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Some stairs were later converted to steamboat piers or
bridges or made it onto maps as street names and so their
names live on: Hungerford, Cherry Garden, Puddle Dock.
The red and green wherries and smaller flat-sterned skiffs
clustered at public stairs waiting for fares, the watermen
shouting “oars, oars” to signal that they were for hire.
Men known as Jack-in-the-Waters earned pennies for
carrying passengers to and fro boats from stairs and
causeways to save their heavy clothes from getting wet.
Most watermen plied for their trade independently but the
forerunners of today’s cab companies were also formed;
the diarist Samuel Pepys commuted by water from his
home to his job at the Admiralty using boats belonging
to a large operator named Cropp. Watermen disliked
sedan chairs, Hackney carriages and bridges often
petitioning against them and fighting for compensation
where needs be. When Blackfriars Bridge was built, the
Watermen's Company accepted the sum of £13,650 as
compensation for the loss of the Sunday ferry.
Doggett’s Wager
The Doggetts ‘Coat & Badge Race’ from Old Swan Stairs,
by London Bridge, to the Old Swan Inn at Chelsea, a
distance of four miles and seven furlongs, was established
by the Irish actor and manager of the Theatre Royal Drury
Lane in 1715. In his will Doggett gifted a sum of money
to ensure that this race should continue to be rowed “for
ever”. And it is. Every summer the race takes place under
the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers.
It the oldest continually run race in history and is only
open to newly qualified Freemen of the Watermen’s
company to mark the end of their apprenticeship.
The prize of the orange red coat with a silver arm badge
embossed with the horse of the House of Hanover is still
much treasured by those who have the honour of
“winning the wager”. Last year the Doggett’s Wager was
won by Christopher Anness, pictured above, whose
father had won it in 1982. Today the race uses modern
craft and is rowed with the tide taking around 25 minutes.
Wherry being sculled by a late 19th century Waterman
.