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River Thames

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This article is about the River Thames in southern England. For other meanings of the word Thames, see Thames (disambiguation)
River Thames
Physical characteristics
MouthNorth Sea
Length346 km (215 mi)

The Thames (pronounced [tɛmz]) is a river flowing through southern England and connecting London with the sea.

History

Recorded history

It provided the major highway between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The clannish guild of watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing, and tolerated no outside interference.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, during the period now referred to as the Little Ice Age, the Thames often froze over in the winter. This led to the first Frost Fair in 1607, complete with a tent city set up on the river itself and offering a number of amusements, including ice bowling. After temperatures began to rise again, starting in 1814, the river has never frozen over completely. The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 may also have been a factor; the new bridge had fewer pillars than the old and so allowed the river to flow more freely, thus preventing it from flowing slowly enough to freeze in cold winters.

By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the vast, mercantile British Empire. During this time one of the worst river disasters in England took place on 3 September 1878 on the Thames, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collided with the Bywell Castle killing over 640.

View looking west, from the high-level walkway on Tower Bridge. Click on the picture for a longer description

In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river became so bad that sittings at the House of Commons at Westminster had to be abandoned. A concerted effort to contain the city's sewage by constructing massive sewers on the north and south river embankments followed, under the supervision of engineer Joseph Bazalgette.

The coming of rail and road transportation, and the decline of the Empire in the years following 1914, have reduced the prominence of the river. London itself is no longer a port of any note, and the Port of London has moved downstream to Tilbury. In return, it has undergone a massive clean-up from the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries, and life has returned to its formerly dead waters.

In the early 1980s, a massive flood-control device, the Thames Barrier, was opened. It is closed several times a year to prevent water damage to London's low-lying areas upstream. In the late 1990s, the 12-km-long Jubilee River was built, which acts as a flood channel for the Thames around Maidenhead and Windsor.[1]

Name origin

The river's name appears always to have been pronounced with a simple "t" at the beginning; the Middle English spelling was typically Temese and Latin Tamesis. The "th" lends an air of Greek to the name and was added during the Renaissance, possibly to reflect or support a belief that the name was derived from River Thyamis in the Epirus region of Greece, whence early Celtic tribes are thought to have migrated. However, most scholars now believe Temese and Tamesis come from Celtic (Brythonic) Tamesa, perhaps meaning "the dark one".

But Rickett & Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain) reported that it is more probably based upon Proto-Indo-European ta- with a meaning “to flow”. This view was first postulated by Nacolaisen in 1957. There are a large number of river names commencing with this element, which can be divided into three groups (see also River Isis).

The name Isis, given to the part of the river running through Oxford, may have come from the Egyptian river god of that name but is believed to be a contraction of Tamesis, the Latin (or pre-Roman Celtic) name. It may be that the name Isis was a fanciful and neo-classical one, given by the university population as a type of pet name. The actual derivation is obscure, so conjecture prevails.

Richard Coates has recently suggested that the river was called the Thames upriver where it was narrower, and Plowonida down river where it was too wide to ford. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks, which became known as Londinium from the original root Plowonida derived from pre-celtic Old European 'plew' and 'nejd,' meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river.[2]

Geography

Course

Map of the River Thames
Map of the River Thames

The Thames has a length of 346 km (215 miles). Its source (at Ordnance Survey grid reference ST 980 994) is about a mile north of the village of Kemble, near Cirencester in the Cotswolds. However, some claim the source to be at Seven Springs near Cheltenham where the river Churn rises, as this location fulfills two definitions of a river source, being furthest from the mouth both in distance along its course and as the crow flies. This spring also flows throughout the year while that at Thames head near Kemble is only seasonal. It then flows through Lechlade, Oxford, Abingdon, Wallingford, Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor, Eton, Staines and Weybridge, before entering the Greater London area.

From the outskirts of Greater London, the river passes Syon House, Hampton Court, Kingston, Richmond (with the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill) and Kew before flowing through central London. In central London, the river forms one of the principal axes of the city, from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower of London. Once clear of central London, the river passes Greenwich and Dartford before entering the sea in a drowned estuary near Southend-on-Sea.

In terms of counties, the Thames rises in Gloucestershire, traditionally forming the county boundary, firstly between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, between Berkshire on the south bank and Oxfordshire on the north, between Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, between Berkshire and Surrey, between Surrey and Middlesex, and between Essex and Kent. Before the 1974 boundary changes, the current boundary between Berkshire and Surrey was between Buckinghamshire and Surrey. The Oxfordshire - Berkshire boundary was also moved at that time.

The area to the west of London is normally called the Thames Valley, whilst east of Tower Bridge development agencies and Ministers have taken to using the term Thames Gateway.

Catchment area and discharge

File:Map of the River Thames downstream from London 1840.JPG
The lower course of the Thames in 1840

The whole of the river drains a catchment area of some 12,935 square km (4994 square miles), or 15,343 square km (5924 square miles) if the River Medway is included as a tributary).[3]

See Rivers of Great Britain for a full list of tributaries.

The non-tidal section

Innumerable brooks, streams and rivers, within an area of 9948 square km (3841 square miles), combine to form 38 main tributaries feeding the Thames between its source and Teddington. These include the rivers Churn, Leach, Cole, Coln, Windrush, Evenlode, Cherwell, Ock, Thame, Pang, Kennet, Loddon, Colne, Wey and Mole.

Between Maidenhead and Windsor, the Thames supports an artificial secondary channel, known as the Jubilee River, for flood relief purposes.

More than half the rain that falls on this catchment is lost to evaporation and plant growth. The remainder provides the water resource that has to be shared between river flows, to support the natural environment, and the community needs for water supplies to homes, industry and agriculture.

The tidal section

About 90 km from the sea, at Teddington, the river begins to exhibit tidal activity from the North Sea. This tidal stretch of the river is known as "the Tideway". London was reputedly made capital of Roman Britain at the spot where the tides reached in AD 43, but this spot has moved up river in the 2000 years since then, because of the glacial rebound effect. At London, the water is slightly brackish with sea salt. Below Teddington, the principal tributaries include the rivers Brent, Wandle, Effra, Westbourne, Fleet, Ravensbourne (the final part of which is called Deptford Creek), Lea, Darent and Ingrebourne.

The average discharge of the Thames grows up to approximately 66 m³/s (cumecs) at the end of its non-tidal section at Kingston upon Thames, a figure which is exceeded by some other British rivers (e.g., the Severn and the Tay). Indeed, if the Thames were not a tidal river, its average discharge in the centre of London would be somewhere between 80 and 100 m³/s, and the Thames would look like a small river, not the large river we can see today by Westminster, the Houses of Parliament or the City.

Bray lock, Berkshire
St John's lock, near Lechlade.

The Thames is navigable from the estuary as far as Lechlade in Gloucestershire. Between the sea and Teddington Lock, the river forms part of the Port of London and navigation is administered by the Port of London Authority. From Teddington Lock to the head of navigation, the navigation authority is the Environment Agency.

The river is navigable to large ocean-going ships as far as the Pool of London and London Bridge. Today little commercial traffic passes above the docks at Tilbury, and central London sees only the occasional visiting cruise ship or warship moored alongside HMS Belfast and a few smaller aggregate or refuse vessels operating from wharves in the west of London. Both the tidal river through London and the non-tidal river upstream are intensively used for leisure navigation.

There are 45 locks on the River Thames. See Locks on the River Thames for a full list of all locks.

Crossings

Railway bridge at Maidenhead

The river is crossed by many bridges and tunnels. Famous crossings of the Thames include:

See Crossings of the River Thames for a full list of all crossings.

Islands

Sunset on the river Thames viewed from Greenwich

Famous islands in the Thames include:

See Islands in the River Thames for a full list of all islands.

Culture

Literature

The Thames is a motif in many books. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome describes a boat trip up the Thames; published in 1889, it has never been out of print, proof of the continuing influence of the Thames on the literary imagination. Other authors took inspiration from this best-selling comic novel (with its side-nods to social commentary). Examples include poet Kim Taplin's 1993 travelogue Three Women in a Boat and Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. Somewhere near the Oxford stretch is where the Liddells were rowing in the poem at the start of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The river is almost a character in its own right in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and its derivatives. The utopian News from Nowhere is mainly the account of a journey through the Thames valley in a socialist future.

In books set in London there is Sherlock Holmes looking for a boat in The Sign of Four. Many of Charles Dickens's novels feature the Thames. Oliver Twist finishes in the slums and rookeries along its south bank. Our Mutual Friend begins with a scavenger and his daughter pulling a dead man from the river, to legally salvage what the body might have in its pockets. Dickens opens the novel with this sketch of the river, and the people who work on it:

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

The Thames also features prominently in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as a communications artery for the waterborne Gyptian people of Oxford and the Fens.

In poetry, T.S. Eliot references the Thames at the beginning of The Fire Sermon, Section III of "The Waste Land".

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the old sailor Marlow begins his yarn while sitting on a boat in the Thames. The serenity of the contemporary Thames is contrasted with the savagery of the Congo River, and with the wilderness of the Thames as it would have appeared to a Roman soldier posted to Brittania two thousand years before. Conrad also gives a memorable description of the approach to London from the Thames Estuary in his essays The Mirror of the Sea (1906).

Sport

The River Thames in Oxford

Rowing and sailing are the main sports which take place on the River Thames, though punting and skiffing also take place; unlike the 'pleasure punting' common on the Cherwell in Oxford and the Cam in Cambridge punting on the Thames is competitive and uses narrower craft. There are many clubs which encourage participation in these sports and organise racing and inter-club competitions.

Sailing Clubs on the non-tidal river

(in order downstream)

  • Medley Sailing Club - Oxford
  • Abbey SC - Abingdon
  • Goring Thames SC
  • Henley SC
  • Marlow SC
  • Upper Thames SC - Bourne End
  • Cookham Reach SC
  • Staines SC
  • London River Yacht Club - Kingston-upon-Thames
  • Desborough SC - Shepperton
  • Weybridge SC
  • Aquarius SC - Hampton
  • Hampton SC
  • Thames SC - Surbiton
  • Tamesis Club - Teddington

Rowing

Two important events in the English sporting calendar occur on the River Thames. The University Boat Race is rowed between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge on the tidal portion of the river from Putney to Mortlake in the west of London. The Henley Royal Regatta is another rowing event which takes place over a number of days at the upstream town of Henley-on-Thames; besides its sporting significance the regatta is an important date on the English social calendar alongside events like Royal Ascot and Wimbledon.

Trivia

  • The Sex Pistols played a concert on the Queen Elizabeth Riverboat on June 7, 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee, while sailing down the river.
  • On January 20, 2006, a northern 16-18ft (5m) bottle-nosed whale was spotted in the Thames and was seen as far upstream as Chelsea. This is extremely unusual because this type of whale is generally found in deep sea waters. Crowds gathered along the riverbanks to witness the extraordinary spectacle. But it soon became clear there was cause for concern, as the animal came within yards of the banks, almost beaching, and crashed into an empty boat causing slight bleeding. Approx. 12 hours later, the whale was believed to be seen again near Greenwich, possibly heading back to sea [1]. There was a rescue attempt lasting several hours, but it eventually died on a barge. See River Thames whale.
  • Amongst unusual objects floated along the Thames include a Eurostar Railway locomotive, a Concorde aircraft and a U boat Submarine.
  • It is not unusual to see the French navy in the Thames, very often French naval vessels make official visits to the Royal Navy dock, HMS President, just by the Tower Bridge.
  • While writing his diary Samuel Pepys was disturbed by the sound of gunfire, as Dutch warships on the Thames broke through the Royal Navy to invade London.

Religion

When a Roman Catholic converts to Anglicanism, that person is said to have "swum the Thames". The reverse is referred to as "swimming the Tiber".

See also

References

  1. ^ Environment Agency (2005). Jubilee River. Retrieved November 1, 2005.
  2. ^ Culteral Heritage Resources (2005). Legendary Origins and the Origin of London's place name. Retrieved November 1, 2005.
  3. ^ Dot & Ian Hart (2001–5). The River Thames — Its geology, geography and vital statistics from source to sea. Retrieved November 1, 2005.
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