Near the stairs below bridge the watermen stand looking out for customers, or they sit on an adjacent form, protected from the weather, some smoking and some dozing. They are weather-beaten, strong-looking men, and most of them are of, or above, the middle age. Those who are not privileged work in the same way as the privileged, wear all kinds of dresses, but generally something in the nature of a sailor’s garb, such as a strong pilot-jacket and thin canvas trousers. The present race of watermen have, I am assured, lost the sauciness (with occasional smartness) that distinguished their predecessors. They are mostly patient, plodding men, enduring poverty heroically, and shrinking far more than many other classes from any application for parish relief. “There is not a more independent lot that way in London,” said a waterman to me, “and God knows it isn’t for want of all the claims which being poor can give us, that we don’t apply to the workhouse.” Some, however, are obliged to spend their old age, when incapable of labour, in the union. Half or more than one-half of the Thames watermen, I am credibly informed, can read and write. They used to drink quantities of beer, but now, from the stress of altered circumstances, they are generally temperate men. The watermen are nearly all married, and have families. Some of their wives work for the slop-tailors. They all reside in the small streets near the river, usually in single rooms, rented at from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a-week. At least three-fourths of the watermen have apprentices, and they nearly all are sons or relatives of the watermen. For this I heard two reasons assigned. One was, that lads whose childhood was passed among boats and on the water contracted a taste for a waterman’s life, and were unwilling to be apprenticed to any other calling. The other reason was, that the poverty of the watermen compelled them to bring up their sons in this manner, as the readiest mode of giving them a trade; and many thus apprenticed become seamen in the merchant service, and occasionally in the royal navy, or get employment as working-lightermen, or on board the river steamers.
At each stairs there is what is called a “turnway and causeway club,” to which the men contribute each 2s. per quarter. One of the regulations of these clubs is, that the oldest men have the first turn on Monday, and the next oldest on Tuesday, and so on, through the several days of the week, until Saturday, which is the apprentices’ day. The fund raised by the 2s. subscription is for keeping the causeway clean and in repair. There is also a society in connexion with the whole body of watermen, called the “Protection Society,” to proceed against any parties who infringe upon their privileges. To this society they pay 1d. per week each. The Greenwich watermen are engaged generally as pilots to colliers, and other small crafts.
From one of the watermen, plying near the Tower, I had the following statement:—
“I have been a waterman eight-and-twenty years. I served my seven years duly and truly to my father. I had nothing but my keep and clothes, and that’s the regular custom. We must serve seven years to be free of the river. It’s the same now in our apprenticeship. No pay; and some masters will neither wash, nor clothe, nor mend a boy: and all that ought to be done by the master, by rights. Times and masters is harder than ever. After my time was out I went to sea, and was pretty lucky in my voyages. I was at sea in the merchant service five years. When I came back I bought a boat. My father helped me to start as a waterman on the Thames. The boat cost me twenty guineas, it would carry eight fares. It cost 2l. 15s. to be made an apprentice, and about 4l. to have a license to start for myself. In my father’s time—from what I know when I was his apprentice, and what I’ve heard him say—a waterman’s was a jolly life. He earned 15s. to 18s. a-day, and spent it accordingly. When I first started for myself, twenty-eight years ago, I made 12s. to 14s. a-day, more than I make in a week now, but that was before steamers. Many of us watermen saved money then, but now we’re starving. These good times lasted for me nine or ten years, and in the middle of the good times I got married. I was justified, my earnings was good. But steamers came in, and we were wrecked. My father was in the River Fencibles, which was a body of men that agreed to volunteer to serve on board ships that went on convoys in the war times. The watermen was bound to supply so many men for that and for the fleet. I can’t call to mind the year, but the full number wasn’t supplied, and there was a press. Some of my neighbours, watermen now, was of the press-gang. When the press was on there was a terrible to do, and all sorts of shifts among the watermen. The young ones ran away to their mothers, and kept in hiding. I was too young then,—I was an apprentice, too,—to be pressed. But a lieutenant once put his hand on my poll, and said, ‘My fine red-headed fellow, you’ll be the very man for me when you’re old enough.’ Mine’s a very bad trade—I make from 10s. to 12s. a-week, and that’s all my wife and me has to live on. I’ve no children—thank the Lord for it: for I see that several of the watermen’s children run about without shoes or stockings. On Monday I earned 1s. 9d., on Tuesday, 1s. 7d., on Wednesday, which was a very wet day, 1s., and yesterday, Thursday, 1s. 6d., and up to this day, Friday noon, I’ve earned nothing as yet. We work Sundays and all. My expenses when I’m out isn’t much. My wife puts me up a bit of meat, or bacon and bread, if we have any in the house, and if I’ve earned anything I eat it with half-a-pint of beer, or a pint at times. Ours is hard work, and we requires support if we can only get it. If I bring no meat with me to the stairs, I bring some bread, and get half-a-pint of coffee with it, which is 1d. We have to slave hard in some weathers when we’re at work, and indeed we’re always either slaving or sitting quite idle. Our principal customers are people that want to go across in a hurry. At night—and we take night work two and two about, two dozen of us, in turn—we have double fares. There’s very few country visitors take boats now to see sights upon the river. The swell of the steamers frightens them. Last Friday a lady and gentleman engaged me for 2s. to go to the Thames Tunnel, but a steamer passed, and the lady said, ‘Oh, look what a surf! I don’t like to venture;’ and so she wouldn’t, and I sat five hours after that before I’d earned a farthing. I remember the first steamer on the river; it was from Gravesend, I think. It was good for us men at first, as the passengers came ashore in boats. There was no steam-piers then, but now the big foreign steamers can come alongside, and ladies and cattle and all can step ashore on platforms. The good times is over, and we are ready now to snap at one another for 3d., when once we didn’t care about 1s. We’re beaten by engines and steamings that nobody can well understand, and wheels.”
“Rare John Taylor,” the water-poet in the days of James I. and Charles I., with whose name I found most of the watermen familiar (at least they had heard of him), complained of the decay of his trade as a waterman, inasmuch as in his latter days “every Gill Turntripe, Mistress Tumkins, Madame Polecat, my Lady Trash, Froth the tapster, Bill the tailor, Lavender the broker, Whiff the tobacco-seller, with their companion trulls, must be coached.” He complained that wheeled conveyances ashore, although they made the casements shatter, totter, and clatter, were preferred to boats, and were the ruin of the watermen. And it is somewhat remarkable that the watermen of our day complain of the same detriment from wheeled conveyances on the water.
The Lightermen and Bargemen.
These are also licensed watermen. The London watermen rarely apply the term bargemen to any persons working on the river; they confine the appellation to those who work in the barges in the canals, and who need not be free of the river, though some of them are so, many of them being also seamen or old men-of-war’s men. The river lightermen (as the watermen style them all, no matter what the craft) are, however, so far a distinct class, that they convey goods only, and not passengers: while the watermen convey only passengers, or such light goods as passengers may take with them in the way of luggage. The lighters are the large boats used to carry the goods which form the cargo to the vessels in the river or the docks, or from the vessels to the shore. The barge is a kind of larger lighter, built deeper and stronger, and is confined principally to the conveyance of coal. Two men are generally employed in the management of a barge. The lighters are adapted for the conveyance of corn, timber, stone, groceries and general merchandise: and the several vessels are usually confined to such purposes—a corn lighter being seldom used, for instance, to carry sugar. The lighters and barges in present use are built to carry from 6 to 120 tons, the greater weight being that of the huge coal barges. A lighter carrying fourteen tons of merchandise costs, when new, 120l.—and this is an average size and price. Some of these lighters are the property of the men who drive them, and who are a prosperous class compared with the poor watermen. The lightermen cannot be said to apply for hire in the way of the watermen, but they are always what they call “on the look out.” If a vessel arrives, some of them go on board and offer their services to the captain in case he be concerned in having his cargo transported ashore; or they ascertain to what merchant or grocer goods may be consigned, and apply to them for employment in lighterage, unless they know that some particular lighterman is regularly employed by the consignee. There are no settled charges—each tradesman has his regular scale, or drives his own bargains for lighterage, as he does for the supply of any other commodity. I heard no complaints of underselling among the lightermen, but the men who drive their own boats themselves sometimes submit to very hard bargains. Laden lighters, I was told on all hands, ought not, in “anything like weather,” to be worked by fewer than two men; but the hard bargains I have spoken of induce some working lightermen to attempt feats beyond their strength, in driving a laden lighter unassisted. Sometimes the watermen have to put off to render assistance, when they see a lighter unmanageable. Lighters can only proceed with the tide, and are often moored in the middle of the river, waiting the turn of the tide, more especially when their load consists of heavy articles. The lighters, when not employed, are moored alongshore, often close to a waterman’s stairs. Most master-lightermen have offices by the waterside, and all have places where “they may always be heard of.” Many lightermen are capitalists, and employ a number of hands. The “London Post Office Directory” gives the names of 175 master-lightermen. If a ship has to be laden or unladen in a hurry, one of them is usually employed, and he sets a series of lighters “on the job,” so that there is no cessation in the work. Most lightermen are occasionally employers; sometimes engaging watermen to assist them, sometimes hiring a lighter, in addition to their own, from some lighterman. A man employed occasionally by one of the greater masters made the following statement:—
“I work for Mr. ——, and drive a lighter that cost above 100l., mostly at merchandise. I have 28s. a-week, and 2s. extra every night when there’s nightwork. I should be right well off if that lasted all the year through, but it don’t. On a Saturday night, when we’ve waited for our money till ten or eleven perhaps, master will say, ‘I have nothing for you on Monday, but you can look in.’ He’ll say that to a dozen of us, and we may not have a job till the week’s half over, or not one at all. That’s the mischief of our trade. I haven’t means to get a lighter of my own, though I can’t say I’m badly off, and I’m a single man; and if I had a lighter I’ve no connexion. There’s very few of the great lightermen that one has a regular berth under. I suppose I make 14s. or 15s. the year through, lumping it all like.”
