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River Buses
There were also barges for transporting people
en masse.
These ‘river buses’ had designated routes and termini but
no timetables as such – the bargemaster would wait until
he had enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile.
The
long ferry
operated between Billingsgate and
Gravesend for intercontinental passengers making it the
Heathrow Express of its day. Later the open barges were
replaced by tilt-boats, the tilt being an awning to afford
greater comfort and protection. An especially grand tilt
might be referred to as a shallop. Each waterman had to
have his boat numbered and carry a fare list. You paid more
for a shallop than a tilt and more for a tilt than for an open
barge and in all vessels you paid more if the watermen had
to row against the tide.
Watermens’ Stairs
Watermen were known as
above bridge
or
below bridge
men depending on the plying place that they served. Stairs
were used at high tide, and causeways were used at low
tide; their location and names memorized during the long
waterman's apprenticeship. Watermen's Stairs had formed
part of a complex transport network since the 1300s. The
new Company of Watermen designated men to particular
stairs and authorised a Sunday service at key stairs.
By the 18th century there were more than 100 public stairs
where watermen could ply for trade and many private
houses, pubs and other businesses had private stairs.
You can still see many of these old stairs when you cruise
along the river today and you can find the lost and glorious
names of public stairs on old maps: Old Magpie, Marygold,
Pelican, Cupids, Pickle Herring.
Below: Wapping Old Stairs
Watermen carried passengers. Lightermen, who joined
the Company of Watermen in 1700, carried goods.
Over the years, as successive bridges were built demand
for the services of the Watermen declined. The opposite,
however, happened with lightermen, who became busier
and busier. Employment of lightermen probably peaked
last century, between the two world wars. The only
lighterage left now is “rough goods” – London’s waste -
towing barges down to Mucky Flats and Pitsea Creek.
With road travel dangerous, difficult and slow the
Thames was the key highway for London with most
journeys a pragmatic A to B affair. Indeed with only
London Bridge for pedestrians and carts and that often
blocked many journeys were quick transpontine hops.
It is believed that a boating trip organised from Abingdon
in 1555 to see the Protestant martyrs burnt in Oxford is
one of the first recorded instances of a pleasure trip on
the River Thames, but geographically this was outside
the
jurisdiction of the new Company of Watermen which
only governed watermen plying between Windsor and
Gravesend. What times they were - Mary Tudor’s short
reign was characterized by persistent rain and flooding
and a battle to revive the English economy by cutting
government spending and cracking down on tax evasion.
Company Rules
Each year eight overseers were to be chosen from among
the watermen, to keep order among the rest.
The watermen’s traditional open boats were known as
wherries. These swift and agile boats, painted green or
red were beamy in the midships to give seating for five
passengers but they had pointed bows so that they could
get close in to shore and let their passengers off without
getting wet feet. They were usually rowed by a pair of
wherrymen with long oars. But for cross-river hops and
other short journeys a wherry might be manned by a
single man with short oars and described as a 'sculler'.