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my schedule I took his hand in mine and didn’t let go
until he had opened the exhibition, been photographed
with Mr. Watson and his book and had shaken hands
(hand!) with those expecting to be shaken hands with.
He didn’t object or try to wriggle free at any point so
I think maybe it is OK to hold hands with ministers.
Perhaps it happens to them all the time. But HM Queen
Elizabeth II or other royalty? That’s a different kettle
of fish. Unless, like the crew of the Woolwich Ferry for
example, you are a Licensed Waterman. Traditionally
Watermen are allowed to touch royalty in order to help
them on and off boats. So George Campion can hold
hands with the Queen but I can’t. That’s health and safety
protocol by way of ancient custom and tradition.
It was the olde “’elf & safety” that led to properly trained
and licensed watermen in the first place. The Thames had
been a major highway since Roman times but the City
had little say in its affairs until, the strapped for cash and
keen Crusader, Richard I sold the Crown’s rights over the
River Thames to the Corporation of London in 1197.
Before the ink was dry on the papers the City Fathers had
their first stab at licensing boats on the river. 250 years
later transport of both people and goods by river was
being blocked by all manner of watermills, piers and
fishing traps built from the crowded and chaotic banks
so Edward III prohibited obstruction of the river.
In 1510 Henry VIII gave watermen exclusive rights to
carry passengers which giddy power soon went to their
heads and finally fed up with being rough handled and
threatened with a dunking if they didn’t cough up more
once they were away from the banks, MPs passed another
Act soon after to introduce fare regulation. But it was only
when Mary Tudor almost became quite literally and not
just metaphorically bloody that proper registration and
training of watermen began. Legend has it that the Queen
(who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dennis Waterman)
was almost killed when a cannon ball from a botched gun
salute from a boat on the Thames crashed though the walls
of the Palace of Placentia at Greenwich. Thus rattled she
instructed her Government to
do something
and in 1555
by Act of Parliament the Company of Watermen was
established. It immediately ordered one year of training
later extended to seven years of apprenticeship in order
to gain an encyclopaedic knowledge of the tides, currents,
reaches, stairs and causeways of the River Thames.
Dynastic Successions
Like the cabbies’ ‘
knowledge’
teaching them all the short
cuts to “
cotton up
” the shortest routes, watermen navigate
using tiny details: four steps above the waterline on the
bank at Wandsworth means the tide is low enough to pass
under the fourth arch of Battersea Bridge.
Long apprenticeships encourage dynastic successions and
so it is with the Watermen. Father to son for generations.
Old George Campion (former tug boat skipper whose own
father and grandfather had been on the river and who had
set up the pleasure cruise business in 1980 when the docks
closed) to his son Young George Campion (our skipper
Christmas 2012) to his son Young Craig Campion (who
has inherited the silver tongued gift of the gab from his
grandfather and delivers a wonderful commentary).
Woolwich Ferry 1950s. The Royal Docks are full of cranes
.