River //

The Thames is a no-man’s land between the cultural stereotyping of north and south, but seems determined to fight its own territorial battle. It throttles London in greedy bights of river, pushing north and south as if it can resolve divisions by the power of its geology. It invades and occupies by tidal force: Richmond fights a double front in Hounslow and Hammersmith, Rotherhithe invades Limehouse, Millwall sneaks into Greenwich, Kent tries to take Essex. 

The river is the reason London exists, even if at the same time it separates and divides it. Firstly separated by the effects of an ice age when the Thames valley was twisted, bent into shape and filled with melting glaciers; in the early twenty-first century it is now divided by river and by stereotyping. If London became so overcrowded and if the pressures to build were so great that the Thames was built over in a continuous bridge, a slab of concrete from Chelsea to Greenwich, the enmity would probably be as strong. There will be a north and south divide as long as there are the kind of people living in London who like to dwell on imagined divisions. Bickering between north and south is occasionally bitter in a pub-fuelled sort of way, but all divided cities have suffered from ignorances in one way or another. 

For merchant seamen, the Thames has long been just ‘The London River’ and Londoners themselves often refer to it simply as ‘the river’. It defines the city at the same time that it divides it, even if its use has mostly been relegated to the ornamental and recreational. At one time there were private and public wharves lining both sides of the river from London Bridge to Gravesend. The river teemed with the trade that made it, and then hungrily demanded more to feed it. And in the end it wasn’t war that killed it off. London was a frantically busy working port for the whole length of the Thames until the first container ship berthed at Tibury in 1968. Within a year it was all up. Even the docks weren’t immune. St Katherine’s and East India were the first to go followed closely by Surrey. But the trade didn’t even stay in Tilbury. The Port of London had been planning for this for some time, the means were in place, but the dockers put up a fight which saw shipping move to Felixstowe and Southampton. Eventually the PLA opened the container port at Tilbury, and there are still specialist wharves handling specialist cargoes from Gravesend to Greenwich in the south, and Tilbury to Poplar on the north side. 

The Pool of London, the section of river between Tower and London Bridges, was always the busiest chunk of water in London, and for different reasons it still is. London Bridge has always been the start of London’s fixed bridges, and for a few centuries was the only bridge. There was no going beyond it except at slack water. The narrowness of the spans constricted the tidal stream so much that reports speak of a six foot height difference from one side to the other at high water springs. Until the specialist docks were built everything fetched up here, mostly moored fore and aft in the tideway to prevent the chaos that swinging to a single anchor would bring. 

It’s chaos of a different kind now. A concentration of sightseeing and pleasure craft churn up the water, buzzing and swarming around the most popular embarkation points and sights. HMS Belfast sits permanently moored to her ground tackle and occasionally a cruise liner rafts alongside her for a night of two, which other than arriving in Venice must be one of the finest city berths in the world.

My pilot guide to the Thames tells me that to have Tower Bridge raised I must give a fortnight’s notice in writing; by mail, not email or fax. Not that there’s anywhere to tie up if I did go through (and I could probably scrape through at low water anyway), as there aren’t any public moorings in the Pool and anchoring is prohibited accept in an emergency. The looping chains hanging from every quayside and bridge pier in the upper reaches aren’t an invitation to come alongside either, but a life saving measure for anyone falling in.The traditional way to request a bridge lift or a lock opened (and is still the only way if you don’t have a radio set), is to hoist a bucket in the fore-rigging and wait to be spotted. I’ve often been tempted to try this at Tower Bridge, just to see... 

For me, Tower Bridge is the navigable head of the river. St Katherine’s Dock, now a marina, is the final destination or point of embarkation.

The tide runs hard in the Thames. Even harder now that the old London Bridge doesn’t constrict the flow and now the river is squeezed between canalised banks to contain its flood. The banks that have come into being by joining them ETC, have forced the river to work harder to fill and discharge. On the ebb, the natural flow adds to its urgency, and like unpowered sailing ships, any sailing boat with a small auxilary engine needs to harness that power by setting off at high water, knowing then that there will be six hours of tide under the keel; enough to get to Gravesend in one go. The prevailing wind on the river is from a vaguely westerly direction so with any luck a departing eastbound boat can carry sail.

At least as far as Deptford, the south bank seems to have value, to be a desirable place to live. There’s also a business like clutter to the water itself. Moorings just downstream of Tower Bridge are crowded with sailing barges and houseboats converted from steel barges of all kinds. They quickly run out, as though they were flotsom and jetsom pushed to their navigable limit by the tide. Once clear, and turning back to face upstream, for the first time Tower Bridge seems dwarfed by the Shard as it continues to creep upwards, not even topped off yet.

The north bank, conforming to stereotype perhaps, seems prosperous and aloof as you move east. Even the river police headquarters is on that side, but at least the south, in its relative poverty has kept some of its old wharf buildings.

Turning sharply south after Rotherhithe, Canary Wharf is as close to you as it’s going to get; but it doesn’t go away for a long time. Left to it’s own devices, the river would probably form an ox-bow lake here, making the Isle of Dogs a real island. Even if it isn’t, it feels like an island a long way off, like a mirage. It’s an archipeligo of wealth and power, an ‘invisible city’ which keeps popping up on different sides of the boat.

The south side here becomes patchy in its inhabitation, still bits of wharf at Deptford. Convoy’s Wharf which despite an approved masterplan has remained empty and undeveloped for years. Part of it’s problem has been its protected wharf status, recently resolved by moving the wharf to the edge of the site. All along the south shore remnants of slipways slide out of the river at low water, marking the sites of past shipyards. The Thames riverbed is a pretty mixed environment until Erith and the Essex shore turns it to mud. Between here and there, there are sand spits to trap the unwary as well as shingle mixed with fragments of brick, stone, terracota, glass and marble. Scraps of every material ever used on a London building is mixed in the shingle, making a construction salad on the exposed shores.

Just past the classic glories of the Naval Hospital at Greenwich the south bank drops away to an industrial past. There’s even a working power station used as a back-up for London Underground. Now it’s gas fired, but the jetty once used to unload the coal sits straddling the bank, as big as an unfinished block of flats.

The Richard Roger’s designed Dome squats at the end of the Greenwich Penninsula like a beached jellyfish, while all around it seems forgotten. This is the start of London’s dirty bottom, its alimentary canal. Piles of spoil from the Crossrail project will eventually end up creating marshy habitats for wildlife at places like Wallasea Island, but in the meantime the penninsula seems to be a temporary resting place. Once round the point the north side too looses its gloss. The river edges suddenly look like the the stuff that has been swept under the carpet. Scrap yards, aggregates and Trinity Buoy Wharf. The stuff that we don’t want in the city but we need to make it all work. Canary Wharf is now on our starboard side before it starts to slip behind.

The Thames Barrier isn’t really a crossing, but is still a very powerful structure and it insists on respect.  All sailing vessels must round up and stow sails before motoring through a designated gap. It’s annoying if the wind is astern, which it probably is, and I’m not sure what would happen if you don’t have an engine or it’s not working. I suspect that a PLA launch would tow you through.

The biggest structure between the barrier and the Woolwich Ferry is the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery, now probably the furthest east an edible cargo comes by river. The Thames tends to have an eastward peristaltic movement, pushing its waste products downriver.

The industry swops sides as the river turns north east and there are even greenish gaps here and there; golf courses, wildlife habitats on the mandatory spaces around sewage treatment works and waste incinerators. Landscaped landfill. Petrochemicals, waste in, waste out, recycling is the new industry. It’s all heavy and dirty, and the south side takes up the theme too. There are lots of very big sheds, and on the north side lots of cars too. This is Dagenham by the river.

Just where another bend turns us briefly east, Erith, sitting in the crook comes down to the waters edge and to the swinging moorings of the yacht club, a good refuge if you run out of tide coming up or down river. Rainham Marshes, an RSPB reserve sits low behind a river wall on the north side. Unwanted and unloved like a lot of land they take on it was once a gunnery range and a strategic point to aim at a westbound enemy. Just past it the roof of the eighteeneth century Royal Gunpowder Magazine pops up from its sunken site too, looking more like a barn than a military building. On a fine day, if you look back you can see Canary Wharf for the last time from here too.

It’s all a brief respite. The turn south east brings a concentration of jetties and serious industry clustered either side of the QEII bridge, the last fixed crossing on the river going east. The jetties here reach right out into the tideway beyond extensive mudbanks. Easy to see in the daytime, they’re flytraps at night and provide the only navigation lights you’re going to get and they won’t be easy to spot among the shore lights. 

Rare on the muddy banks of the Thames the Kent chalk pokes through the mud here forming a green promontory of old quarries before Tilbury swallows up the north side. The chart shows that it’s built out into the river, claiming rather than reclaiming. It constricts the gut of the Thames, pinching it like a sphincter before Gravesend reach. Built on that same lump of chalk descending from the north downs, Gravesend is flanked by marshes on both sides. Its geology and geography have made it a good landing place, and just as importantly it’s a tide away from London Bridge. No wonder Tibury Fort was built directly over the river. To the Essex coast, or to the Foreland, it’s the last place you’ll find a mooring unless you make a detour to Queenborough at the mouth of the Medway. It’s a full days sail from anywhere else without a port of refuge in-between.

Conrad’s yawl fetched up here for the same reason that countless vessels have: to wait out the foul tide. A century later the tide will be turning for us, so we do the same, coming to our anchor or a mooring buoy if there’s one to be had. It’s taken around half a day to get here with a favourable wind and tide, and this where the Thames runs out; from here it’s more estuary than river. Looking east, beyond Tilbury power station the edges between water, air and land are blurred: ‘sea the colour of lead, sky the colour of smoke’, and it still feels that it will lead to the utmost ends of the earth.