For many years sailing barges were a familiar sight on London River, as the Thames between the Estuary and the tidal limit of the Port at Teddington was traditionally known. Sailing barges had evolved – in terms of hull shape, size, construction, rig and steering – over a long period of time. This article provides a brief introduction to these very interesting and distinctive vessels.
In 1800 London had a population of around 1 million, but by 1900 this had increased to 6.5 million. The growing city needed food, fuel, and building material, together with a means of getting rid of both huge volumes of refuse and dung, from its many thousands of horses. Cinders became an ingredient for the thousands of Kent and Essex bricks sent up to London, and horse dung provided convenient manure for market gardens and arable farms.
Many cargoes could be delivered in bulk and flat-bottomed sailing barges – which could carry up to 150 tons – were one of the main forms of transport, together with a huge number of un-rigged dumb barges, or lighters. With the development of the docks downstream from the Upper Pool, there were opportunities for sailing barges to take goods from them to ports along the East Coast and in north Kent. Sailing barges carried imported wheat and maize down to distant mills, and some might return back to London with coal from the Trent. Essex barges were heavily involved in the ‘stackie’ trade, bringing tall deck cargoes of hay and straw to feed London’s hungry horses.
The Thames formed a very busy highway, conveying passengers and goods by the power of oars, sail and, particularly, the tides. Large barges once worked upriver to-and-from afar as Abingdon and Newbury – on the Kennet – and smaller craft went as far as Oxford and even Cricklade, together with many other towns and villages along the Thames and its tributaries.
Western barges – as historically the craft trading inland, westwards of London Bridge, were called – plied the upper tideway, with other types joining them at the London wharves. Those of the lower tideway and the Medway were swim-headed sailing craft of massive construction, designed to withstand rough waters and to lay loaded on shingle and sand, waiting for the tide to flood.
Most sailing barges had spritsails. Of Dutch origin, the ‘sprit, or ‘spreet’ was a large spar rigged from near the foot of the mast, crossing diagonally up to the peak of the large mainsail, which was otherwise loose-footed. A mainsail, a foresail and a sprit-rigged mizzen provided the usual sailing rig. Later barges also had topsails and staysails as well.
The spritsail rigging was ingeniously arranged to be handled by a crew of two, with masts stepped in a tabernacle and a large windlass and stayfall tackle at the bow allowing rigging and sails to be let down in one go, especially when negotiating low bridges. As sailing barges had no keel, leeboards – another borrowing from the Dutch – were used to stop sideways drift.
From the mid-19th century, major improvements were made to spritsail barges, with the traditional swim-headed bows being made increasingly more rounded and transom sterns replacing the old undercut budget (fixed rudder) sterns, with finer hull lines, and more sophisticated sails and rigging.
Throughout the Victorian era these distinctive barges with their ochre and grease dressed red/brown sails could be seen in harbours all around Britain, with some even crossing the Irish Sea and English Channel. The latter included bigger ketch-rigged barges.
Although crew sizes on typical barges remained just a skipper and mate, occasional third-hands called ‘hufflers’ were often engaged, for their local knowledge, to help with rowing, poking the barges up creeks, and lowering the gear to go under bridges. Rowing up to Kew Bridge was customary, with barges going further using tugs. By the 1950s, barges were no longer rowed but some skippers still ‘drudged’ through bridges on the tide, with the anchor just touching the bottom. Barges were sometimes ‘snatched up’, or given a tow, by friendly tug skippers, often ‘for a drink’ taken from the cargo.
There were also smaller barges , with either lightweight sprits or lug rigs (jury rigs) on short masts so they could be sailed between bridges, whilst others known as ‘stumpies’ dispensed with topmasts and bowsprits.
The free water clause meant barges and lighters could be left unattended in the enclosed docks for short periods, waiting to receive/load cargoes directly from shipside. As Bob Roberts, a skipper of mainly engineless sailing barges from the 1930s to 1970s, commented:
‘Some of the hardest work I have ever done in my life has been in the docks of the Port of London and many are the curses I have rained upon bridgemen who won’t raise bridges, tugmen who won’t tow you, especially if it’s near knocking-off time, lightermen who cast you off without warning. Here and there we find a PLA man with a soft spot for sailormen but they are few and far between. So much for the docks, they are no haven of refuge for a sailorman.’
The River Lee Navigation was reconstructed largely as a canal in 1767-70, with its Limehouse Cut avoiding the long and awkward journey via Bow Creek and the Isle of Dogs. The War Department had a fleet of small barges which brought down ammunition from the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey to Woolwich Arsenal.
The Regent’s Canal provided a direct connection to the Midlands and for distributing much seaborne coal and timber, regular cargoes for sailing barges; with Henry Dodd, the ‘Golden Dustman’ owning giant dust heaps near Kings’ Cross and a fleet of barges carrying refuse from there to the Kent brickfields, returning with bricks.
Dodd’s story was a real ‘rags to riches’ one, as he started life as a ploughboy, then became a scavenger, building up a rubbish empire. He started the first properly organised Thames Sailing Barge Race in 1863. Dickens knew Dodd and based his character ‘Noddy’ Boffin in Our Mutual Friend on him.
There were some distinct Regent’s Canal or ‘Cut’ barges, very narrow, and measuring 70ft x 12.6ft to fit the locks. Working such waterways for these and other small barges, mainly stumpies, was an arduous job: the anchor had to be brought aboard, and then the barge boat; the leeboards had to be unshipped; the mainmast lowered; and the sprit unshackled. At the destination, such as a gasworks, the sprit was re-shackled, mast and sprit raised, leeboards and boat put ashore. Sometimes coke was shipped on return trips, if not and particularly after rain with the canal level raised, the bilges had to be filled to give less freeboard to go under bridges. At the Regent’s Canal Dock water had to be pumped out and all the gear re-rigged.
Thornhill Wharf on the Regent’s near King’s Cross was used by barges until the early 1930s, to deliver cement and an example of the many cement companies was Tunnel Cement, West Thurrock, who delivered to the docks and elsewhere.
Off Coalhouse Point, Tilbury sailing barges called ‘sandies’ dredged silver sand with huge leather scoops, sold to London taverns – for floor scouring – and for foundry castings. The ballast trade involved barges loading from dredgers in Sea Reach, and then taking cargoes upstream to building suppliers’ wharves.
Because crews were paid by the freight they drew no money while waiting for cargoes, often on buoys such as those at Woolwich, known as ‘Starvation Buoys.’ Skippers were sculled ashore by the mate to telephone for orders. After World War II owners would phone Mrs Riley, a shop-owner and she would go on to the foreshore and shout the name of the barge so the skipper knew he had to phone to see where he was going to load.
The Port of London Authority (PLA) put down buoys at barge roads, and at the mouth of each creek and dock, which were leased to companies for mooring lighters and barges.
From 1890 there were powder hulks moored in the Lower Hope and only sailing barges – which had low risks of fire – were allowed to carry explosives or ammunition to-and-from ships, docks and wharves. Some of these ‘powder barges’ had the upper works of their hulls painted red and all had to carry a red warning flag at the peak of their sprits. Once the PLA allowed powered vessels to carry explosives on the Thames, in the 1950s, the sailing barge trade rapidly declined.
Many wharves benefitted from the ‘free water clause’ in the original West India Dock Act, then extended to other docks. This concession meant that all barges arriving or leaving wet docks could do so free of charge to load/unload ships. Sailing barges went to all these docks, as well as to riverside and railway wharves at Brentford, Battersea, Chelsea, Nine Elms, Blackfriars, Deptford and Angerstein’s in Bugsby’s Reach.
By the early 1900s there were 1700 riverside wharves between Gravesend and Brentford. Most of these relied on barges and small motor coasters , as did towns such as Dartford and Crayford on the navigable creeks.
In 1907 there had been about 2090 sailing barges working on the Thames and in the coasting trade. Most of these barges had been built along the Thames and in Kent, Essex and Suffolk ports. By 1930 the number of sailing barges had about halved and, as they lost their traditional trades, many barges were sold off cheaply to become yachts or houseboats. The number of working barges was down to six hundred by 1939 and had halved again by the end of World War II. In 1954, only 34 sailing barges were still at work, supplemented by 44 engined auxiliary craft. Both were outnumbered by the 88 entirely motorised barges that worked the Port. Most of the sailing barges proper had finished by 1960 and only Cambria, skippered by Bob Roberts carried freights under sail until 1970. Some were converted as motor barges and continued for longer but others suffered from the winding down of the London docks system, with the collapse of the whole water transport infrastructure.
Today there are some thirty sailing barges to be seen around the Thames Estuary and in various other berths, including Maldon, Faversham – where Cambria is usually moored – and St. Katharine Docks. Some preserved sailing barges offer charters and day trips – which are promoted in TDHG Newsletters. Sailing barge matches, or races, are still organised and these present the best opportunity to see these magnificent craft in action.
Peter Finch, 2025
More information can be obtained from:
Society for Sailing Barge Research – sailingbargeresearch.org.uk.
Thames Sailing Barge Trust – bargetrust.org.
Further reading:
There are many useful publications on Thames sailing barges, including a good many by those who once worked on them. The best comprehensive work on the subject still remains Frank G. G. Carr’s Sailing Barges (Lavenham, revised edition,1989