The Lord Mayor’s watermen are still undiminished in number, the complement being thirty-six. Of these, eight are water-bailiffs, who, in any procession, row in a boat before the Lord Mayor’s state-barge. The other twenty-eight are the rowers of the chief magistrate’s barge on his aquatic excursions. They are all free from impressment, and are supplied with a red jacket and dark trousers every two years, the city arms being on the buttons.
One of these men told me that he had been a Lord Mayor’s man for some years, and made about eight journeys a-year, “swan-hopping and such-like,” the show being, as he said, a regular thing: 10s. a voyage was paid each man. It was jolly work, my informant stated, sometimes, was swan-hopping, though it depended on the Lord Mayor for the time being whether it was jolly or not. He had heard say, that in the old times the Lord Mayor’s bargemen had spiced wine regularly when out. But now they had no wine of any sort—but sometimes, when a Lord Mayor pleased; and he did not always please. My informant was a lighterman as well as a Lord Mayor’s waterman, and was doing well.
Among other privileged classes are the “hog-grubbers” (as they are called by the other watermen), but their number is now only four. These hog-grubbers ply only at the Pelican stairs; they have been old sailors in the navy, and are licensed by the Trinity house. No apprenticeship or freedom of the Waterman’s Company in that case being necessary. “There was from forty to fifty of them, sir,” said a waterman to me, “when I was a lad, and I am not fifty-three, and fine old fellows they were. But they’re all going to nothing now.”
The Admiralty watermen are another privileged class. They have a suit of clothes once every two years, a dark-blue jacket and trousers, with an anchor on the buttons. They also wear badges, and are exempt from impressment. Their business is to row the officials of the Admiralty when they visit Deptford on Trinity Monday, and on all occasions of business or recreation. They are now about eighteen in number. They receive no salary, but are paid per voyage at the same rate as the Lord Mayor’s watermen. There was also a class known as “the navy watermen,” who enjoyed the same privileges as the others, but they are now extinct. Such of the city companies as retain their barges have also their own watermen, whose services are rarely put into requisition above twice a-year. The Stationers’ Company have lately relinquished keeping their barge.
The present number of Thames watermen (privileged and unprivileged) is, I am informed by an officer of the Waterman’s Hall, about 1600. The Occupation Abstract of 1841 gives the number of London boat, barge, and watermen as 1654. The men themselves have very loose notions as to their number. One man computed it to me at 12,000; another at 14,000. This is evidently a traditional computation, handed down from the days when watermen were in greater requisition. To entitle any one to ply for hire on the river, or to work about for payment, it is provided by the laws of the City that he shall have duly and truly served a seven-years’ apprenticeship to a licensed waterman, and shall have taken up his freedom at Waterman’s Hall. I heard many complaints of this regulation being infringed. There were now, I was told, about 120 men employed by the Custom-house and in the Thames Police, who were not free watermen. “There’s a good many from Rochester way, sir,” one waterman said, “and down that way. They’ve got in through the interest of members of Parliament, and such-like, while there’s many free watermen, that’s gone to the expense of taking up their freedom, just starving. But we are going to see about it, and it’s high time. Either give us back the money we’ve paid for our rights, or let us have our proper rights—that’s what I say. Why, only yesterday, there was two accidents on the river, though no lives were lost. Both was owing to unlicensed men.”
“It’s neither this nor that,” said an old waterman to me, alluding to the decrease in their number and their earnings, “people may talk as they like about what’s been the ruin of us—it’s nothing but new London Bridge. When my old father heard that the old bridge was to come down, ‘Bill,’ says he, ‘it’ll be up with the watermen in no time.’ If the old bridge had stood, how would all these steamers have shot her? Some of them could never have got through at all. At some tides, it was so hard to shoot London Bridge (to go clear through the arches), that people wouldn’t trust themselves to any but watermen. Now any fool might manage. London-bridge, sir, depend on it, has ruined us.”
The places where the watermen now ply, are, on the Middlesex shore, beginning from London Bridge, down the river, Somers Quay, Upper Custom-house Quay, Lower Custom-house Quay, Tower Stairs, Irongate Stairs, St. Katharine’s, Alderman’s Stairs, Hermitage Stairs, Union Stairs, Wapping Old Stairs, Wapping New Stairs, Execution Dock, Wapping Dock, New Crane Stairs, Shadwell Dock Stairs, King James’s Stairs, Cold Stairs, Stone Stairs, Hanover Stairs, Duke’s Shore, Limehouse Hole, Chalk Stones, Masthouse, and Horseferry. On the Surrey side, beginning from Greenwich, are Greenwich, Lower Water-gate, Upper Water-gate, George’s Stairs, Deptford Stairs, Dog-and-Duck Stairs, Cuckold’s Point, Horseferry Road, Globe Stairs, King-and-Queen Stairs, Surrey Canal Stairs, Hanover Row, Church Stairs, Rotherhithe Stairs, Prince’s Stairs, Cherry Garden, Fountain High Stairs, East Lane, Mill Stairs, Horse and Groom New Stairs, George’s Stairs, Horse and Groom Old Stairs, Pickle Herring Stairs, Battle Bridge Stairs, and London Bridge Stairs.
Above London Bridge, the watermen’s stairs or stations on the Middlesex shore are, London Bridge, All Hallows, Southwark Bridge, Paul’s Wharf, Blackfriars, Fox-under-the-Hill, Adelphi, Hungerford, Whitehall-Stairs, Westminster Bridge, Horseferry, Vauxhall, and Hammersmith. On the opposite shore are London Bridge, Horseshoe Alley, Bankside, Southwark Bridge, Blackfriars Hodges, Waterloo Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Stangate Stairs, Lambeth Stairs, Vauxhall Bridge, Nine Elms, and the Red House, Battersea. Beyond, at Putney, and on both sides of the river up to Richmond, boats are to be had on hire, but the watermen who work them are known to their London brethren as “up-country watermen”—men who do not regularly ply for hire, and who are not in regular attendance at the river side, though duly licensed. They convey passengers or luggage, or packages of any kind adapted to the burden of a boat of a light draught of water. When they are not employed, their boats are kept chained to piles driven into the water’s edge. These men occasionally work in the market gardens, or undertake any job within their power; but, though they are civil and honest, they are only partially employed either on or off the river, and are very poor. Sometimes, when no better employment is in prospect, they stand at the toll-bridges of Putney, Hammersmith, or Kew, and offer to carry passengers across for the price of the toll. Since the prevalence of steam-packets as a means of locomotion along the Thames, the “stairs,” (if so they may be called), above bridge, are for the most part almost nominal stations for the watermen. At London Bridge stairs (Middlesex side), there now lie but three boats, while, before the steam era, or rather before the removal of the old London Bridge, ten times that number of boats were to be “hailed” there. At Waterloo and Southwark bridges, a man stands near the toll-gate offering a water conveyance no dearer than the toll; but it is hopeless to make this proposition when the tide is low, and these men, I am assured, hardly make eightpence a-day when offering this futile opposition. The stairs above bridge most frequented by the watermen, are at the Red House, Battersea, where there are many visitors to witness or take part in shooting-matches, or for dinner or picnic parties.
Down the river, the Greenwich stairs are the most numerously stocked with boats. Ordinarily about thirty boats are to be engaged there, but the business of the watermen is not one-twentieth so much to convey passengers as to board any sailing vessels beating up for London, and to inquire with an offer of their services (many of them being pilots) if they can be of any use, either aboard or ashore.
The number of “stairs” which may be considered as the recognised stations of watermen plying for hire, are, as I have shown by the foregoing enumeration, 75. The watermen plying at these places, I am told, by the best-informed men, average seventy a “stairs.” This gives 525 men and boats, but that, however, as we shall presently see, presents no criterion of the actual number of persons authorised to act as watermen.