Waterman (occupation)

In 1197, King Richard I sold the Crown's rights over the Thames to the Corporation of the City of London, which tried to issue licensing to boats on the river.

[3] In 1510, Henry VIII granted a licence (a form of licensed public transport) to watermen, giving exclusive rights to carry passengers on the river.

The Act empowered the London mayor and aldermen to yearly choose eight of the "best sort" of watermen to be company rulers, and to make and enforce regulations.

This was a constant source of grievance and dispute with company rulers who were frequently accused of taking bribes to "free" apprentice watermen.

A twenty-year campaign by the rank-and-file of the watermen, to introduce a more representative government in their company, resulted, on the eve of the English Civil War in 1642, in the introduction of a form of indirect democracy.

[6][7] London's lack of bridges and rolling marshy landscape to the south and east were perfect for access by boat and the Thames was the main thoroughfare for all kinds of traffic.

Samuel Pepys, who commuted by water from his home to his job at the Admiralty, refers to the death of his waterman in his diaries of 1665 revealing the particular vulnerability of Thames watermen to infection during the Great Plague of London.

Apart from the obvious occupational risks of the trade, death by drowning, watermen were particularly susceptible to bronchial diseases caught from working and living close to waters of the Thames.

The invention of the flush toilet in the 1840s quickly turned the Thames into a giant sewer causing typhoid and cholera outbreaks and the Great Stink of 1858.

An 1859 Act of Parliament abolished many privileges held by the Watermen's Company; further, it set up the Thames Conservancy creating two bodies with responsibilities for the Thames.In 1871 the Labour Protection League gave lightermen in particular the ability to negotiate better terms from their employers.

The transport of coal and goods was of particular importance during wartime, however, during the 1920s worsening conditions and industrial action again brought London's docks to a halt.

Bombing during the Blitz of World War II severely damaged the docks, and by the 1960s, newer container technology and relocation to Tilbury had made the lightermen's trade, lighterage, obsolete.

In the lighterage sector Cory Environmental, originally an amalgamation of eight companies, bucked the trend of this traditionally fragmented industry by capitalizing on an opportunity and used its empty coal barges, on return trips, to transport rubbish from London's streets[15] generating enough extra revenue to buy up surplus barges from smaller lighterage companies as they sold up.

Its ancient apprenticeship index[17] is a unique resource to genealogical research however despite its mediæval guild roots it is an active lobbying force today.

Working alongside The Passenger Boat Association, it consults and negotiates with national and local government and its agencies on behalf of its members.

In 2003 funds were made available via CWL using government grants, to assist apprentices from the riverside east London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham.

Rather than a five-year apprenticeship, it enables anyone to become a captain after a less onerous qualification period of just two years plus six months of "local knowledge" training on the central stretch of the Thames.

As well as in Britain itself, the term "watermen" was used to describe boatmen performing essentially similar duties on coastal waterways in the British colonies.

The heyday of Hobart Town's watermen was from the 1840s to the mid-1850s, when over 200 licences were issued to different individuals, but with improved steam ferry services the numbers declined and in 1896 only 21 were licensed.

The enslaved Africans had engaged in oystering, crabbing, fishing, sailing, boat building and net making in their homeland, and many of them took up the same occupations in the Chesapeake Bay.

[28] In the following centuries, their descendants helped build the communities and the culture that formed around the Bay, and their labor contributed greatly to the development of the region's economically dominant marine industries and naval presence.

[29] African American watermen became expert fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay area and border state of Maryland's Eastern Shore, but with the arrival of steamboats in the 19th century many of them found work as river workers.

African American watermen went on to gain financial success and freedom by specialising in the crewing of these boats within the Mississippi River Steamboat economy of the 1840s.