A riverside name honouring the watermen – the licensed boatmen who ferried Londoners across and along the Thames for centuries
Watermans in Richmond holds three hundred and twenty-eight reviews and a 4.3 – a solid score on a good sample – and it honours a genuine and historic institution of the Thames: the watermen, the licensed boatmen who, for many centuries, ferried Londoners across and along the great river, a vital and colourful part of the life of old London.
The boatmen of the river
The “watermen” were the licensed boatmen of the Thames – and for centuries, before the great bridges and roads, they were absolutely essential to the life of London. In an age when the Thames was one of London’s great highways, and when there were few bridges, the watermen were the taxi-drivers of the river – ferrying passengers across the river and up and down it in their wherries and boats, carrying Londoners to their destinations along the great watery highway. They were a large, vital and colourful body of men – thousands of them worked the river, organised into their own ancient guild (the Company of Watermen), licensed and regulated, plying their trade on the busy Thames. “Oars!” was their cry, touting for custom at the riverside steps. For centuries, the watermen were an essential, familiar, and colourful part of the life of the river and of London itself.
The busy old Thames
The watermen evoke the whole vanished world of the old working Thames – when the river was one of London’s great highways, thronged with boats and barges and the wherries of the watermen, alive with the traffic and trade of the river. In those days, the Thames was the great artery of London – and the watermen were its lifeblood, ferrying the endless traffic of passengers along and across the water. It was a colourful, vital, bustling world – the crowded river, the busy steps and stairs where the watermen touted for custom, the endless coming and going of the boats. This whole vanished world of the working river – the watermen, the wherries, the busy old Thames – is a genuine and colourful part of London’s history, and “Watermans” evokes it directly. For a Richmond riverside venue, it is a fitting and historic name – honouring the boatmen of the very river on which it stands.
Doggett’s Coat and Badge
The watermen have left one particularly wonderful legacy – “Doggett’s Coat and Badge,” the oldest rowing race in the world, and indeed one of the oldest continuously-held sporting events anywhere. First rowed in 1715, and still contested to this day, it is a rowing race for young watermen on the Thames, established by the actor Thomas Doggett, with a fine red coat and a silver badge as the prize. It is a genuine and remarkable survival – over three hundred years of continuous history, the young watermen still racing on the Thames for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, a living link to the great tradition of the Thames watermen. It is a wonderful piece of living river history, and a fitting tribute to the watermen the name honours. There is genuine history and colour in the whole tradition – the boatmen, the busy old river, the ancient race.
There is genuine history and colour in the name – the watermen of the Thames, the vital boatmen of old London, the busy working river, the ancient race that survives to this day. It is an evocative, historic, fittingly riverside name, honouring a genuine and colourful institution of the great river. Its solid score across a good sample marks it as a genuinely good and popular venue, worthily bearing its historic river name. The Prat’s history desk cries “Oars!”, salutes the watermen of the Thames, and raises a glass to the boatmen of the old river.
The bar
A solid, popular riverside venue doing a good 4.3 across a good sample, historically named “Watermans” – after the licensed boatmen who ferried Londoners across and along the Thames for centuries.
Verdict
Solid, popular, and historically riverside – Watermans, honouring the watermen, the vital boatmen of the old working Thames.
Have a drink at Watermans by the Richmond river, and enjoy the historic name – the watermen, the licensed boatmen who ferried Londoners along the Thames for centuries, and whose ancient race, Doggett’s Coat and Badge, is still rowed to this day.
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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