WORKING THE BARGES

JIM LAWRENCE’S TALES OF LIFE ABOARD THAMES BARGES EVOKE A FORGOTTEN WORLD RICH IN SEAMANSHIP SKILLS AND CAMARADERIE

- JIM LAWRENCE

Anybody who has successfully worked an 85ft, 120-ton Thames sailing barge up and down the estuary and East Coast waters, under 4,000 square feet of canvas with only a mate and perhaps a dog as crew, has to be something special, and Jim Lawrence is one of the last of the line still alive. As a young man in the 1950s he skippered barges carrying cargo in the old-fashioned way. Few now can make such a claim.

Luckily for the rest of us, Chaffcutter Books have had the vision to publish Jim’s autobiography under the title of London Light, referring of course to a barge coming up to ‘The Smoke’ with an empty hold to load cargo for the creeks and rivers downstream. The language of the book is uniquely from another age, rich with the inherent humour of the true sailor.

In this extract, Jim, Mick his mate, and the 100-odd ton barge Memory are moored at Woolwich. Their London broker has found them 155 tons of maize for Mistley upriver from Harwich. The weight is too much for Memory, but being the only freight on offer Jim decides to accept the responsibility, knowing the barge will lie so deep in the water she’ll sail ‘like a pig’. It is mid-winter, and the Memory sets off to load after breakfast.

We get underway immediately with the wind straight down, which means tacking up the river to the Surrey Commercial Dock. The river is full of craft, tugs towing six lighters at a time, blowing four-and-two or four-and-one blasts when turning head to tide either to port or starboard, to release their charges or to pick up additional craft. Tankers, ‘flat iron’ colliers, Baltic timber ships, all are rushing up river to save this precious flood tide.