The character of the Thames watermen in the last century was what
might have been expected from slightly-informed, or uninformed, and
not unprosperous men. They were hospitable and hearty one to another,
and to their neighbours on shore; civil to such fares as were civil
to them, especially if they hoped for an extra sixpence; but often
saucy, abusive, and even sarcastic. Their interchange of abuse with
one another, as they rode on the Thames, down to the commencement of
the present century, if not later, was remarkable for its slang. In
this sort of contest their fares not unfrequently joined; and even
Dr. Johnson, when on the river, exercised his powers of objurgation
to overwhelm some astonished Londoner in a passing boat. During the
greater part of the last century the Thames watermen were employed in
a service now unknown to them. They were the carriers, when the tide
and the weather availed, of the garden-stuff and the fruit grown in
the neighbourhood of the river from Woolwich and Hampton to the London
markets. The green and firmly-packed pyramids of cabbages that now
load the waggons were then piled in boats: and it was the same with
fruit. One of the most picturesque sights Sir Richard Steele ever
enjoyed was when he encountered, at the early dawn of a summer’s day,
“a fleet of Richmond gardeners,” of which “ten sail of apricot-boats”
formed a prominent and fragrant part. Turnpike-roads and railways have
superseded this means of conveyance, which could only be made available
when the tide served.
The observances on the Thames customary in the olden time still
continue, though on a very reduced scale. The Queen has her watermen,
but they have only been employed as the rowers of her barge twice since
her accession to the throne; once when Her Majesty and Prince Albert
visited the Thames Tunnel; and again when Prince Albert took water at
Whitehall, and was rowed to the city to open the Coal-exchange. Besides
the Queen’s watermen, there are still extant the dukes’ and lords’
watermen; the Lord Mayor’s and the City Companies’, as well as those
belonging to the Admiralty. The above constitute what are called the
privileged watermen, having certain rights and emoluments appertaining
to them which do not fall to the lot of the class generally.
The Queen’s watermen are now only eighteen in number. They have no
payment except when actually employed, and then they have 10_s._ for
such employment. They have, however, a suit of clothes; a red jacket,
with the royal arms on the buttons, and dark trousers, presented
to them once every two years. They have also the privileges of the
servants of the household, such as exemption from taxes, &c. Most of
them are proprietors of lighters, and are prosperous men.
The privileges of the retainers of the nobles in the Stuart days linger
still among the lords’ and dukes’ watermen, but only as a mere shadow
of a fading substance. There are five or six men now who wear a kind of
livery. I heard of no particular fashion in this livery being observed,
either now or within the memory of the waterman. Their only privilege
is that they are free from impressment. In the war time these men were
more than twenty-five times as numerous as they are at present; in
fact they are dying out, and the last “dukes,” and the last “lord’s”
privileged watermen are now, as I was told, “on their last legs.”
The Lord Mayor’s watermen are still undiminished in number, the
complement being thirty-six. Of these, eight are water-bailiffs, who,
in any procession, row in a boat before the Lord Mayor’s state-barge.
The other twenty-eight are the rowers of the chief magistrate’s barge
on his aquatic excursions. They are all free from impressment, and are
supplied with a red jacket and dark trousers every two years, the city
arms being on the buttons.
One of these men told me that he had been a Lord Mayor’s man for
some years, and made about eight journeys a-year, “swan-hopping and
such-like,” the show being, as he said, a regular thing: 10_s._ a
voyage was paid each man. It was jolly work, my informant stated,
sometimes, was swan-hopping, though it depended on the Lord Mayor for
the time being whether it was jolly or not. He had heard say, that
in the old times the Lord Mayor’s bargemen had spiced wine regularly
when out. But now they had no wine of any sort--but sometimes, when a
Lord Mayor pleased; and he did not always please. My informant was a
lighterman as well as a Lord Mayor’s waterman, and was doing well.
Among other privileged classes are the “hog-grubbers” (as they are
called by the other watermen), but their number is now only four. These
hog-grubbers ply only at the Pelican stairs; they have been old sailors
in the navy, and are licensed by the Trinity house. No apprenticeship
or freedom of the Waterman’s Company in that case being necessary.
“There was from forty to fifty of them, sir,” said a waterman to me,
“when I was a lad, and I am not fifty-three, and fine old fellows they
were. But they’re all going to nothing now.”
The Admiralty watermen are another privileged class. They have a suit
of clothes once every two years, a dark-blue jacket and trousers, with
an anchor on the buttons. They also wear badges, and are exempt from
impressment. Their business is to row the officials of the Admiralty
when they visit Deptford on Trinity Monday, and on all occasions of
business or recreation. They are now about eighteen in number. They
receive no salary, but are paid per voyage at the same rate as the
Lord Mayor’s watermen. There was also a class known as “the navy
watermen,” who enjoyed the same privileges as the others, but they are
now extinct. Such of the city companies as retain their barges have
also their own watermen, whose services are rarely put into requisition
above twice a-year. The Stationers’ Company have lately relinquished
keeping their barge.
The present number of Thames watermen (privileged and unprivileged) is,
I am informed by an officer of the Waterman’s Hall, about 1600. The
Occupation Abstract of 1841 gives the number of London boat, barge,
and watermen as 1654. The men themselves have very loose notions as to
their number. One man computed it to me at 12,000; another at 14,000.
This is evidently a traditional computation, handed down from the days
when watermen were in greater requisition. To entitle any one to ply
for hire on the river, or to work about for payment, it is provided
by the laws of the City that he shall have duly and truly served a
seven-years’ apprenticeship to a licensed waterman, and shall have
taken up his freedom at Waterman’s Hall. I heard many complaints of
this regulation being infringed. There were now, I was told, about 120
men employed by the Custom-house and in the Thames Police, who were
not free watermen. “There’s a good many from Rochester way, sir,” one
waterman said, “and down that way. They’ve got in through the interest
of members of Parliament, and such-like, while there’s many free
watermen, that’s gone to the expense of taking up their freedom, just
starving. But we are going to see about it, and it’s high time. Either
give us back the money we’ve paid for our rights, or let us have our
proper rights--that’s what I say. Why, only yesterday, there was two
accidents on the river, though no lives were lost. Both was owing to
unlicensed men.”
“It’s neither this nor that,” said an old waterman to me, alluding to
the decrease in their number and their earnings, “people may talk as
they like about what’s been the ruin of us--it’s nothing but new London
Bridge. When my old father heard that the old bridge was to come down,
‘Bill,’ says he, ‘it’ll be up with the watermen in no time.’ If the old
bridge had stood, how would all these steamers have shot her? Some of
them could never have got through at all. At some tides, it was so hard
to shoot London Bridge (to go clear through the arches), that people
wouldn’t trust themselves to any but watermen. Now any fool might
manage. London-bridge, sir, depend on it, has ruined us.”
The places where the watermen now ply, are, on the Middlesex shore,
beginning from London Bridge, down the river, Somers Quay, Upper
Custom-house Quay, Lower Custom-house Quay, Tower Stairs, Irongate
Stairs, St. Katharine’s, Alderman’s Stairs, Hermitage Stairs, Union
Stairs, Wapping Old Stairs, Wapping New Stairs, Execution Dock, Wapping
Dock, New Crane Stairs, Shadwell Dock Stairs, King James’s Stairs, Cold
Stairs, Stone Stairs, Hanover Stairs, Duke’s Shore, Limehouse Hole,
Chalk Stones, Masthouse, and Horseferry. On the Surrey side, beginning
from Greenwich, are Greenwich, Lower Water-gate, Upper Water-gate,
George’s Stairs, Deptford Stairs, Dog-and-Duck Stairs, Cuckold’s
Point, Horseferry Road, Globe Stairs, King-and-Queen Stairs, Surrey
Canal Stairs, Hanover Row, Church Stairs, Rotherhithe Stairs, Prince’s
Stairs, Cherry Garden, Fountain High Stairs, East Lane, Mill Stairs,
Horse and Groom New Stairs, George’s Stairs, Horse and Groom Old
Stairs, Pickle Herring Stairs, Battle Bridge Stairs, and London Bridge
Stairs.
Above London Bridge, the watermen’s stairs or stations on the Middlesex
shore are, London Bridge, All Hallows, Southwark Bridge, Paul’s Wharf,
Blackfriars, Fox-under-the-Hill, Adelphi, Hungerford, Whitehall-Stairs,
Westminster Bridge, Horseferry, Vauxhall, and Hammersmith. On the
opposite shore are London Bridge, Horseshoe Alley, Bankside, Southwark
Bridge, Blackfriars Hodges, Waterloo Bridge, Westminster Bridge,
Stangate Stairs, Lambeth Stairs, Vauxhall Bridge, Nine Elms, and the
Red House, Battersea. Beyond, at Putney, and on both sides of the
river up to Richmond, boats are to be had on hire, but the watermen
who work them are known to their London brethren as “up-country
watermen”--men who do not regularly ply for hire, and who are not in
regular attendance at the river side, though duly licensed. They convey
passengers or luggage, or packages of any kind adapted to the burden
of a boat of a light draught of water. When they are not employed,
their boats are kept chained to piles driven into the water’s edge.
These men occasionally work in the market gardens, or undertake any
job within their power; but, though they are civil and honest, they
are only partially employed either on or off the river, and are very
poor. Sometimes, when no better employment is in prospect, they stand
at the toll-bridges of Putney, Hammersmith, or Kew, and offer to carry
passengers across for the price of the toll. Since the prevalence of
steam-packets as a means of locomotion along the Thames, the “stairs,”
(if so they may be called), above bridge, are for the most part almost
nominal stations for the watermen. At London Bridge stairs (Middlesex
side), there now lie but three boats, while, before the steam era, or
rather before the removal of the old London Bridge, ten times that
number of boats were to be “hailed” there. At Waterloo and Southwark
bridges, a man stands near the toll-gate offering a water conveyance no
dearer than the toll; but it is hopeless to make this proposition when
the tide is low, and these men, I am assured, hardly make eightpence
a-day when offering this futile opposition. The stairs above bridge
most frequented by the watermen, are at the Red House, Battersea, where
there are many visitors to witness or take part in shooting-matches, or
for dinner or picnic parties.
Down the river, the Greenwich stairs are the most numerously stocked
with boats. Ordinarily about thirty boats are to be engaged there, but
the business of the watermen is not one-twentieth so much to convey
passengers as to board any sailing vessels beating up for London, and
to inquire with an offer of their services (many of them being pilots)
if they can be of any use, either aboard or ashore.
The number of “stairs” which may be considered as the recognised
stations of watermen plying for hire, are, as I have shown by the
foregoing enumeration, 75. The watermen plying at these places, I
am told, by the best-informed men, average seventy a “stairs.” This
gives 525 men and boats, but that, however, as we shall presently see,
presents no criterion of the actual number of persons authorised to act
as watermen.
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 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._
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 2_s._ 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 2_s._ 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 1_d._ 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 2_l._ 15_s._ to be made an apprentice, and about 4_l._
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 15_s._ to 18_s._ a-day, and
spent it accordingly. When I first started for myself, twenty-eight
years ago, I made 12_s._ to 14_s._ 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 10_s._ to 12_s._ 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 1_s._ 9_d._, on Tuesday, 1_s._ 7_d._, on Wednesday,
which was a very wet day, 1_s._, and yesterday, Thursday, 1_s._ 6_d._,
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 1_d._ 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 2_s._ 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 3_d._, when once we didn’t care about 1_s._
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.