Before 1750 the only bridge across the Thames was London Bridge (Londoners referred to it as ‘the bridge’) and was so congested, that often the quickest way of getting across the river was by using a waterman or ferryman.
Thousands of watermen in skiffs or wherries plied their trade on the Thames and would row you up and down river or across for a small fee. They were very much the ‘taxi drivers’ of the day as the city’s roads were mostly unmade, impossibly congested or downright dangerous.
Ferrymen would wait at stone stairs that led down to the riverbank – a sort of unofficial taxi rank – and to attract their presence, they would shout out “oars, oars” or “upriver/down river” depending on the direction of the tide. You can just imagine them saying to their wives at the end of the day ‘you’ll never guess who I had in the back of my boat today!”
No-one knows how old the Bankside Ferryman’s seat is, but the watermen waiting there no doubt would have been busy ferrying people to and from the city, where most people lived at the time, to the ‘entertainment’ areas of Southwark.
But the writing was on the wall for the city’s water cabbies. After the Great Fire of London, London’s population began slowly moving out the old city and towards Westminster with the theatre and night-time industries following close behind.
More bridges were also being built which the watermen violently opposed – often ramming the bridge foundations with their boats.
The final nail in their coffin was us, the Hackney Carriage trade, which you could say the waterman saw as the uber of the day. Today the Ferryman’s seat here in Bankside, is a nostalgic reminder of London’s lost proud river trade.
This seat is thought to have been constructed for ferrymen, who transported people across the river. Image courtesy of Wikipedia