Cervia

 

Some years ago I bought a book in the Falconwood Bookshop “London Ship Types” published in  1938 by the East Ham Echo.  The first chapter is headed “Points of Vantage on the London River”.  And lists  out good places to stand and watch the shipping. It says “Greenwich and its opposite shore are particularly popular”. What was there then for them to see? We could well look at some of the places where you can stand today - although you’ll see nothing even remotely like they would have seen in 1938.

The River has been very much in my mind all week because I’ve been looking at a Facebook page or the preserved steam tug, Cervia. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/steamtugcervia?locale=en_GB) I noted the date of the memorial service for the 70^th anniversary of her terrible accident in the river at Gravesend. Cervia was working at Tilbury docks and involved in the undocking of the P&O liner Arcadia by  towing her, stern first, away from the landing stage. Arcadia put her engines full ahead to avoid a collision with P&O liner Orcades which was in Tilbury entrance.  CERVIA was pulled sideways, capsized and sank. Although they tried to release the towing hawser the Cervia’s  Master, Bill Russell, MBE and five of her crew died. Another Watkins owned tug, Challenge, rescued three of the crew.

I’ve had been talking to Bill Russell only 24 hours or so earlier, standing in his garden where he had been mowing the lawn. Next morning there was his picture on the front page of the News Chronicle  with a whole story about the accident.  It is a small illustration of daily work on the River and its frequent dangers – and the people who worked with all those ships.

For many years Cervia was in Ramsgate in a dock next to the Museum as a preserved ship - like Greenwich has got Cutty Sark so Ramsgate had Cervia. She is now in the hands of voluntary sector organisation, dedicated to her.

Back to the book about Thames Shipping in 1938.  As the author says people enjoy looking at the River and the ships.  He says Greenwich “has the advantage of an unusually long stretch of river in view and so narrow that the ships are bound to come close. Thousands of people stand on the bank here for hours!”  I don’t know where those thousands stood in Greenwich to see the ships. I hope they weren’t all there together or most of them would see nothing but other people’s heads!  In 1938 the pier and the river frontage next to it - Garden Stairs –Billingsgate Dock  - were much as now but behind them there were streets with industrial buildings and lots of pubs! The Cutty Sark wasn’t there;  Cutty Sark gardens weren’t there - so there was a lot less space for all these thousands of people.

What would they have been looking at and what would they have seen? In those days  newspapers published very long lists of the ships that were expected in the Port, and other list of those that were here already.  Almost all movement around the world was by ship for both passengers and goods. I know most good are still are moved by ship, although we don’t see them – and in the Port of London they go to termini down river. In 1934 most of it would have been coming up river - and by a lot I mean a lot! 

If you want to know about how the Port used to operate - x see a film made in 1940 called City of Ships. If you’ve never seem it. then you should.  It’s in the BFI collection so you can see it on-line (https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-city-of-ships-1940)  It was made by Basil Wright – the same man who made ‘Nightmail’ which I wrote about last year.

The lists of ships in the newspaper cover the whole port, right down to Gravesend and beyond.  I think the people watching a Greenwich will just have seen ships which were going up River (and back down) from, say, Charlton. So that would exclude everything downriver of Charlton and, I’m afraid, I would exclude shipping using the Royal Docks because the entrance at Galleons is further down river.

Now a very very rough count of the ships listed as in the Port of London on the 12^th November 1938 which would pass Greenwich was probably about 100 vessels. The lists include ships at riverside wharves and that includes wharves as up as far as Brentford and beyond. It also includes the upriver docks. I guess that most people these days will have no idea about the various docks and dock names. I said I would exclude shipping using the Royal Docks from what they would  see from Greenwich but they are very much still there although in other use, including the airport. The next docks going upriver on the north bank were the East India Docks which have very largely gone - but there are some bits and pieces if you walk around the site. They were directly opposite Blackwall Point and the Dome.  The West India Docks and Millwall Dock which are the water areas all round Canary Wharf.  Although they are not used you can still get boats in and out of them. Then Regents Canal Dock which now seems to call itself Limehouse Basin which gives access to the whole of the Midlands and north in England. The London Dock which was in Wapping and is now just a few bits of canal and then St Katharine’s which is still there and used a ‘yacht basin’ and leisure facility.

On the south side of the River were the Surrey Docks. An awful lot of the vessels in the list are going there. Surrey Docks was the area around Canada Water and that great big Tesco. There are still two  docks there - the South Dock which you can get enter from the River and the Greenland Dock which is a rebuild of the oldest dock on the river.  The Surreys specialised in timber imports.

On the 12^th November 1938 the list says that a ship called Aurania was expected in the Surrey Commercial Docks that day.  Aurania was owned by Cunard and she had come from Montreal in Canada, stopping off first at Le Havre and at Plymouth. Cunard had bought her from a Newcastle based shipping company called Cairns Line who had established the trade with Canada. Aurania and her sisters were basically cargo vessels but they also carried passengers. Almost all movement around the world in 1938 was by boat and that while we know all about the big glamorous passenger liners we don’t hear about the ships which went to everywhere else. You would have to go on a ship which was taking part cargo and part passengers. A lot of the ships going up river past Greenwich would be like this.

Every day there would be many ships bringing coal down from the Durham coalfield for gas works and power stations in London, and many other industries – some using several 1,000 ton of coal every day. Some of the big gas companies had their own fleets and, South Met. for instance had a  site on Deptford Creek where they had not only serviced the ships that went to Durham but also had tugs and various small workboats.  Some gas works and power stations were upriver and vessels had to pass under bridges to get to them. Wandsworth Gas Works, for instance had collier vessels called ‘Flat irons’ whose funnels were hinged so they could lay flat as the boat went under the bridges. 

The people watching at Greenwich would also have seen a lot of boats - probably most of what was in the River – which were not in these lists of arrivals from overseas. Lot of vessels worked on the river. There would be official boats like launches owned by the Port of London Authority and other organisations doing actual business about the River.  There would also have been River maintenance  boats – like dredgers. Some of them were owned by Tilbury Construction based on Dreadnought Wharf in Greenwich. Then there were boats delivering cargoes from up and down the river and never going to sea. Of course there were lots of sailing barges – just as glamorous then as they are now but in those days they would be at work.  They have a lot of fans and a lot of websites which will tell you about every one of them.  For example  https://sailingbargeassociation.co.uk/

We mustn’t forget the cable ships – always ready to keep world communications working by going off and repairing a cable in mid-Atlantic in a Force 12!  Clearly there was always one based in Greenwich at Enderbys and further downriver - actually in Charlton - was Faraday at Siemens. There were other specialist ships for local works and I would be interested to know about them.

There were lots more types of boats up and down the River which I have no space to mention.

So those river watchers in Greenwich in 1938 would see a busy, crowded, River.   What would they see on the River today?  To be perfectly honest - not much! Do all the visitors leaving the various trippers vessels take much notice and who in the end wants to look at lots of lots of identikit flats anyway? On the River itself there are still of course working boats from organisations like PLA but otherwise it’s just the Clippers and party boats with very occasional visitors like a battleship or a cruise liner.

The old world of the River was hard and dirty –watch ‘City of Ships’ and see the heavy labouring and the black smoke stacks.  We shouldn’t romanticise it. But  ... still ...