Named for the pilot – the expert navigator who guides ships safely through dangerous waters, a fitting name by the great river
The Pilot in Greenwich holds twenty-three hundred and twenty-six reviews and a 4.4 – a strong score on a large sample – and it carries a name of genuine maritime resonance, fitting for its riverside setting: the pilot, the skilled expert navigator who guides ships safely through dangerous and difficult waters.
The pilot
A “pilot,” in the maritime sense, is a highly skilled navigator who guides ships through dangerous, difficult or unfamiliar waters – especially the tricky approaches to ports, the winding channels of rivers, and the hazardous passages where local knowledge is essential. The ship’s own captain may be master of the open sea, but when entering a busy port or navigating a difficult river, a specialist local pilot comes aboard to guide the vessel safely through – for the pilot knows every current, sandbank, channel and hazard of the local waters intimately, as no visiting captain could. It is a skilled, expert, responsible and honourable profession – the guiding of great ships safely through danger, by the expert who knows the waters.
The pilots of the Thames
The name is especially fitting for a Greenwich pub, for the Thames has always needed its pilots. The great river, with its winding channels, its tides, its currents and sandbanks, and its enormous traffic of shipping, was for centuries one of the busiest and most demanding waterways in the world – and the Thames pilots, with their expert local knowledge, guided the countless ships up and down the river, into and out of the great Port of London. Greenwich sits right on this great working river, and would have known its pilots well – the skilled navigators guiding the ships past Greenwich, up to the docks of London or down to the open sea. A pub named “The Pilot,” by the Greenwich riverside, honours these skilled guides of the river – a fitting maritime name for a pub on the great Thames.
The wider meanings
“Pilot” carries other resonances too, all of them positive. In the air, a “pilot” is the skilled aviator who flies the aircraft – the same word, extended from the sea to the sky, for the skilled guide of a vessel. More broadly, a “pilot” is any skilled guide or leader – “to pilot” something is to guide it skilfully through difficulty, and a “pilot” can be one who leads and guides others safely through. There is also the humble “pilot light” – the small, steady flame that keeps a larger fire ready to light – suggesting steady reliability. All these meanings share the core idea of skilled, reliable, expert guidance – the pilot who guides safely through difficulty and danger. It is a name of genuine dignity and positive resonance – the skilled expert, the safe guide, the reliable navigator.
For a pub, there is a nice warmth in the idea, too – the pub as a safe harbour, a place of refuge and welcome, guided into by the weary traveller as a ship is guided into port by the pilot. The Pilot, on the Greenwich Peninsula by the great river, is a fine and fitting maritime name – and its strong score across a large sample marks it as a genuinely good and popular pub, a reliable safe harbour on the Greenwich riverside. The Prat’s desk salutes the skilled guides of the name.
The pub
A strong, popular riverside pub doing a good 4.4 across a large sample, fittingly named “The Pilot” after the skilled navigator who guides ships safely through dangerous waters – a fine maritime name by the great Thames.
Verdict
Strong, popular, and fittingly maritime – the Pilot, named for the skilled expert who guides ships safely through danger, on the Greenwich riverside of the great working Thames.
Have a pint at the Pilot, by the Greenwich river, and raise it to the skilled guides of the name – the expert pilots who steered the great ships safely up and down the Thames, past Greenwich, for centuries.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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