The footpath here is certainly marked on the 1894-6 OS map, when the site which later became the container terminal was occupied by several industries. As well as the Victoria linoleum works with its wharf immediately to the north of Bay Wharf were Imperial Wharf, with the Thames Silicated Stone Works, Sussex Wharf, with a number of storage tanks and a travelling crane across the footpath, then a Wood Planing Works. The empty site to the north of these had by 1916 been filled by a larger Greenwich Linoleum works.
 
Victoria Wharf was earlier developed as the site of a steel works built in the 1860s by Henry Bessemer, who in 1865 applied to the Thames Conservators to build a jetty there. The building was equipped (according to Bessemer's son) with two 2½ ton Bessemer converters; he states that this plant, intended to be a model one, was never opened because of a downturn in Thames shipbuilding, but other evidence suggests it was working until the site was bought to become a linoleum works. You can read more on the Greenwich Industrial history site, though remarkably little seems to be known.