‘Are you fond of the water?’ is a question very frequently asked, in
hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. ‘Very,’ is the
general reply. ‘An’t you?’—‘Hardly ever off it,’ is the response,
accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker’s heartfelt
admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of
society in general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest
that some of the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every
individual who has occasionally disported himself on the Thames, must
be connected with his aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a
successful water-party?—or to put the question in a still more
intelligible form, who ever saw one? We have been on water excursions
out of number, but we solemnly declare that we cannot call to mind one
single occasion of the kind, which was not marked by more miseries than
any one would suppose could be reasonably crowded into the space of
some eight or nine hours. Something has always gone wrong. Either the
cork of the salad-dressing has come out, or the most anxiously expected
member of the party has not come out, or the most disagreeable man in
company would come out, or a child or two have fallen into the water,
or the gentleman who undertook to steer has endangered everybody’s life
all the way, or the gentlemen who volunteered to row have been ‘out of
practice,’ and performed very alarming evolutions, putting their oars
down into the water and not being able to get them up again, or taking
terrific pulls without putting them in at all; in either case, pitching
over on the backs of their heads with startling violence, and
exhibiting the soles of their pumps to the ‘sitters’ in the boat, in a
very humiliating manner.
We grant that the banks of the Thames are very beautiful at Richmond
and Twickenham, and other distant havens, often sought though seldom
reached; but from the ‘Red-us’ back to Blackfriars-bridge, the scene is
wonderfully changed. The Penitentiary is a noble building, no doubt,
and the sportive youths who ‘go in’ at that particular part of the
river, on a summer’s evening, may be all very well in perspective; but
when you are obliged to keep in shore coming home, and the young ladies
will colour up, and look perseveringly the other way, while the married
dittos cough slightly, and stare very hard at the water, you feel
awkward—especially if you happen to have been attempting the most
distant approach to sentimentality, for an hour or two previously.
Although experience and suffering have produced in our minds the result
we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the
fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What
can be more amusing than Searle’s yard on a fine Sunday morning? It’s a
Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of
the parties who have engaged them. Two or three fellows in great rough
trousers and Guernsey shirts, are getting them ready by easy stages;
now coming down the yard with a pair of sculls and a cushion—then
having a chat with the ‘Jack,’ who, like all his tribe, seems to be
wholly incapable of doing anything but lounging about—then going back
again, and returning with a rudder-line and a stretcher—then solacing
themselves with another chat—and then wondering, with their hands in
their capacious pockets, ‘where them gentlemen’s got to as ordered the
six.’ One of these, the head man, with the legs of his trousers
carefully tucked up at the bottom, to admit the water, we presume—for
it is an element in which he is infinitely more at home than on land—is
quite a character, and shares with the defunct oyster-swallower the
celebrated name of ‘Dando.’ Watch him, as taking a few minutes’ respite
from his toils, he negligently seats himself on the edge of a boat, and
fans his broad bushy chest with a cap scarcely half so furry. Look at
his magnificent, though reddish whiskers, and mark the somewhat native
humour with which he ‘chaffs’ the boys and ’prentices, or cunningly
gammons the gen’lm’n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we
verily believe he swallows in one day as much as any six ordinary men,
without ever being one atom the worse for it.
But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved from his state of
uncertainty, starts up into activity. They approach in full aquatic
costume, with round blue jackets, striped shirts, and caps of all sizes
and patterns, from the velvet skull-cap of French manufacture, to the
easy head-dress familiar to the students of the old spelling-books, as
having, on the authority of the portrait, formed part of the costume of
the Reverend Mr. Dilworth.
This is the most amusing time to observe a regular Sunday water-party.
There has evidently been up to this period no inconsiderable degree of
boasting on everybody’s part relative to his knowledge of navigation;
the sight of the water rapidly cools their courage, and the air of
self-denial with which each of them insists on somebody else’s taking
an oar, is perfectly delightful. At length, after a great deal of
changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-oar:
the inability of one gentleman to pull on this side, of another to pull
on that, and of a third to pull at all, the boat’s crew are seated.
‘Shove her off!’ cries the cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable
as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay. The order is obeyed; the
boat is immediately turned completely round, and proceeds towards
Westminster-bridge, amidst such a splashing and struggling as never was
seen before, except when the Royal George went down. ‘Back wa’ater,
sir,’ shouts Dando, ‘Back wa’ater, you sir, aft;’ upon which everybody
thinking he must be the individual referred to, they all back water,
and back comes the boat, stern first, to the spot whence it started.
‘Back water, you sir, aft; pull round, you sir, for’ad, can’t you?’
shouts Dando, in a frenzy of excitement. ‘Pull round, Tom, can’t you?’
re-echoes one of the party. ‘Tom an’t for’ad,’ replies another. ‘Yes,
he is,’ cries a third; and the unfortunate young man, at the imminent
risk of breaking a blood-vessel, pulls and pulls, until the head of the
boat fairly lies in the direction of Vauxhall-bridge. ‘That’s right—now
pull all on you!’ shouts Dando again, adding, in an under-tone, to
somebody by him, ‘Blowed if hever I see sich a set of muffs!’ and away
jogs the boat in a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars dipping
into the water at a different time; and the yard is once more clear,
until the arrival of the next party.
A well-contested rowing-match on the Thames, is a very lively and
interesting scene. The water is studded with boats of all sorts, kinds,
and descriptions; places in the coal-barges at the different wharfs are
let to crowds of spectators, beer and tobacco flow freely about; men,
women, and children wait for the start in breathless expectation;
cutters of six and eight oars glide gently up and down, waiting to
accompany their _protégés_ during the race; bands of music add to the
animation, if not to the harmony of the scene; groups of watermen are
assembled at the different stairs, discussing the merits of the
respective candidates; and the prize wherry, which is rowed slowly
about by a pair of sculls, is an object of general interest.
Two o’clock strikes, and everybody looks anxiously in the direction of
the bridge through which the candidates for the prize will
come—half-past two, and the general attention which has been preserved
so long begins to flag, when suddenly a gun is heard, and a noise of
distant hurra’ing along each bank of the river—every head is bent
forward—the noise draws nearer and nearer—the boats which have been
waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river, and a well-manned
galley shoots through the arch, the sitters cheering on the boats
behind them, which are not yet visible.
‘Here they are,’ is the general cry—and through darts the first boat,
the men in her, stripped to the skin, and exerting every muscle to
preserve the advantage they have gained—four other boats follow close
astern; there are not two boats’ length between them—the shouting is
tremendous, and the interest intense. ‘Go on, Pink’—‘Give it her,
Red’—‘Sulliwin for ever’—‘Bravo! George’—‘Now, Tom, now—now—now—why
don’t your partner stretch out?’—‘Two pots to a pint on Yellow,’ &c.,
&c. Every little public-house fires its gun, and hoists its flag; and
the men who win the heat, come in, amidst a splashing and shouting, and
banging and confusion, which no one can imagine who has not witnessed
it, and of which any description would convey a very faint idea.
One of the most amusing places we know is the steam-wharf of the London
Bridge, or St. Katharine’s Dock Company, on a Saturday morning in
summer, when the Gravesend and Margate steamers are usually crowded to
excess; and as we have just taken a glance at the river above bridge,
we hope our readers will not object to accompany us on board a
Gravesend packet.
Coaches are every moment setting down at the entrance to the wharf, and
the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the ‘fares’ resign
themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize
all the packages at once as a matter of course, and run away with them,
heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme. A Margate boat lies
alongside the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies
alongside that again; and as a temporary communication is formed
between the two, by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural
confusion of the scene is by no means diminished.
‘Gravesend?’ inquires a stout father of a stout family, who follow him,
under the guidance of their mother, and a servant, at the no small risk
of two or three of them being left behind in the confusion.
‘Gravesend?’
‘Pass on, if you please, sir,’ replies the attendant—‘other boat, sir.’
Hereupon the stout father, being rather mystified, and the stout mother
rather distracted by maternal anxiety, the whole party deposit
themselves in the Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself
on having secured very comfortable seats, the stout father sallies to
the chimney to look for his luggage, which he has a faint recollection
of having given some man, something, to take somewhere. No luggage,
however, bearing the most remote resemblance to his own, in shape or
form, is to be discovered; on which the stout father calls very loudly
for an officer, to whom he states the case, in the presence of another
father of another family—a little thin man—who entirely concurs with
him (the stout father) in thinking that it’s high time something was
done with these steam companies, and that as the Corporation Bill
failed to do it, something else must; for really people’s property is
not to be sacrificed in this way; and that if the luggage isn’t
restored without delay, he will take care it shall be put in the
papers, for the public is not to be the victim of these great
monopolies. To this, the officer, in his turn, replies, that that
company, ever since it has been St. Kat’rine’s Dock Company, has
protected life and property; that if it had been the London Bridge
Wharf Company, indeed, he shouldn’t have wondered, seeing that the
morality of that company (they being the opposition) can’t be answered
for, by no one; but as it is, he’s convinced there must be some
mistake, and he wouldn’t mind making a solemn oath afore a magistrate
that the gentleman’ll find his luggage afore he gets to Margate.
Here the stout father, thinking he is making a capital point, replies,
that as it happens, he is not going to Margate at all, and that
‘Passenger to Gravesend’ was on the luggage, in letters of full two
inches long; on which the officer rapidly explains the mistake, and the
stout mother, and the stout children, and the servant, are hurried with
all possible despatch on board the Gravesend boat, which they reached
just in time to discover that their luggage is there, and that their
comfortable seats are not. Then the bell, which is the signal for the
Gravesend boat starting, begins to ring most furiously: and people keep
time to the bell, by running in and out of our boat at a double-quick
pace. The bell stops; the boat starts: people who have been taking
leave of their friends on board, are carried away against their will;
and people who have been taking leave of their friends on shore, find
that they have performed a very needless ceremony, in consequence of
their not being carried away at all. The regular passengers, who have
season tickets, go below to breakfast; people who have purchased
morning papers, compose themselves to read them; and people who have
not been down the river before, think that both the shipping and the
water, look a great deal better at a distance.
When we get down about as far as Blackwall, and begin to move at a
quicker rate, the spirits of the passengers appear to rise in
proportion. Old women who have brought large wicker hand-baskets with
them, set seriously to work at the demolition of heavy sandwiches, and
pass round a wine-glass, which is frequently replenished from a flat
bottle like a stomach-warmer, with considerable glee: handing it first
to the gentleman in the foraging-cap, who plays the harp—partly as an
expression of satisfaction with his previous exertions, and partly to
induce him to play ‘Dumbledumbdeary,’ for ‘Alick’ to dance to; which
being done, Alick, who is a damp earthy child in red worsted socks,
takes certain small jumps upon the deck, to the unspeakable
satisfaction of his family circle. Girls who have brought the first
volume of some new novel in their reticule, become extremely plaintive,
and expatiate to Mr. Brown, or young Mr. O’Brien, who has been looking
over them, on the blueness of the sky, and brightness of the water; on
which Mr. Brown or Mr. O’Brien, as the case may be, remarks in a low
voice that he has been quite insensible of late to the beauties of
nature, that his whole thoughts and wishes have centred in one object
alone—whereupon the young lady looks up, and failing in her attempt to
appear unconscious, looks down again; and turns over the next leaf with
great difficulty, in order to afford opportunity for a lengthened
pressure of the hand.
Telescopes, sandwiches, and glasses of brandy-and-water cold without,
begin to be in great requisition; and bashful men who have been looking
down the hatchway at the engine, find, to their great relief, a subject
on which they can converse with one another—and a copious one
too—Steam.
‘Wonderful thing steam, sir.’ ‘Ah! (a deep-drawn sigh) it is indeed,
sir.’ ‘Great power, sir.’ ‘Immense—immense!’ ‘Great deal done by steam,
sir.’ ‘Ah! (another sigh at the immensity of the subject, and a knowing
shake of the head) you may say that, sir.’ ‘Still in its infancy, they
say, sir.’ Novel remarks of this kind, are generally the commencement
of a conversation which is prolonged until the conclusion of the trip,
and, perhaps, lays the foundation of a speaking acquaintance between
half-a-dozen gentlemen, who, having their families at Gravesend, take
season tickets for the boat, and dine on board regularly every
afternoon.