Leontyne (2 page)

At the end of June I decided that I must try out the new towing post. Pushing the barge up river to Putney, the gearbox overheated and we had to stop to let it cool down. On the way back to Rotherhithe I decided to tow the barge, which I thought would be better for the gearbox and perhaps not give it quite so much work to do. As we went downstream the ebb tide got stronger and stronger and I began to realize that I wasn't going to be able to stop very easily. As we raced under London Bridge and then Tower Bridge, the spring ebb tide was at its full force. I was alone on the tug, with the rest of the crew, which included Sabine, on the barge; there was no means of communication with them as they were below decks. I started to get really alarmed.

To stop in these circumstances meant that I would have to chuck round, that is to say that I would have to bring the tug, with the barge following, round into the current at just the right moment or I would be swept past the mooring I wanted to go to; this, in turn, was drying out so fast as the tide went out that soon there would be no water for us to come alongside. I tried the manoeuvre. As the
Leo
came round to face the tide, the engine and gearbox failed to give me the punch I needed. The barge and the
Leo
jack-knifed, the towrope trapped me against the steering wheel and then I felt the whole weight of the barge, all forty-two tons, press against my abdomen. I was literally squashed, but the rope slackened for a moment, giving me just enough time to haul my semi-paralysed lower half up on to the barge. As I did so, the bow of the barge crashed through the wheelhouse of the
Leo
, a blow which would have done for me if I had been in the way. I lay on the deck not able to move or do much at all, except to admire Sabine's courage as she leapt from the barge on to the tug, and tried to correct our course. Miraculously, a police launch happened to be passing, finding us careering helplessly down the Thames on a five-knot tide. They took some time, it seemed to me, to assess the situation; in the meantime Sabine managed to steer the tug
in approximately the right direction, making to throw a line to the police boat. At this point I blacked out.

Further events are somewhat hazy, except that I remember my dear wife leaning over me as I promised her I would sell the boats and live a calmer life.

I was out of action for six weeks and as I lay in my hospital bed overlooking the Pool of London, I watched the hordes of office workers streaming to and fro over London Bridge. The new ‘London Bridge City' is quite a sight at dawn, but, when the sun comes up, its concrete canyons are, alas, just the same as any other project which has been built for the continuing glory of its architects, rather than the poor souls who have to struggle round its windswept gulches. What are they all dreaming about – making their fortunes from the VDU screen? Or perhaps making their escape? What do people dream of today? Once the movies provided dreams of romance and luxury, but today everyone knows the plot. Violence, more violence and sex is all that is being provided, by and large. I dreamed of quiet places with calm water, bread, cheese and a bottle of wine, and above all I dreamed of being in control of my destiny for a time, amongst the rivers of Europe. Perhaps I would be able to persuade someone to back me in what would seem to many a dotty venture.

It was obvious to me by now that I would need professional help in the adventure to improve the odds on completing the journey more or less unscathed. Ray Julian was one of the elite band of Thames watermen who had spent seven years as an apprentice before getting his papers as a licensed waterman. These years of learning are very important on the Thames, a savage and unpredictable river as I knew to my cost. Over the journey, I realized what an enormously resilient person he was. There was hardly ever a situation that he
had not experienced when it came to handling boats and he had the true professional attitude to electrical and mechanical machinery which, if he did not understand how to mend, he would find someone who really did. He kept himself amazingly fit by going for long runs along the towpath at dawn every morning and eating masses of honey with everything. He had two grown-up sons and a very pretty daughter. I had run into him through my contacts on the river and had liked him as soon as I met him as he was clearly a gypsy at heart like me and we got on at once. By the end of the trip, I had the greatest respect for him and his appreciation of the natural beauty through which we travelled, which was far more intense than many an Oxbridge mind I have encountered. My journey would have been a lot more difficult and far less fun without his good humour and stamina.

At the beginning of September 1987, I was well enough to start trials again and get the
Leo's
rig correctly fixed. The biggest problem was the lack of sufficient power. The best and cheapest remedy seemed to be a bigger propeller, but a bigger propeller meant a stronger gearbox; this, in turn, meant a more powerful engine, and that I couldn't possibly afford. In the end I decided not to waste any more time, but to concentrate instead on raising the finance for the voyage which would also have to cover the cost of the six-cylinder Gardner engine that I was planning to get, reconditioned, from a London bus.

During the winter months, many little things were being finished off on the barge and I was slowly getting the boats into a condition which, if not exactly shipshape, might be described as working. The hydraulic steering on the boat had sprung a leak and we were at one time drifting without steering under Tower Bridge. Fundamental mechanical problems like this had dogged our progress, but that is often the way with dress rehearsals for a successful show.

At last, after a winter of biting my fingernails, the money
was raised from a British television company, Central Television, and now all that had to be done was to fix a date for our departure.

Our first night on board, in April 1988, was not without mishap. Ray was not yet with me, and, until he could join me, I had taken the services of another waterman, Reggie, a man with a huge and apparently random knowledge of geographical place names. As he moored us up, at Fisher's Wharf by London Bridge, and tied our warps round a pillar, he reeled off the names of the big towns on the Don and the Volga. ‘No problem,' said he. ‘When the tide goes down, just check the ropes, and all will be well. I bet you can't tell me what the Russian port at the mouth of the Danube is called.'

All was well on the descent, a fall of about eighteen feet, and I sank gratefully into bed, forgetting that in tidal terms what goes down must come up. I awoke, about 3.00 a.m., to find that for some reason the porthole in my cabin was covered with water, and I was falling to the bottom of my bed. I soon discovered that the warps had stuck on the pillar and that the barge was being held under as the tide rose swiftly around us. I rushed for the carving knife which, in those days, was still razor sharp. I had only to touch the blade against the bar-tight rope for the whole forty-odd tons of barge to shake itself free and bob up again from its undignified posture. Rattled, I returned to bed, realizing that for all the charm of Reggie's randomly acquired geographical trivia, I could rely on no one but myself for the safety of the boats.

The next evening we slipped down to the Thames Barrier and tied up next to the
Sir Aubrey
, a large river-tug, which had been built when the river was busier for towing long strings of barges. I talked to Ron Sargeant, the doyen of a famous waterman family on that part of the river. His
forebears had built up their business a century or so before by rowing down to the mouth of the river, sometimes even as far as the Goodwin Sands, and throwing their grappling hooks on to ships bound for the Thames in order to get the pilotage before anyone else. His grandfather had been present at the disaster of the
Princess Alice:
a passenger boat full of Victorian families having a day out on the river collided with a small collier on a perfect summer's afternoon. Many people were drowned, and those who were not choked to death on the effluent that came streaming out from London's sewers just there. (To this day the largest tributary of the Thames is the treated sewage outlet a little further down the river.) Amongst the victims of this catastrophe had been the owners of the Crown and Anchor at Charlton. Ron Sargeant's grandfather had bought the pub at once and from then on the Sargeants had become the most powerful family on that part of the river.

We also spent a jolly day at Tower Bridge with the Keeper, Colonel Dalton, who, quoting V. S. Pritchett, called the bridge ‘a purple passage suitable for the archers at Agincourt'. The origin of the V-sign lay apparently in the fact that the French, when they captured English bowmen, would chop off the index finger on their right hand so that they could not draw a bowstring properly. To frighten the enemy, the English archers would hold up both fingers showing that they were whole. I discovered that the walkway at the top of the bridge between the bascules had been insisted upon by the City Fathers, so that the public would not have to wait to cross while it was opened for passing ships. The bridgemen became very speedy at opening the bridge, however, and nobody could be bothered to climb the stairs and cross over the walkway. Before long it had become a gathering place for ladies of the night and had to be closed. Colonel Dalton also told me that the bridge's granite stones are merely cosmetic, there to hide the steelwork and make it resemble the Tower of London.

Tower Bridge, like Blackfriars, Southwark, and London, is owned by the Bridges Trust, a City of London foundation. On the Thames, London Bridge is known simply as ‘The Bridge', probably dating back to the time when it was the only bridge, and also because it is the point where all the tidal predictions are made for the river traffic. Blackfriars Bridge is supposed to mark the upper reach of the salt water in the Thames. Sea-water birds are carved on the down-river side and fresh-water fowl on the upper. How many bridge builders would have the time, patience or wit to do that in these days?

On some days we seemed fated to meet lugubrious people. One was a river policeman who chatted for hours about the unfortunates whose bodies he had discovered in the Thames. The tide and the cold were the killers now, no longer the pollution. I suppose it is a
métier
like everything else, but on such a beautiful sunny morning it seemed strange to hear about the improvements he was trying for body recovery. Apparently it takes about three weeks for the gases to build up in the submerged corpse, which shoot it to the surface, by which time, he said, the limbs were becoming ‘a little loose'. Men and women, contradicting each other to the end, float in opposite ways.

In the afternoon, I chatted to a gentleman from Trinity House, whose job it is to service the buoys and lighthouses round the coast of Britain. As we were talking he produced a flat piece of lead from his desk drawer. ‘A replica of the lead found in the stomach of the keeper of the Eddystone Rock Lighthouse,' he said. It seems that this unfortunate lighthouse-keeper was standing on the rocks just below his lighthouse, which was burning fiercely. Looking up aghast, his mouth quite naturally fell open and in dropped the molten lead. Being a tough old boy he rowed ashore and told his unlikely tale which no one believed, but when he died three days later, an autopsy proved his story and the retrieved lead even contained imprints of the carrots he had eaten for his
last meal. Apparently lighthouse-keepers became excellent cooks. It's too bad that all the lighthouses are being replaced by radar beacons. Someone has yet to introduce me to the romance of electronics.

The night of 13 April was my last night at home. The next day I was to take the noon tide to Erith where I would meet up with Ray. The
Leo
came alongside Grices Wharf in Rotherhithe, where I live, to take on final provisions, and I said farewell to Reggie. In the morning, I was given a pennant on which was embroidered a lion rampant (representing Leo), which made a proud sight fluttering in the breeze. All the people in the buildings came to give me a rousing send-off. Balloons, streamers, the lot. Captain Christopher Jones had set off from this very spot to collect the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth Sound on their historic journey. I bet he didn't get balloons or streamers. I certainly had a lump in my throat, but the moisture in the eye could well have been due to the biting north-easterly wind. Nautical departures have a strange effect on people. The sadness of leaving is almost immediately replaced by an intense excitement that will surely end with the voyage. My mother used to tell me how interesting eye-to-eye relationships would develop on the P&O ships going to India, even before England had disappeared over the horizon. By the Eddystone Rock the pairings were almost complete.

Through the Barrier for the last time. ‘Are you inward-or outward-bound, sir?' the calm voice of the controller inquired. Outward-bound is what we were. Plump and fifty, I was leaving behind a life of pampering the pampered and never having to worry about the washing, never mind the washing-up. From now on, it was to be do it yourself. No more limos and lunches or gossip and gush. The 6.00 a.m. shipping forecast would replace the ‘London Last Night' column or
Variety's
latest roundup of box-office figures.

*

I decided that for our first night I would make fast on the buoy at Erith, which is a flat and desolate part of the Thames. I made a real hash of it as I thought that the tide had turned and was coming in, but to my surprise it was still going out (there is a back eddy just there as every waterman knows!). The result was that I shot past the buoy and had to make a ponderous turn to come in again in the right direction. Next morning, early, I took the dinghy and picked up Ray as arranged, from the bottom of the causeway that stretches out over the mudflats at Erith.

We set off for Gravesend, so called because after Gravesend all bodies were buried at sea. Some say that this was where the bodies from the Great Plague of London were buried but, logistically, that seems too fanciful to me. The tide soon started to run strongly against us and my confidence in the power of our excellent Gardner engine was a mite diminished. We pushed our way on through the stream and finally tied up on a buoy outside Custom House Pier, amongst the big seagoing tugs. Opposite, on Tilbury Pier, lay the new P&O palace, the
Sovereign of the Seas
. I'm afraid nobody is ever again destined to go by P&O to the land of the cake Parsee. No more fancy dress parties on the penultimate night before arriving in Bombay, when some joker would always come dressed as a baby and another would arrive with a lavatory seat around his neck to be the life and soul of the party. The Queen of Sheba and Nefertiti were, as I recall, favourites amongst the ladies. This elegant ship, however, had been built for the blue-rinse set off Honolulu.