LONDON WATERMEN, LIGHTERMEN, AND STEAMBOAT-MEN.
Of all the great capitals, London has least the appearance of antiquity, and the Thames has a peculiarly modern aspect. It is no longer the “silent highway,” for its silence is continually broken by the clatter of steamboats. This change has materially affected the position and diminished the number of the London watermen, into whose condition and earnings I am now about to examine.
The character of the transit on the river has, moreover, undergone a great change, apart from the alteration produced by the use of steam-power. Until the more general use of coaches, in the reign of Charles II., the Thames supplied the only mode of conveyance, except horseback, by which men could avoid the fatigue of walking; and that it was made largely available, all our older London chroniclers show. From the termination of the wars of the Roses, until the end of the 17th century, for about 200 years, all the magnates of the metropolis, the king, the members of the royal family, the great officers of state, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the noblemen whose mansions had sprung up amidst trees and gardens on the north bank of the Thames, the Lord Mayor, the City authorities, the City Companies, and the Inns of Court, all kept their own or their state barges, rowed by their own servants, attired in their respective liveries. In addition to the river conveyances of these functionaries, private boats or barges were maintained by all whose wealth permitted, or whose convenience required their use, in the same way as carriages and horses are kept by them in our day. The Thames, too, was then the principal arena for the display of pageants. These pageants, however, are now reduced to one—the Lord Mayor’s show. The remaining state barges are but a few, viz. the Queen’s, the Lord Mayor’s, and such as are maintained by the City Companies, and even some of these are rotting to decay.
Mr. Charles Knight says in his “London:”—“In the time of Elizabeth and the first James, and onward to very recent days, the north bank of the Thames was studded with the palaces of the nobles; and each palace had its landing-place, and its private retinue of barges and wherries; and many a freight of the brave and beautiful has been borne, amidst song and merriment, from house to house, to join the masque and the dance; and many a wily statesman, muffled in his cloak, has glided along unseen in his boat, to some dark conference with his ambitious neighbour. Upon the river itself, busy as it was, fleets of swans were ever sailing; and they ventured unmolested into that channel which is now narrowed by vessels from every region. Paulus Jovius, who died in 1552, describing the Thames, says: ‘This river abounds in swans, swimming in flocks, the sight of whom, and their noise, are vastly agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course.’ The only relics of the palatial ‘landing-places’ above alluded to, which is now to be seen, is the fine arch, or water-gate, the work of Inigo Jones, at the foot of Buckingham-street. This was an adornment of the landing-place from York House, once the town abode of the arch-bishops of that see, but afterwards the property of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. In front of this gate, or nearly so, the Hungerford steam-boat piers are now stationed; and in place of stately barges, directed by half-a-dozen robust oarsmen, in gorgeous liveries, approaching the palace, or lying silently in wait there, we have halfpenny, penny, twopenny, and other steam-boats, hissing, spluttering, panting, and smoking.”
Moreover, in addition to the state and private barges of the olden times, there were multitudes of boats and watermen always on hire. Stow, who was born in 1525, and died at eighty years of age, says that in his time 40,000 watermen were employed on the Thames. This, however, is a manifest exaggeration, when we consider the population of London at that time; still it is an over-estimate common to old chroniclers, by whom precise statistical knowledge was unattainable. That Stow represents the number of these men at 40,000, shows plainly that they were very numerous; and one proof of their great number, down to the middle of the last century, is, that until one hundred years ago, the cities of London and Westminster had but one bridge—the old London-bridge—which was commenced in 1176, completed in thirty-one years, and after standing 625 years, was pulled down in 1832. The want of bridges to keep pace with the increase of the population caused the establishment of numerous ferries. It has been computed, that in 1760 the ferries across the Thames, taking in its course from Richmond to Greenwich, were twenty-five times as numerous as they are at present. Westminster-bridge was not finished until 1750; Blackfriars was built in 1769; Battersea in 1771; Vauxhall in 1816; Waterloo in 1817; Southwark in 1819; the present London-bridge in 1831; and Hungerford in 1844.
The Thames Watermen.
The character of the Thames watermen in the last century was what might have been expected from slightly-informed, or uninformed, and not unprosperous men. They were hospitable and hearty one to another, and to their neighbours on shore; civil to such fares as were civil to them, especially if they hoped for an extra sixpence; but often saucy, abusive, and even sarcastic. Their interchange of abuse with one another, as they rode on the Thames, down to the commencement of the present century, if not later, was remarkable for its slang. In this sort of contest their fares not unfrequently joined; and even Dr. Johnson, when on the river, exercised his powers of objurgation to overwhelm some astonished Londoner in a passing boat. During the greater part of the last century the Thames watermen were employed in a service now unknown to them. They were the carriers, when the tide and the weather availed, of the garden-stuff and the fruit grown in the neighbourhood of the river from Woolwich and Hampton to the London markets. The green and firmly-packed pyramids of cabbages that now load the waggons were then piled in boats: and it was the same with fruit. One of the most picturesque sights Sir Richard Steele ever enjoyed was when he encountered, at the early dawn of a summer’s day, “a fleet of Richmond gardeners,” of which “ten sail of apricot-boats” formed a prominent and fragrant part. Turnpike-roads and railways have superseded this means of conveyance, which could only be made available when the tide served.
The observances on the Thames customary in the olden time still continue, though on a very reduced scale. The Queen has her watermen, but they have only been employed as the rowers of her barge twice since her accession to the throne; once when Her Majesty and Prince Albert visited the Thames Tunnel; and again when Prince Albert took water at Whitehall, and was rowed to the city to open the Coal-exchange. Besides the Queen’s watermen, there are still extant the dukes’ and lords’ watermen; the Lord Mayor’s and the City Companies’, as well as those belonging to the Admiralty. The above constitute what are called the privileged watermen, having certain rights and emoluments appertaining to them which do not fall to the lot of the class generally.
The Queen’s watermen are now only eighteen in number. They have no payment except when actually employed, and then they have 10s. for such employment. They have, however, a suit of clothes; a red jacket, with the royal arms on the buttons, and dark trousers, presented to them once every two years. They have also the privileges of the servants of the household, such as exemption from taxes, &c. Most of them are proprietors of lighters, and are prosperous men.
The privileges of the retainers of the nobles in the Stuart days linger still among the lords’ and dukes’ watermen, but only as a mere shadow of a fading substance. There are five or six men now who wear a kind of livery. I heard of no particular fashion in this livery being observed, either now or within the memory of the waterman. Their only privilege is that they are free from impressment. In the war time these men were more than twenty-five times as numerous as they are at present; in fact they are dying out, and the last “dukes,” and the last “lord’s” privileged watermen are now, as I was told, “on their last legs.”