory, it was undertaken to discover new areas for whale fishing but this trade was soon in decline as gas lighting replaced oil, and whales became scarcer.
In 1847 Charles Enderby got a concession to set up a whaling station in the Auckland Islands in Antarctica, the 'Southern Whale Fishery'. It was a short lived and unsuccessful venture in which he, and other members of his family, lost a lot of money and the brothers died in relative poverty.
Nevertheless the manufacture of rope at Enderby Wharf had started something and that was to be in cables. There was in fact a business which had begun slightly down river at Morden Wharf which was looking for a vacant site to which they could expand.
Sources
A lot has been written about the Enderbys by many people. These include
Sally Jenkinson. The Enderby Family of Enderby Wharf
Barbara Ludlow. Whaling for Oil. Journal of the Greenwich Historical Society Vol 3 nos 4 & 5
Stewart Ash. The Eponymous Enderbys. (see https://atlantic-cable.com/)
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