Ebb & Flow

Thames Clippers is now in partnership with Uber. After an agreement finalised in August 2020, the new name of London’s river bus service is Uber Boat by Thames Clippers. The names of the twenty vessels in the fleet have remained the same and, as you may know, are weather or space themed. Each clipper has its own distinctive flash of colour painted on the bow.
When the service first started under Sean Collins and Alan Woods in May 1999, it began with three Hydrocats, SKY, STAR and STORM; which were later joined by River Runner and Hunt Class vessels, together with three other specially tasked boats. Here I have photographed and recorded all the clippers, save two, in their new livery, adding a few details, which can be further explored on Uber Boat by Thames Clippers.
Hydrocats
At the time of writing STAR and STORM Clippers are in dry dock so that SKY Clipper is the only one that I’ve seen and been able to photograph recently.

SKY, STORM and STAR were “originally built by FBM Marine, on the Isle of Wight, in 1992 for a high-speed passenger ferry service to aid the redevelopment of London’s docklands.” They joined Thames Clippers when the company was set up in 1999.

River Runners
The majority of the fleet is made up of nine River Runners: AURORA, CYCLONE, HURRICANE, METEOR, MONSOON, MOON, SUN, TORNADO and TYPHOON.

AURORA Clipper was built in Australia by Brisbane Ship Construction, as were: CYCLONE, METEOR, MONSOON, TORNADO and TYPHOON, and she joined the fleet in 2008. She is a ‘Typhoon class’ vessel and the colour on her bow is light blue.

CYCLONE Clipper joined the fleet in 2007. She is a ‘Typhoon class’ vessel and her individual colour stripe on her bow is orange.

Specially built for Thames Clippers by NQEA, Engineers and Shipbuilders in Cairns, Australia, HURRICANE Clipper joined the fleet in 2001 and was for a time their flagship. You might have seen her in another guise when she spent some time covered in Damien Hurst spots as she ran the Tate to Tate service from Tate Britain to Tate Modern, bringing both art galleries to public attention. Her bow stripe is a cheerful lime green.

Built by Brisbane Ship Construction in Australia, METEOR Clipper joined the fleet in 2008. She is a ‘Typhoon class’ vessel and her individual bow colour is bright red.

MONSOON Clipper, also built by Brisbane Ship Construction, joined the fleet in 2007. She is a ‘Typhoon class’ vessel and her individual stripe of bow colour is dark pink.

Together with her sister SUN Clipper, MOON Clipper was built by NQEA, Australia in 2001 and first operated in Belfast where MOON was known as ‘Down Runner’. She joined Thames Clippers in 2005. “Her wheel box was lowered in 2012 so that she could navigate the low-lying bridges to the west of their route more easily.” The coloured stripe on her bow is violet.

Built by NQEA, Australia in 2001, and also first serving in Belfast, SUN was known as ‘Antrim Runner’. She joined the Clipper fleet in 2005. The wheelhouses of both MOON and SUN are in the bow of each vessel. Her individual bow stripe is yellow.

TORNADO Clipper was built by Brisbane Ship Construction in Australia and joined the fleet in 2007. Her bow stripe is a minty green.

TYPHOON Clipper, also built by Brisbane Ship Construction was the first ‘River Runner’ to join the fleet in 2007. And “as a result, our six River Runner 200 Mk IIB vessels are often referred to as ‘Typhoon Class’.” Her bow stripe is purple.

Hunt Clippers
Are named after “long serving engineer Clive Hunt, who worked on many builds including both GALAXY and NEPTUNE Clippers, before losing his battle with cancer.
‘Hunt Class’ clippers have been specially designed to navigate the shallower waters and low-lying bridges to the west of their route along the river, which ends at Putney Pier. Built by Incat, Australia, renowned for the construction of high speed, lightweight catamarans, GALAXY and NEPTUNE were the first ‘Hunt Class’ vessels of the fleet.

“GALAXY Clipper and her sister NEPTUNE Clipper […] were loaded onto a cargo ship for the 10,000 mile journey to the UK. When they arrived in 2015, Tower Bridge was raised so that they could be welcomed onto the Thames in central London.” See here the excellent film on their departure from Incat. GALAXY’s Bow has a yellow stripe and NEPTUNE’s has a purple stripe.

JUPITER Clipper, and her sister MERCURY were built by Wight Shipyard on the Isle of Wight and sailed from there to London, a distance of about 200 nautical miles. Jennifer Edwards wrote in 2017 how “travelling along the English coast, the boats would sail past landmarks including Spinnaker Tower at Gunwharf Quays, Brighton Pier and the White Cliffs of Dover to their home at Trinity Buoy Wharf in East London.” She explains how “Six members of crew – with over 80 years of combined experience between them” would undertake the 12 hour journey, at an average speed of 20 knots.
JUPITER’s emblematic bow colour is gold and MERCURY’s is silver.

VENUS Clipper is the flagship of the Uber Boat by Thames Clippers fleet. She was built by Wight Shipyard in the Isle of Wight and joined the fleet in 2019 in time for the company’s 20th anniversary.
Her chosen colour is emerald green to reflect her ‘green’ credentials, being the fleet’s most ecologically advanced vessel to date.

Extra clippers

Launched in September 2020, COMET Clipper is part of an integrated system for “small scale freight transport.” Ian Wilson, Chief Executive of DHL Express UK & I, says: “This new and unique service, combining electric vehicles, riverboat and last-mile bikes creates fast and efficient access across the capital.” This is yet another measure reducing the volume of traffic and pollution in central London.

ORION Clipper is a fast, smart, private, executive launch that can be chartered for special occasions or luxury transfers. Ben @liquid_highway1 tells me that “She was originally called H2O&M, renamed OGILVY & MATHER, and changed again to OGILVY by 2005.” An impressive speedboat, she could reach Canary Wharf from the Embankment in fifteen minutes. Ben adds, “Thames Clippers bought her about 3 years ago, overhauled her and renamed her ORION Clipper.”

In service as a ferry for over forty years TWINSTAR Clipper began by carrying staff between the Ford Dagenham factory and Belvedere. She now carries hotel guests, visitors and commuters between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe.

The clippers are very active over their stretch of the Thames, so if you’re walking along the banks of the river in central London, you are bound to see at least one, if not more. And better still, as life is getting back to normal, treat yourself to a trip on the river. You’ll see the centre of London from a totally different perspective.

Further Information and sources
Discover routes and ticket information on Uber Boat by Thames Clippers, details of private hire for social or corporate events, and up-to-date Covid guidance and measures taken on the fleet.

Liquid Highway is the leading resource for the latest news on the River Thames. You can see their extensive photo gallery here.
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If you would like to experience a journey from a few years back, see ‘Inside Thames Clippers’. Sean Collins interviewed by Alastair Greener in 2013.

Evening Standard Magazine: ‘A Day in the life of the River Thames: 24 hours spent on its waters’ by Frankie McCoy, July 18, 2019.

South Bank London: ‘New Addition to Thames Clippers’ by Jennifer Edwards, June 23, 20

…from my photo archives of Thames Clipper pictures taken before the pandemic. As you’ll see, they are all marked with the MBNA bank company logo, which had a sponsorship deal with Thames Clippers that lasted until June 2020. Their new partnership is with Uber and the vessels are now known as “Uber Boat by Thames Clippers”. Though they have been repainted with the Uber logo, their names have remained the same.
The picture above is of AURORA Clipper, who joined the fleet in 2008 and the following images, are in alphabetical order with the date they joined the fleet. Apart from COMET, only transporting packages, and ORION only available for private hire, all clippers are part of the public Thames river bus passenger service.
Many of you will have boarded a clipper for a sightseeing trip, or regularly to your workplace. Some of you will have served as crew, some worked as guides talking about the famous London landmarks on the route, and some will have skippered these vessels along this tricky central London section of the Thames with its many bridges, fast-flowing tides and particular currents, all of which need to be thoroughly learnt.

In the next article I will post pictures of the clippers in their new livery and list the fleet by category, giving more detail about individual craft.

Further Information
Article in Ship Technology ’40 Million up…’, December 14, 20 18.
Transport for London ‘About River Bus’
Uber boat by Thames Clippers for full information on ticketing and timetables.

The bridge above, a toll bridge, was opened by Queen Victoria in 1858 and named after her. However, Zoe Craig writes that “its name was soon changed to Chelsea Bridge” suggesting that as it was “narrow and structurally unsound it might have been renamed to avoid any associations with the Queen should it collapse.”

As you may have noticed, not all London’s present Thames bridges are included in this collection as a number of them had not yet been built at the time Herring made his sketches. Tower Bridge, not opened until ten years later on June 30th, 1894 is the most famous of the *missing* bridges.

The start of the Oxford v. Cambridge Boat Race has traditionally been just upstream from Putney Bridge and ends just before Chiswick Bridge. However, the 2020 race was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic and this year took place on a rather less navigationally challenging course along the river Ouse in Cambridgeshire.
The race has always drawn big crowds and normally takes place each year around Easter time. On one memorable occasion reported in The Times, at the end of March 1912, “Both boats sank owing to the roughness of the water, Cambridge early in the race, off Harrod’s Wharf, while Oxford struggled as far as Chiswick Eyot”, where they emptied their boat and completed the course. However, much of Oxford’s annoyance, the umpire would not allow the result to stand and the race was rowed again two days later. The Oxford crew won by six lengths.

Waterman and Lighterman Eric Carpenter, who helped me with an earlier article on Herring’s drawings, remarks that “Hammersmith Bridge is quite low, and was a problem for tugs taking barges up to Brentford Dock, if they were late up on a spring tide”. He remembers when commercial traffic still travelled up that way “Many tugs on the Brentford run had open wheelhouses, or wheelhouses that could be dismantled” so were able to cope with the height limitations.

And now there’s a more serious problem at Hammersmith Bridge. At the time of writing all passages under the bridge have been cancelled apart from pre-arranged transits on Sundays, and even these are liable to cancellation should any of the movement alarms be sounding. According to Dorenda and Gordon of Hotel Boat Kailani, this has now been changed so that “boats are able to pass under the bridge on any day, giving at least 72 hours notice”.
There are difficulties too for road traffic. Much to the irritation and inconvenience of local residents, and others usually crossing the Thames there, the bridge has been closed to traffic for two years. A group called HammersmithBridgeSOS is campaigning “for the urgent reinstatement of the crossing”.

Sources and further information
Zoe Craig: article in The Londonist on Chelsea Bridge.
J. H. Herring: London’s Bridges from London to Hampton Court; London, 1884
Hotel Boat Kailani
Port of London Authority: Thames Bridges

With thanks to the following for their help and for lending their photographs:
Benmeg for the Richmond Railway Bridge photo, 2015.
Waterman and Lighterman Eric Carpenter
Wal Daly-Smith, Director of Thames Ranger Marine Service. See his Views From the River
Artist, photographer and BBC Weather Watcher Ruth Wadey

Returning to the subject of central London’s Thames’ bridges where in an earlier post I quoted from J. H. Herring’s book: Thames Bridges from London to Hampton Court, published in 1884, I am now sharing some of his etchings, along with roughly equivalent views from my photo archives.

From the earliest days, bridges have imposed difficulties on navigation. And the historic London Bridge, the city’s only Thames bridge for centuries was no exception. Sarah Morris writes in ‘Old London Bridge in the Sixteenth Century’ that its nineteen narrow arches effectively caused artificial rapids between the two sides of the bridge “that were highly dangerous to navigate {…] Sailing a boat between the pillars was called shooting the bridge”.
Though today’s navigational problems on the river are not as hazardous as then due to safety measures, there are still dangers and much to be learnt by professionals studying for official qualifications. In 2007 a national Boatmasters Licence was created by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency to replace the former Watermen and Lightermen’s Licence, and one addition to this for the Thames, is the Port of London Authority’s Local Knowledge Endorsement which applies to the river from Margaretness to Putney Bridge, and necessary for anyone holding a national Boatmasters Licence navigating in this area.
Someone with expert local knowledge is Waterman and Lighterman Eric Carpenter, who worked for fifty years on the Thames and surrounding waterways. Further on he kindly gives me insight into difficulties navigating some of the central London bridges. Also adding notes of their experience are Vic Clarke, who sailed up the Thames from Blyth on collier SS Hudson Firth, delivering coal to London power stations in the 1960s, and Wal Daly-Smith, whose life has been bound up with the Thames for both work and pleasure since boyhood.

Though he can’t recall exactly which bridges, Vic Clarke remembers “a couple of times being on the keel at low tide. It was dependant on where we berthed. I can remember, along with a couple of senior seaman lowering masts at some point. There were no electric winches on the “Firth” just old steam winches. These times were just noise and activity with the Bosun shouting orders above the steam Jennys. I realise now how we must have been limited to where we discharged our load due to low bridges, and that’s where the ‘flat-irons’ came in.” The masts and funnels of these specially designed colliers telescoped into the hull allowing them to pass under all the bridges to the power stations upstream.

Wal Daly-Smith says that for him, “passing through Blackfriars bridges on a near high tide with a strong wind can be challenging! It gets very choppy in that area.” Having looked down into the turbulent waters racing beneath, I can understand that.

Eric Carpenter who worked for Cory Waste Management at Charlton from 1984 until his retirement in 2008, explains that extra care is needed to navigate bridges positioned on bends in the river. Coming upstream, “the tide wants to flow in a straight line, so when it coms to a bend, it ‘sets’ into the bend and consequently takes the tow with it.”
Eric says “The first bridge that comes to mind is Waterloo Bridge. On the flood, the tide sets towards the north shore, so not too much of a problem because the arch is quite wide.” He adds that “the tide sets to the north shore of the Hungerford Railway Bridge as well.”

Eric explains that “the concern with Westminster Bridge is its small arches, so there it’s important to line correctly. Extra care is needed when towing craft with empty containers when the weather is windy.” Something he was only too aware of when towing Cory barges. So the sets, the direction towards which the current is flowing, have to be learned and “obviously on the ebb tide, they are in reverse”.

A parliamentary Select Committee on the Embankment of the Thames, dated June 1840, went into some detail over the various problems of navigation at the time. There are minuted reports of interviews which bring to life enterprises, such as the rebuilding of Parliament destroyed by fire in 1834 involving the construction of a cofferdam and its effect on the river; trade such as the importation of coal; all kinds of commerce; and a real glimpse into what working on the Thames was actually like.
There are details of problems with “the shoaly state of the river”; the effect of the removal of London Bridge “occasioning an earlier flood tide and a longer flood tide”; and constant complaints about the “noxious state of the mud” into which London’s waste flowed freely. This last problem was not to be addressed until “the great stink of 1858” made working in the Palace of Westminster, and elsewhere along the river, quite impossible. It was Sir Joseph Bazalgette who finally achieved the building of a sewer system for London in 1875, which has served the city well, only now being replaced by the Tideway ‘super sewer’ at present under construction.
Among the witnesses called in were: John May, Master of iron steam-boat, the Moonlight; James Covell, Master of the Woolwich steam-boat the Naiad; William Dennis, Waterman for over forty years; and William Gillet, Captain of an ‘iron boat’, called The Bachelor. When questioned, on the state of the river, Gillet replied:
“There is a great deal of inconvenience at low water time; the river is very shallow at places between Westminster and Waterloo Bridge.”
When asked on his opinion as to the construction of an embankment on each side of the river he said ” It would cause a great run of the tide; and it would cause more water in the river; and it would cause more race of the tide.” He added when questioned further, that dredging and deepening the river would make it more navigable, provided the dredged material was actually removed. When asked if his vessels had ‘received any injury’, he told the Committee that “They have very often got aground near Westminster Bridge; and we have been aground in some other parts.”
The collection of first-hand accounts in these reports, in the witnesses’ own words, recreate a bygone age, parts of which would, I imagine, still be familiar to those working on the river today.

To end: An interesting and engaging short interview with experienced Thames Lighterman Bob Harris, explaining in the second half of this piece, the difficulties of navigating Vauxhall Bridge. It was posted on Youtube by @LiquidHighway

Sources and further information
The Liquid Highway, is the leading River Thames resource for news, info, and the world’s largest Thames vessel photo gallery.
Londontopia: Laura Porter’s article ‘A history of London’s 35 Bridges over the Thames.’, with pictures, dates & interesting facts.
The Londonist: ‘How London’s Thames Bridges got their names.’
Port of London Authority: ‘Thames Bridge Heights’ – Bridge clearances.
Steven Szymanski, @itsthebridgeman
Thames Bridges Port of London Authority.
The Tudor Travel Guide ‘A Brief History of Old London Bridge’ by Sarah Morris.
Reports from Committees, Volume 9, Metropolis Improvements […] Thames Embankment …

Thanks to:
Eric Carpenter, Vic Clarke and Wal Daly-Smith for their help.

One of my favourite walks over the last few years has been to wander slowly along the South Bank of the Thames on a busy Saturday afternoon just watching people and soaking up the atmosphere. Having always been somewhat clumsy, without a good sense of balance, I appreciated the gutsy, gravity defying energy and freedom of the skateboarders, skaters and bikers exciting the Undercroft watchers at the Southbank Centre. Not formally organised, they put on an impromptu, unstructured show for passers by, family and friends, who stand behind a safety rail.

Like so many sporting activities, indoor and outdoors, skateboarding here has been put on hold, so after searching through past pictures here is a retrospective selection to give a feeling of one of my favourite parts of London. A feeling that I hope will soon be possible to experience again.

According to SkateboardGB, at the moment “Skateboard coaching can continue outside on a one-to-one basis, maintaining social distancing and hygiene protocols.” And the Southbank Centre say that “the Skate Space area is currently fenced off but will re-open once social distance measures are relaxed. […] Hopefully within the next few weeks.”

Also usually putting on a real show are the many living statues, whose ability to keep absolutely still never ceases to amaze me, often under a certain amount of touching, even prodding. Though you can see them in other touristy parts of London, the area close to the London Eye along the Southbank has been the most popular place to perform. But since the beginning of the first lockdown in March 2020, and all the anti-covid restrictions, this has not been possible.

The Plimsoll white statue with his thick, Medusa like strands of hair would change position every so often, otherwise remaining impossibly still. There was something about his thoughtful expression that, after dropping the necessary coin at his feet, I wanted to photograph. The following day I returned to the South Bank with a picture for him in an envelope which I laid at his feet, explaining what it was. Though he gave a slight smile, he held his position. However, the time to leave his post was approaching and still in the area, I saw him retrieve the photograph, taking it carefully from the envelope, and could see the pleasure it gave him. When I approached, he told me that he didn’t have any pictures of himself working in London and would send it to his parents, if I remember rightly, in Poland.

All this takes place against an ever-evolving background of street art on the walls and ceilings of the Undercroft below the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a famous London concert hall venue. Every time I went, there were different images and colours splashed across the walls. How long a particular design remained in place before being painted over, I don’t know. Rules, or a kind of etiquette would seem to contradict the spontaneity and vibrancy of the art but I imagine there is some sort of code or understanding. But for the moment, the space is in limbo, waiting, as are so many, for it to be safe to relax social distancing.

Further Information
SkateboardGB On March 22, SkateboardGB will publish the latest information on the route out of lockdown.
Southbank Centre
Southbank Undercroft: Cultural and Heritage Assessment Report, September 2014