Sailing upriver Thames

[Matusalem]

I've seen the Thames, and the few times that I was there, I was along the banks not far from the HMS Belfast, I saw some muddy shoals. How does a sailing ship make it up a river this shallow?...all those poor captured pirates en route to Marshalsea prison.

[JoshuaRed]

I'm just guessing based on accounts I've read of other rivers/canals from the sail era....that there was a thriving industry of small boats and/or oxen teams on the banks that pulled ships upriver?

Barring that there was always using the anchor to slowly work your way upstream. Just have a longboat row the anchor way out ahead of the ship, drop it, pull up to to it and repeat.

Again, just guessing. Sure I'll get b*tch slapped for it by someone how knows far more than I....

[Gentleman of Fortune]

Hey Josh!

Haven't seen you around in a while... Guess you been hanging out in the pubs other forums (where I seldom frequent... )

Glad to see you back in 'twill

GoF

[LocktownDog]

I've seen the Thames, and the few times that I was there, I was along the banks not far from the HMS Belfast, I saw some muddy shoals. How does a sailing ship make it up a river this shallow?...all those poor captured pirates en route to Marshalsea prison.

Keep in mind that the river wasn't always that shallow. There have been a lot of manmade changes to the area over the past few centuries. Drainage isn't what it used to be, traffic increases constantly, etc. Rivers like to make there own way through a landscape. But most can no longer do so, because of building along the banks. In trying to constrain a river to our boundaries, we might be constraining ourselves by inadvertantly narrowing channels and building sandbars.

Richard

[Capt. Sterling]

**By the 1720s, according to Daniel Defoe, there were 'about two thousand sail of all sorts, not reckoning barges, lighters or pleasure boats or yachts' using the wharves and quays.

There is mention that damns (?) or other types of wall building along the Thames, allowed the river to become deeper...?? anyone know more about that...don't forget major shipbuilding took place on the Thames as well and the congestion during the 18th century was supposedly terrible, ships having to wait their turn to unload cargo... so at one point she had to be deeper than what you saw...

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

Locktown makes good sense. there is still the question of "how" to sail upriver. Depends on many variables;

Wind; is there any and what direction?

Tide; In or out?

Draft of craft.

During the American War for Independence, one account of a raid by our very own John Paul Jones has the crew pulling the ship upstream using tow-lines from the ships boats at night. After completeting the raid and loading the plunder they drifted back down and out to sea. I wasn't there so I couldn't say whether it actually happened just like that, but it does have the common sense factor.

Bo

[Matusalem]

Hard to tack a sailing vessel when the river is a ssssnake!

[Captain Jim]

A good way to determine the method would be to "reverse engineer" the method, first by obtaining an accurate period depiction of the Thames and any warfage that existed then. Determine tidal range. Assume a deeper channel than exists today (less flood control = deeper natural channel). If the warfage for the deeper ships was in the tidal area, assume some help from the natural reversal of flow. Are there any mentions of tow roads next to the river? Many canals in Upstate NY have have roads for mules to tow barges far inland. The same could have been used on the Thames. Written records? Naval accounts?

[JoshuaRed]

I think I recall Marcus Rediker talking a lot about the NY tow-roads in one of his books.

[blackjohn]

Seamanship in the Age of Sail by Harland covers this pretty well.

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

YAAAY! It worked again! Just a little uneducated speculation here always brings out the fellers or ladies with the books!

Bo

[Coastie04]

Also remember that many times ships would just have to wait for a favorable wind to sail up a river. Even packet ships in the 19th century would wait for a favorable wind before crossing a dangerous river bar, and vessels were still "sailing with the tide." Heck, I spent two years as a deck officer on a US Coast Guard cutter, and we still, with modern propulsion (heck, one of the newest ships in the fleet), wait for the proper tides to transit some areas. Granted, it's the inside passage of Alaska with 20ft tides and strong currents, but those considerations would have been taken into account under sail with weaker forces.

Coastie

[Morgan Dreadlocke]

An interesting snippet of water depth-

"Between 1620 and 1624 he successfully manoeuvred his craft at depths of from 12 to 15 feet (four to five meters) beneath the surface during repeated trials in the Thames River."

Full artical at Drebble's submarine