Image: Southampton water, from town quay, looking toward the Ocean Cruise Terminal.

Southampton water is a tidal estuary, with the port city of Southampton at the most northernly point, where the rivers Test and Ichen meet. Once the main point of departure for ocean liners, more recently it has been the home port for large cruise ships.

I first came here, way back in the last century, to photograph a Trinity House pilot guiding an oil tanker into the Fawley Terminal from the shipping lanes of the Solent. I was then here for some years, awarded a  Fellowship in Photography at Southampton University, working  with Leo Stable as he established the John Hansard Gallery.

On this particular day, the Mayflower park is blocked off, as marquees are being erected for a marine festival, while queues of cars and lorries wait alongside to board the ferry to the Isle of Wight. There are a few Spanish tourists wandering beneath the medieval town walls nearby, but the town quay itself is deserted. The only other people are in Starbucks; here you can find a few plaques in memory of the D-Day landings, and the millions of soldiers who left from here for the invasion of Europe in 1944-45.

It’s a cold and overcast morning. The light is as flat as the water itself. I make a few double-exposures.

About a mile from the town quay stands the old Admiralty building, at the entrance to the cruise liner terminals. On the corner of this building is a commemorative plaque dedicated to ‘The Old Contemptibles 1914’. It was dedicated in 1950, and was originally placed on the gate entrance to the Eastern Dock, which was later demolished.

In the First World War, Southampton was designated as Military Embarkation Port No. 1. The railway took troops straight to the town quay; the trains were not allowed to stop anywhere else and went to the dockside sheds alongside the berth, where troopships were waiting.

Military planners split each working hour into five 12-minute segments, with the aim of getting one train successfully unloaded and moved on in each segment. In the early months of the war, at the peak of mobilization, up to eight trains were brought in each hour, resulting in some 90 troop trains per week arriving and departing. They say that only one train ran late during the whole first period of mobilisation. The trains were not allowed to stop anywhere and went straight to the dockside sheds alongside the berth, at which the troopships were waiting.

Southampton Common had large army rest camps and sites at Salisbury Plain and at Winchester were also used as assembly points. Most troops arrived and left here in less than 24 hours. By the end of the war, more than 7 million men had passed through the port, along with 179,069 vehicles, 859,830 horses, and 15,266 guns.

Here in Southampton, in January 1919, 20,000 soldiers went on strike; when units were ordered back to France, they refused and took over the docks, complaining about the slow pace of promised demobilisation. This was one of several similar protests at this time across the country. The Commander in Chief of the Home Forces sent General Trenchard to the port to restore some semblance of military authority.