Ebb & Flow

As the changing of the clocks last weekend marks a deeper descent into early evening winter darkness, some Twitter friends have kindly agreed to share their pictures of the Thames at night. So please escape today’s anxieties for a while and stroll along with them to see the river through their eyes.

Based in Kingston Astrid Tontson has a large and appreciative following for her beautiful sounds of dawn and pictures of awakening life in Bushy Park. You can follow her on Twitter @Astrid_Tontson, Instagram, and her “Soul Food – videos of calming scenes in nature” on YouTube.

If you live in the London area, or further afield, you might quite often have noticed the photo credit ‘ruthiebabes’ attached to a BBC Weather Watchers’ image. This is Ruth Wadey. Not only is she a talented photographer, she is also an artist, and you can see her work at her gallery Ruth Wadey, and you can follow her on Twitter @ruths_gallery and Instagram.

Hammersmith Bridge, in the news recently, has been closed to all traffic, both road and river, since August 13, 2020, for safety reasons. This is causing inconvenience and annoyance to many, particularly as disagreement about who should pay for repairs is holding up the necessary work. Kristi Tange, a keen photographer living nearby, often walks along the river there and has, among other London scenes, been recording some of the boats guarding the bridge. You can follow her on Twitter @KristiTange

Author and photographer Andrew Wilson is a also publisher. Among others, he has written several books, beautifully illustrated with his photographs, on areas in London close to the Thames, including Chiswick, Barnes, Putney, Battersea and Chelsea. You can explore his site Wild London and follow him on Twitter @wildlondonpics

Wal Daly-Smith is a Director of Thames Ranger Marine Services, also acting as commercial Skipper/crew for the company. He is a keen photographer and you can see some of his work in ‘From the River’. He was my first interviewee back in February 2019 and you can read about the importance of the Thames throughout his life by clicking here.

Acting as mate/deckhand on this job for the Illuminated River art commission with safety boat PROTECTOR, Ian Ruffles also skippers other boats mainly sailing barges. You can follow him on Twitter @capt_PB and you can see him demonstrating how to ascend to the top of barge S.B. CAMBRIA, a preserved Thames sailing barge, by clicking here.

Living on a narrowboat, photographer Alastair Hilton tweets an eclectic variety of pictures of his life and travels along the canals and rivers of London on Twitter @London_W4 For his professional portfolio, click on Art Store and Portrait Gallery to see the wide range of his work.

Tower Lifeboat Station on the Thames at Waterloo, is the busiest RNLI Station in the country. Lifeboat HEARN MEDICINE CHEST was funded by Jimmy Hearn and his wife Anne. “Jimmy was sailing in the 1979 Fastnet race, during which fifteen people lost their lives in a raging sea. Heading back to port, he saw brave RNLI volunteers setting straight out into the storm to help.” The Hearn Medicine Chest Trust was set up soon afterwards “with the aim of one day funding a lifeboat.” This latest addition to the Tower fleet is a fulfilment of the Trust’s original goal. Follow Tower Lifeboat Station on Twitter @TowerRNLI
Chris Walker, one of the Helms at the Tower Station, often illustrates his tweets with action photos. You can read about him by clicking here and follow him on Twitter @RescueShrek1

Yeoman Warder Spike Abbot, Beefeater 402, at H.M. Tower of London has exceptional views over the river from the Tower itself and roundabout this famous part of the city. This photo was taken from the OXO tower. You can follow him on Twitter to discover more about life in the Tower @spike_abbott

“Drawing inspiration from the spirit and history of the river Thames”, Illuminated River is a public art commission by Leo Villareal, which will eventually see the lighting of fourteen central London bridges. Here, stretching into the distance towards Tower Bridge, you can see the four bridges whose lighting has already been installed: Millennium Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Canon Street Railway Bridge and London Bridge. Follow the project on Twitter @IlluminatedRiv The illuminations are switched on from sunset till 2.00 am.

Based in London Mark Roche specialises in landscape and street photography. He enjoys sharing his ideas and working with others. He has a passion “for capturing images that excite and draw you in”. You can follow him on Twitter @Markroche114

Meteorologist Simon Cardy, based in Wapping, is a perceptive photographer who loves London and takes fine pictures of the river Thames and skies around him. You can follow him on Twitter @weather_king

Having moved to Rotherhithe during lockdown, Jon Carruthers enjoys exploring and photographing the river. He has covered most of the tidal Thames from Teddington to the Hoo Peninsula in Kent. “Its ever-changing nature and its history are what I love about it.” And that feeling clearly shows in his images. You can follow him on Twitter @carruthers_jon

Michelle Buchan’s stunning shots over the Thames from the Isle of Dogs, with their silhouetted skylines and big open skies to the west, lead your gaze to the heart of London. You can often see her images of striking sunsets on Twitter @M_Buchan

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Covid-19 limitations and lockdowns have severely affected the activities of the pleasure and party boats which usually light up the night-time Thames. It is a difficult time for everyone involved, the companies, their crews and all their staff, many of whom have lost their jobs. We should all come together to support them when they can safely take to the river again. There is so much to see and to enjoy along along its shores…

With thanks for joining in with the project to:
Astrid Tontson, Ruth Wadey, Kristi Tange, Andrew Wilson, Wal Daly-Smith, Ian Ruffles, Alastair Hilton, RNLI Tower Lifeboat Station, Chris Walker, Spike Abbot, James Newton for Illuminated River, Mark Roche, Simon Cardy, Jon Curruthers and Michelle Buchan.

Further information
“From the City to the Sea”: The Thames at Night October 30, 2019. You can discover the author on Twitter @VanishedLondon
The Bridges of Old London by the Gentle author.

There is no doubt that there has been a marked renewal of marine life in the river since the dark days of 1957 when the Natural History Museum declared the Thames to be “biologically dead”. The London Natural History Society says that now “the Tidal Thames supports 120 species of fish and that over 60 species of bird nest in central London.” Some of these nest in riverside parks and feed there, or on the foreshore, and I have managed to catch a number of them on camera. Since my wider wanderings have been curtailed by lockdown and health considerations, what follows is of necessity a personal view but I will guide you to further sources at the end.

The Thames has had its problems over water quality ever since the arrival of humans when it became a convenient place to dispose of people’s waste and rubbish. The most notorious, but by no means the only notable example of pollution in recent times, was The ‘Great Stink’ in the hot summer of July and August 1858. The smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that affected the whole of central London, and particularly the Houses of Parliament, was thoroughly nauseating and made it virtually impossible to carry on normal business. Literally under and into the noses of our elected representatives, this miasma emanating from the river, was the catalyst that brought about the construction of London’s Victorian sewer system designed by Joseph Bazalgette and constructed in the 1860s and 70s.

Largely forgotten but even worse was the untreated toxic human waste regularly released into the river further downstream that played a significant part in the tragedy surrounding the sinking of pleasure boat the S.S. Princess Alice at Gallions Reach in 1878. After a fatal collision with the collier Bywell Castle, and horrific drownings at the time, many of the victims died later from infections contracted from the sewage floating freely in the river. This disaster, with a loss of about 700 lives, remains the deadliest inland shipping accident known in Britain.

In the mid 20th century, London’s by then already overloaded Victorian sewers were damaged during the Blitz in the Second World War and, writes Sophie Hardach in an article for the BBC, “post-war Britain did not have the resources – or it seems, the energy to fix the problem quickly.” She goes on to explain that with gradual improvements during the late 1960s “the river began to breathe again.” And the improvements continued. Hopefully the remaining problems of sewage overflow from the existing Victorian system during storms, will be sorted out with the inception of Tideway, London’s new ‘super sewer’, which is nearing completion.

There is always some bird action on the foreshore at low tide as the improvement of water quality has allowed the return of all kinds of microscopic creatures, which in turn have provided nourishment for those further up the food chain.

Above the foreshores, good for foraging when the tide allows it, the river embankments make good lookout posts for many of the birds in the area. Crows, ducks, geese and all kinds of gull can often be seen perching on the walls of the central London Thames. And herons have been spotted in the area too.

Higher up, there are even better lookout posts along the river. The Palace of Westminster has been home to a pair of peregrine falcons for a number of years and though I haven’t seen them myself, I have come across discarded feathers from some of their feasts littering the ground in Victoria Tower Gardens below.

However, there are other birds within reach, that sit in trees, on buildings, or wires above the paths and walkways. Look about you as you go and you will be sure to see some of them.

The Thames is a highway, a “liquid highway”, for boat traffic but also the track for a flight path. In WW I German zeppelins used the reflections of moonlight in the river to guide them to their bomb targets. In WW2 many Luftwaffe pilots heading for London followed the course of the river to inflict the fury of their blitz on the city.

But more peaceably, for a far, far greater stretch of time, the river has served as a flight path for birds. In 1902 naturalist C.J. Cornish, who lived on Chiswick Mall, was one of many to observe that the river “is a regular migration route for several species”.

Where this bevy of swans was off to, I don’t know but they were clearly flying upstream along the course of the river.

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Though the improvement in the Thames environment has been spectacular there is one scourge harming river life that needs to be addressed: plastic. Plastic bottles, bags, containers, cotton buds, and other non-biodegradable detritus including covid masks, that litter the shores in great quantities. The environmental organisation Thames 21 is working hard with others to combat this, including the Port of London, who have set up a new litter survey, and they have organised a number of events for London Rivers Week, from October 24 – November 1, 2020, now in its fourth year. And there are people organising regular litter collection outings along the paths, banks, and foreshores of the river. Hopefully, with concerns and awareness about plastic pollution being raised by so many worldwide, it can be brought under control soon, to save our wildlife and to improve the look of our rivers and countryside.

Further Information on the following sites:
The Naturalist on the Thames: C.J. Cornish. An interesting book published in 1902, now online, with information on wildlife conservation and a discussion on purity of the water.
Louise Cripps: ‘The Thames is one of the cleanest rivers…’.
Sophie Hardach ‘How the River Thames was brought back from the dead’, BBC, 2015.
Dante Shepherd & Josh Jones: ‘Watching gulls in East London’.
Ian Young: ‘Anxious Birding’, a blog on birding and mental health.

Thanks also to Ian Young for help with identification of some of the birds. You can catch up with his bird posts on Twitter @ianyoung33