Craft of the Upper Thames

One of the last old-established firms using the Upper Thames to continue into the 20th century was Pemberton’s of Abingdon. Its commercial history dated from 1803 and, for much of the 19th century, traded as William Pemberton, coal, slate and salt merchant of East St Helen Street, whose premises backed onto the Thames. By the middle years of the century he owned two pairs of narrowboats: one pair steered by William Townsend and the other by Stephen and William Edwards. Coal was brought up from the Midlands and also via the Stroudwater and Thames & Severn route and from Somerset. When the Canal Boats Act came into effect in 1879 he was running two boats named Queen of the Thames, dating from 1867, paired with Sailors Farewell. 

William Pemberton died in April 1888 and his business and boats passed to his son Charles Dandridge Pemberton, who continued until his own death in February 1907. For several decades the boats were under the command of Alfred Mann of Abingdon, who might be the man shown aboard Queen of the Thames about to take another wheelbarrow full of coal into the warehouse near St Helen’s church. If this image was taken in the early years of the 20th century, he would have been in his mid-70s. The boat beyond must be Sailors Farewell having already landed its coal cargo. Following the death of Charles Dandridge Pemberton, the business was sold in March 1907 to Percy J. Farmer, who continued trading as Pemberton & Co. However, the boats were disposed of in favour of railway wagons and another pair of coal-boats disappeared from the Upper Thames.

This model boat on display at Oxford Museum is a fine example of a narrowboat typically seen on the Upper Thames during the 19th century. Although its length has been compressed, its fore-end and stern are accurately modelled with raised washboards around the fore-deck to protect it when passing flash-locks, and the curved top plank commonly seen at that time. Its decoration and colours give historians a glimpse of what such boats looked like and is well painted. The boat appears to be a toy or model built for a child with the owner’s name shown as G. Davis of Shillingford, Oxfordshire. This is surely George Henry Davis, the son of Henry Davis, victualler of the New Inn and coal merchant at Shillingford. George was born around 1857 in the hamlet and, as a young boy growing up in the early 1860s, he would have seen his father’s boats delivering coal. Henry’s first boat was Enterprise and was bought second-hand in 1863, but dated back to 1841. In 1867 he bought another second-hand boat, dating back to 1845, which he renamed Surprise. Henry Davis employed boatman Alfred Mann to steer his craft, bringing up coal from the Midlands pits. 

George Davis followed his father into the pub and coal merchant’s trade. After he married in 1878, he moved to Sandford-on-Thames with his wife, although evidence that he used water transport has not survived. His father still continued to use a pair of his own boats into the 1880s based in Shillingford at the George Inn.

Near the westernmost point of the Upper Thames was Lechlade Wharf, photographed around 1882. At the time Matthew Hicks was based there trading as a coal, corn and salt merchant and maltster, and the owner of two narrowboats, Garibaldi and Good Intent, the latter seen moored at the wharf. He had spent most of his adult life associated with the wharf in one way or another and started in business, first as a coal dealer, then a coal merchant from the mid-1850s. Much of his coal was drawn from pits in the Forest of Dean and loaded into barges at Bullo Pill Dock Basin near Newnham on the tidal River Severn. These were taken upstream and across the river to Framilode to join the Stroudwater Canal, where the coal was transhipped into his narrowboats. Sometimes his coal was loaded at Brimscombe Port. On rarer occasions, coal was loaded from Staffordshire pits and taken down the Severn via the Staffs & Worcs Canal, or loaded on the Somerset Coal Canal and taken to Lechlade via the Wilts & Berks Canal. His boats backloaded with wheat to Gloucester and elsewhere, and at other times a cargo of roadstone or timber could be had.

In 1882 Matthew Hicks employed two boatmen, Charles William Phipps and William Meecham, who steered Good Intent. It was built by Matthew Gardiner of Brimscombe Port in 1876 measuring 72ft 6in long and 7ft 2in wide, and capable of loading 40 tons. It was essentially a Severn longboat, which was a common sight on the Upper Thames in the 19th century. In the 1890s Matthew Hicks also started using the railway with a depot at Lechlade Station, then after his death in October 1899, Good Intent was sold off to Harry Plowman of the Prince of Wales pub, Abingdon, in 1900.

Perhaps the most illustrated Thames craft of all was the West Country barge. Although extinct by the latter decades of the 19th century, it was the standard Upper Thames mode of transport for commercial cargoes and a common sight in the Pool of London. They were portrayed in many engravings, paintings and sketches of Thames scenes by famous landscape artists such as Constable, Turner and Canaletto, as well as a multitude of lesser-known artists. They were large punt-shaped shallow-draught vessels, often using a mast and sail when not being towed, and fitted with a large rudder. Crew accommodation was at the stern, being merely a tarpaulin stretched over wooden hoops to form a makeshift cabin. 

This scene titled ‘The Thames at Shillingford’ was painted in 1823 by British maritime artist John Thomas Serres (1759-1825) and was one of several paintings he did featuring these barges. This one is of particular interest as it shows a West Country barge in front of a more familiar swim-headed Thames spritsail stumpy barge, which was both a coastal and river craft. The West Country barge has its mast and square sail lowered using the deck winch at the bow, which is being used as a seat by one of the crew while fishing. Another point to note is how the craft is being held against the shallow bank with a set pole tied to the gunwale, a standard means of securing a vessel, and there may well be two others on the other side of the barge to give greater stability. 

Some of these barges were small enough to fit in the Thames & Severn Canal locks, and so could transport their loads between Brimscombe Port and London. One owner was John Carter of Oxford who in 1810 was recorded with three barges operating on the T&S taking coal, parcels, timber, grain and stone to many places between Brimscombe Port and London, with 450 bundles of wire on one trip to London, and 4,953 bars of iron weighing 71 tons on another.