Craft of the Thames

A Broader Outlook: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2024

Christopher M Jones

Chris M. Jones examines images showing various types of boats working on the tidal Thames

The craft most associated with the River Thames is the sailing barge, of which Maud Hawthorn, shown here, is a typical example. This image was taken on 9th April 1883 and captures the barge against the New Putney Bridge under construction in the background. Maud Hawthorn was built in 1878 at Teynham on the Swale in Kent for Elwin Hawthorn of London. Its Port of Registry was Rochester with a tonnage of 42. Elwin Hawthorn was brought up in Stepney, the son of a lighterman, and for years lived in various houses, mainly in London’s East End in the vicinity of the Regent’s Canal at Ratcliff and Mile End Old Town. Although he apprenticed as a tailor, he followed his father onto the water and became a barge-owner in the 1860s. At one point in 1876 he was based at a wharf at Emmott Street above Johnson’s Lock in Stepney, and at another he lived for a period in Margate. In the latter decades of his life he lived in Wanstead and had a number of occupations such as a house agen…