Harbour Master's House and the regulation of the River coal trade

 

The Harbour masters house sits at the end of Ballast Quay on the corner with Pelton Road and is seen by many people who may be having a drink in the Cutty Sark Pub or attempting to walk along the riverside.  It’s a big house and prominent but very few people will have any idea what it was for and was for and who the Harbour Master was.

It was all about coal. 

Until the 1970s river was busy with ships from all over the world and we think if the great days of sail bringing goods like ‘the spices of the east’ into London. The truth is that the majority of ships coming up London River brought coal from Durham and Northumberland to power of London’s industry.  ‘Seacoal’ had been coming into London for at least a thousand years  and, for instance,  In the 17^th century 200 collier ships suppied  London and by the end of the 18^th century it was about a million tons of ‘sea coal’ a year was coming into London.

Coal coming into London was taxed by the City of London.  Today all round London on roads and waterways is a circle of little white posts - look up ‘coal posts’ on the web and you will find lists of them.  Any coal which came into London past these posts had to pay tax.  Some of the money raised went to build churches in the 18^th century – and one of these was the Greenwich parish church, St.Alfege.  The old church had collapsed in 1710 and £6,000 was given to rebuild it

As time went on more and more ships arrived in the Thames with coal  and they created an unregulated jam and chaos in the river.  In the early 18^th century there might be 90 colliers in the Pool of London at any one time most of them unloading into a dozen or so barges. By the end of the 18^th century colliers made up three-fifths of the ships entering the Thames and by 1850 3-6 million tons were being brought in  by sailing vessels.

In 1852 the purpose built steamer, John Bowes, arrived in London from the Tyne, to great acclaim. She could take 650 tons of coal and do the round trip in seven days. She was the first of many,

The job of regulating collier ships in the Thames is long and complex story but what was eventually done was to appoint Harbour Masters for stretches of river between Gravesend and the Tower and their job was to allow vessels to proceed up stream in rotation. These Harbour Masters were appointed under the Port Act of 1799 following which a series of by-laws determined specified moorings where not more than 15 ships at a time must wait.  There was a complicated system of paper work and flags which were raised to allow boats to proceed to a wharf for unloading or tell them to sat where they were..

The original Greenwich Harbour Masters Office was in High Bridge Place – probably adjacent to the Drawdock which is still at the end of Eastney Street.  Later, when the present Harbour Masters House was built this old Harbour Office became the Three Crowns pub and was demolished in the 1930s

In the 1850s the current Harbour Master’s House on Ballast Quay was built. It was designed by local architect George Smith – who had already designed and commissioned the surrounding housing as well as Greenwich station.  It closed, along with the system of regulation, in the 1890s and has been a private house ever since –and I hope don’t need to say that the privacy of the residents needs to respected.

There still are Harbour Masters on the river – if you look at the Port of London Authority web site you will see that Greenwich is now included in the Upper Thames area which lies between Teddington and Crossness. The current Master is Mark Towens and he heads up a team of deputies and assistants  all with responsibilities for river uses.  He no longer controls the coal ships coming up the river – they finished in the 1970s when the power stations and gas works closed.  The river may look empty now but the Harbour maters still have work to do. The house on Ballast Quay should remind us of this,