Life on the Thames
Another family member – a great Uncle to Malc’s mum named Henry was a Thames Lighterman. Lightermen ferried the cargo on barges, between dock and ship, and vice versa.
Most sons followed their fathers into employment on the river, first as watermen and then as lightermen and it was a hard job. Henry himself sustained an injury whilst in his barge one day and died a few months later, aged just 37.
Here are some notes from Lighterman’s diary:
Life on the Thames can be peaceful, clean, tranquil, neat. Heaving in circles, breaking a sweat, but my work relies on the Thames’ clean skies open wide. Hope that I will never die listening carefully to the seagulls screeching. The river calls me to work all day, rowing all night and wishing and wanting for my payday rights. Young when we first started out and old when we end our time on the river. My life is so different to when I first started out on the river. Then I am done like the river - polluted, dirty, noisy, ugly. The river is like a monster’s rubbish tip. When no work is available the Thames is gone. I listen carefully to the seagulls screeching, the river still calling for me.
Today was a bone-breaking day, lots of cargo to deal with. I had sacks of coffee, barrels of rum, crates of fruit and bundles of tobacco. I had to take it to Tilbury Docks. I ask you!
I was first in West India Docks at the time, but when I arrived, I found out that one bundle of tobacco was missing. The warehouses were expecting 28 but they only received 27, someone’s thieved it. It was fresh. It’ll cost a lot of money to get more, we could only hope and pray that day and I cried out saying “Lord help us.”
The Lord always hears prayers that truly come from the heart – even the smallest cry.