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1850 saw the launch of the Thames camping skiff
with a canvas cover that unrolls over a frame of iron
hoops from side to side in the style of the fairground
caterpillar ride. Tens of thousands of skiffs were built
in boat houses employing hundreds of people. It was
in such a camping skiff that Jerome K Jerome set off
for his ten day skiff trip from Kingston to Oxford in
the 1899 classic
Three Men in A Boat
. The 2006
BBC2 television programme recreating the trip with
Dara Ó Briain, Rory McGrath and Griff Rhys Jones
has led to a fashion for camping skiff holidays which
has been a gift for the only company left renting out
traditional wooden camping skiffs. It is called
Thames Skiff Hire, founded 20 years before the
television programme, and it is run by Tom Balm
who rents out ten camping skiffs, some of them
more than 125 years old and worth over £10,000.
Balm describes it as the original 19
th
century
adventure holiday. An eight-day trip for three people
from Kingston to Oxford to mimic the original
Jerome K Jerome trip will cost £580.00 If you like it
you could always join the Thames Valley Skiff Club
at Walton who say that it's easier than rowing but
more difficult than knitting.
Is it so nice as all that?" asked the mole, shyly…
"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat
solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke.
"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -
absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as
simply messing about in boats."
Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows
Throughout the long history of settlement by the
River Thames it was an important means of transport
and it wasn’t until the coming of the railways in the
mid 1800s that the working river began to give way
to recreational use. By 1860 there were almost no
working wherries left on the Thames, which had
carried both cargoes and passengers but the Thames
skiffs, rowing boats for gentlemen based on the
design of the traditional workingman’s wherry, had
become increasingly popular for pleasure boating on
the upper, non-tidal reaches of the river. Like the
wherry the Thames skiff, a flat bottomed open
rowing boat with a pointed bow and a square stern,
owes a lot to the Viking boat building method of
overlapping planks known as carvel construction.
The names of skiff parts, tholes, thwarts and the like
are very, very Viking.
Messing About in Boats