River Thames

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Thames
Image:Thames River London.jpg The Thames in London
Country	England, United Kingdom
Regions	Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Essex, Kent
Major cities	Oxford, Reading, Windsor, London
Length	346 km (215 mi)
Watershed	12,935 km² (4,994 sq mi)
Discharge at	London
- average	65.8 m³/s (2,324 cu ft/s)
Discharge elsewhere
- entering Oxford	17.6 m³/s (622 cu ft/s)
- leaving Oxford	24.8 m³/s (876 cu ft/s)
- Reading	39.7 m³/s (1,402 cu ft/s)
- Windsor	59.3 m³/s (2,094 cu ft/s)
Source
- location	Kemble
- elevation	110 m (361 ft)
Mouth	Thames Estuary, North Sea
- location	Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK
- elevation	0 m (0 ft)
Image:Thames map.png

The Thames (pronounced /tɛmz/) is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading and Windsor.

The river gives its name to the Thames Valley, a region of England centred around the river between Oxford and West London, and the Thames Gateway, the area centred around the tidal Thames and the Thames Estuary to the east of London.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Physical and natural aspects 2.1 Course of the river 2.2 Catchment area and discharge 2.2.1 The non-tidal section 2.2.2 The tidal section 2.3 Islands 2.4 Geological history 2.5 Wildlife 3 Human Aspects 3.1 Human history 3.2 Origin of the name 3.3 Navigation 3.4 The river as a boundary 3.5 Crossings 3.6 Tourism 4 Sport 4.1 Rowing 4.2 Sailing 4.3 Skiffing 4.4 Punting 4.5 Kayaking and Canoeing 4.6 Meanders 5 Culture 5.1 Literature 5.2 Visual arts 5.3 Music 5.4 Cinema and Television 6 See also 7 Miscellaneous 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Summary

The River Thames is the longest river entirely in England, rising officially at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flowing into the North Sea at the Thames Estuary. It has a special significance in flowing through London, the capital of the United Kingdom, although London only touches a short part of its course. The river is tidal in London with a rise and fall of 7 metres (23 ft) and becomes non-tidal at Teddington Lock. The catchment area covers a large part of South Eastern and Western England and the river is fed by over 20 tributaries. The river contains over 80 islands, and having both seawater and freshwater stretches supports a variety of wildlife.

The river has supported human activity from its source to its mouth for thousands of years providing habitation, water power, food and drink. It has also acted as a major highway both for international trade through the Port of London, and internally along its length and connecting to the British canal system. The river’s strategic position has seen it at the centre of many events and fashions in British history, earning it a description as “Liquid History”. It has been a physical and political boundary over the centuries and generated a range of river crossings. In more recent time the river has become a major leisure area supporting tourism and pleasure outings as well as the sports of rowing, sailing, skiffing, kayaking, and punting. The river has had a special appeal to writers, artists, musicians and film-makers and is well represented in the arts. It is still the subject of various debates about its course, nomenclature and history.

[edit] Physical and natural aspects

[edit] Course of the river

The Thames has a length of 215 miles (346 km). Its usually quoted source is at Thames Head (at grid reference ST980994), about a mile north of the village of Kemble and near the town of Cirencester, in the Cotswolds. However, Seven Springs near Cheltenham, where the river Churn rises, is also sometimes quoted as the Thames' source, as this location is furthest from the mouth both in distance along its course and as the crow flies. The springs at Seven Springs also flow throughout the year, while those at Thames Head are only seasonal.

The Thames flows through Ashton Keynes, Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford, Abingdon, Wallingford, Goring-on-Thames, Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Marlow, Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton, Staines and Weybridge, before entering the Greater London area.

From the outskirts of Greater London, the river passes Hampton Court, Kingston, Teddington, Twickenham, Richmond (with a famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill), Syon House 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 and was the southern boundary of the mediaeval city.

Once past central London, the river passes between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, before flowing through the Thames Barrier, which protects central London from flooding in the event of storm surges. Below the barrier, the river passes Dartford, Tilbury and Gravesend before entering the Thames Estuary near Southend-on-Sea.

[edit] Catchment area and discharge

The river drains a catchment area of 4,994 square miles (12,934 km²) or 5,924 square miles (15,343 km²) if the River Medway is included as a tributary.^[1]

[edit] The non-tidal section

Innumerable brooks, canals and rivers, within an area of 3,841 square miles (9,948 km²), 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.

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.

During heavy rainfall the Thames occasionally receives raw sewage discharge due to sanitary sewer overflow.

[edit] The tidal section

About 55 miles (89 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.^{[citation needed]} 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, Roding, Darent and Ingrebourne.

The average discharge of the Thames grows up to approximately 66 m³/s 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.^{[citation needed]}

Some low-lying areas beside the tidal section of the Thames regularly flood at spring tides. However, in recent years, the flooding has been occurring more frequently at unusual times. One such example exists at Chiswick Lane South in London's W4 postal district, where the river now bursts its banks almost daily between March and September.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Islands

Main article: Islands in the River Thames

The river Thames contains over 80 islands ranging from the large esturial marshlands of the Isle of Sheppey, Isle of Grain and Canvey Island to small tree covered islets like Rose Isle, Oxfordshire and Headpile Eyot Berkshire. Some of the largest inland islands - Formosa Island near Cookham and Andersey Island at Abingdon - were created naturally when the course of the river divided into separate streams, while Desborough Island, Ham Island at Old Windsor and Penton Hook Island were artificially created by lock cuts and navigation channels. Chiswick Eyot is a familiar landmark on the Boat Race course, while Glover's Island forms the centrepiece of the spectacular view from Richmond Hill. Islands with a historical interest are Magna Carta Island at Runnymede, Fry's Island at Reading and Pharaoh's Island near Shepperton. In more recent times Platts Eyot at Hampton was the place where MTBs were built, Tagg's Island near Molesey was associated with the impresario Fred Karno, and Eel Pie Island at Twickenham was the birthplace of the South East’s R&B music scene.

[edit] Geological history

The River Thames can first be identified as a discrete drainage line as early as 58 million years ago, in the late Palaeocene Period Thanetian Stage.^[2] Until around half a million years ago, the Thames flowed on its existing course through what is now Oxfordshire, before turning to the north east through Hertfordshire and East Anglia and reaching the North Sea near Ipswich. At this time the river system headwaters lay in the English West Midlands and may, at times, have received drainage from the North Wales Berwyn Mountains. Arrival of an ice sheet in the Quaternary Ice Age, about 450,000 years ago, dammed the river in Hertfordshire and caused it to be diverted onto its present course through London. This created a new river route aligned through Berkshire and on into London after which the river rejoined its original course in southern Essex, near the present River Blackwater estuary. Here it entered a substantial freshwater lake in the southern North Sea basin. The overspill of this lake caused the formation of the Dover Straits or Pas-de-Calais gap between Britain and France. Subsequent development led to the continuation of the course which the river follows at the present day.^[3]

At the height of the last ice age around 12000 years ago, Britain was connected to mainland Europe via a large expanse of land known as Doggerland in the southern North Sea basin. At this time, the Thames' course did not continue to Doggerland, but was aligned southwards from the eastern Essex coast where it met the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt^[3] flowing from what are now The Netherlands and Belgium. These rivers formed a single river—the Channel River (Fleuve Manche)—that passed through the Dover Strait and drained into the Atlantic Ocean in the western English Channel.

[edit] Wildlife

Various species of bird or feed off the river or nest on it, some being found both at sea and inland. These include Cormorant, Black-headed Gull, and Herring Gull. The Swan is a familiar sight on the river but the Black Swan is more rare. The annual ceremony of Swan upping is an old tradition of counting stocks. Geese that can be seen include Canada Geese, Egyptian Geese, and Bar-headed Geese, and familiar ducks include the Mallard, Mandarin Duck, and Wood Duck. Other water birds to be found on the Thames include the Great Crested Grebe, Coot, Moorhen, Heron, and Kingfisher. In addition there are many types of British birds that live alongside the river, although they are not specific to the river habitat.

The Thames contains both seawater and freshwater, thus providing support for seawater and freshwater fish. The salmon, which inhabits both environments has been reintroduced, and succession of fish ladders built into weirs to allow them to travel upstream. The eel is a particularly associated with the Thames and there were formerly many eel traps designed to catch them. Some of the freshwater fish to be found in the Thames and its tributaries include brown trout, chub, dace, roach, barbel, perch, pike, bleak, and flounder.

In addition the Thames is host to some invasive crustaceans including Signal crayfish and Chinese Mitten Crab.

On January 20, 2006, a northern 16-18 ft (5 m) 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. There was a rescue attempt lasting several hours, but it eventually died on a barge. See River Thames whale.^[4]

[edit] Human Aspects

The River Thames has served several roles in human history, being an economic resource, a water highway, a boundary, and more recently a leisure facility.

[edit] Human history

There is evidence of human habitation living off the river along its length dating back to Neolithic times.^[5] The British Museum has a decorated bowl (3300-2700BC), found in the River at Hedsor, Buckinghamshire and a considerable amount of material was discovered during the excavations of Dorney Lake.^[6] A number of Bronze Age sites and artifacts have been discovered along the banks of the River including settlements at Lechlade, Cookham and Sunbury-on-Thames. Some of the earliest written accounts of the Thames occur in Julius Caesar’s account of his second expedition to Britain in 54BC^[7] when the Thames presented a major obstacle and he encountered the Iron Age Belgic tribes the Catuvellauni, and the Atrebates along the river.

Under the Emperor Claudius in AD 43, the Romans occupied England and recognising the River's strategic and economic importance, built fortifications along the Thames valley including a major camp at Dorchester. Two hills, now known as Cornhill and Ludgate Hill, provided a firm base for a trading centre at the lowest possible point on the Thames called Londinium where a bridge was built. The next Roman bridge upstream was at Staines (Pontes) to which point boats could be swept up on the rising tide with no need for wind or muscle power. Many of the Thames’ riverside settlements trace their origins back to very early roots and the suffix - “ing” in towns such as Goring and Reading, Berkshire owes their origins to the Saxons. Recent research suggests that these peoples preceded the Romans rather than replaced them.^[8] The river’s long tradition of farming, fishing, milling and trade with other nations started with these peoples and has continued to the present day. Competition for the use of the river created the centuries-old conflict between those who wanted to dam the river to build millraces and fish traps and those who wanted to travel and carry goods on it. Economic prosperity and the foundation of wealthy monasteries by the Anglo-Saxons attracted unwelcome visitors and by around AD870 the Vikings were sweeping up the Thames on the tide and creating havoc as in their destruction of Chertsey Abbey.

Once King William had won total control of the strategic Thames Valley he went on to invade the rest of England. He had many castles built, including those at Wallingford, Rochester, Windsor and most importantly the Tower of London. Many details of Thames activity are recorded in the Domesday book. The following centuries saw the conflict between King and Barons coming to a head in AD1215 when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta on an island in the Thames at Runnymede. This granted them among a host of other things under Clause 23 the right of Navigation. Another major consequence of John’s reign was the completion of the multi-piered London Bridge which acted as a barricade and barrage on the river, affecting the tidal flow upstream and increasing the likelihood of freezing over. In Tudor and Stuart times the Kings and Queens loved the river and built magnificent riverside palaces at Hampton Court, Kew, Richmond on Thames, Whitehall and Greenwich.

The 16th and 17th Centuries saw the City of London grow with the expansion of world trade. The wharves of the Pool of London were thick with sea-going vessels while naval dockyards were built at Deptford. The Dutch navy even entered the Thames in 1667 in the raid on the Medway.

A cold series of winters led to the Thames freezing over above London Bridge, and 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. In good conditions barges travelled daily from Oxford to London carrying timber and wool, foodstuffs and livestock, battling with the millers on the way. The stone from the Cotswolds used to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire in 1666 was brought all the way down from Radcot. The Thames provided the major highway between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries and the clannish guild of watermen ferried Londoners from landing to landing and tolerated no outside interference. In AD 1715 Thomas Doggett was so grateful to a local waterman for his efforts to ferry him home pulling against the tide, that he set up a rowing race for professional watermen known as “Doggett's Coat and Badge”.

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 and progressively over the next century the docks expanded in the Isle of Dogs and beyond.. Efforts were made to resolve the navigation conflicts up stream by building locks along the Thames. After temperatures began to rise again, starting in 1814, the river stopped freezing over completely.^[9] The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 with fewer pillars than the old, allowed the river to flow more freely and reduced the likelihood of freezing over in cold winters.^[10]

The Victorian era was an era of imaginative engineering. In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river reached such proportions 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. Meanwhile, similar huge undertakings took place to ensure water supply, with the building of reservoirs and pumping stations on the river to the west of London. The embankments in London house the water supply to homes, plus the sewers, and protect London from flood. The coming of rail added both spectacular and ugly railway bridges to fine range of earlier road bridges but reduced commercial activity on the river. However sporting and leisure use increased with the establishment of regattas like Henley and The Boat Race. On 3 September 1878, one of the worst river disasters in England took place, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collided with the Bywell Castle, killing over 640 people.

The growth of road transport and the decline of the Empire, in the years following 1914, reduced the economic prominence of the river. In the late 20th and early 21st century, London itself is no longer a port of any note and the Port of London has moved downstream to Tilbury. In return, the river has undergone a massive clean-up, since the filthy days of the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries and aquatic life has returned to its formerly 'dead' waters. Alongside the river runs the Thames Path, providing a route for walkers and cyclists.

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 (as in the 1928 Thames flood for example). In the late 1990s, the 7-mile (11 km) long Jubilee River was built, which acts as a flood channel for the Thames around Maidenhead and Windsor.^[11]

[edit] Origin of the name

The Thames, from Middle English Temese, is derived from the Celtic name for the river, Tamesas (from *tamēssa)^[12], recorded in Latin as Tamesis and underlying modern Welsh Tafwys "Thames". The name probably meant "dark" and can be compared to other cognates such as Irish teimheal and Welsh tywyll "darkness" (PC *temeslos) and Middle Irish teimen "dark gray"^[13], though Richard Coates^[14] mentions other theories: Kenneth Jackson's^[15] that it is non Indo-European (and of unknown meaning), and Peter Kitson's^[16] that it is IE but pre-Celtic, and has a name indicating muddiness from a root *tã-, 'melt'.

The river's name has always been pronounced with a simple t; the Middle English spelling was typically Temese and Celtic 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 were erroneously thought to have migrated.

Indirect evidence for the antiquity of the name 'Thames' is provided by a Roman potsherd found at Oxford, bearing the inscription Tamesubugus fecit (Tamesubugus made this). It is believed that Tamesubugus's name was derived from that of the river.^[17]

The part of the Thames running through Oxford is often given the name the River Isis, although historically, and especially in Victorian times, gazetteers and cartographers insisted that the entire river was correctly named the River Isis from its source until Dorchester-on-Thames. Only at this point, where the river meets the River Thame and becomes the "Thame-isis" (subsequently abbreviated to Thames) should it be so-called; current Ordnance Survey maps still label the Thames as "River Thames or Isis" until Dorchester. However since the early 20th century, this distinction has been lost in common usage outside Oxford, and some historians suggest the name Isis—although possibly named after the Egyptian goddess of that name—is nothing more than a contraction of Tamesis, the Latin (or pre-Roman Celtic) name for the Thames.

Richard Coates suggests that while the river was as a whole called the Thames, part of it, where it was too wide to ford, was called *(p)lowonida. This gave the name to a settlement on its banks, which became known as Londinium, from the Indo-European roots *pleu- "flow" and *-nedi "river" meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing unfordable river).^[14]

For merchant seamen, the Thames has long been just 'The London River'. Londoners often refer to it simply as 'the river', in expressions such as 'south of the river'.^[18]

[edit] Navigation

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.

The tidal part of the river has a speed limit of 8 knots (15 km/h) west (upstream) of the Wandsworth Bridge;^[19] east of this point, there is no speed limit although boats are not allowed to create undue wash. An episode of Top Gear in 2007 showed Jeremy Clarkson driving a boat at claimed speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (113 km/h) near Canary Wharf. On the non-tidal Thames the Environment Agency enforces a strict limit of 8 kilometres per hour (5 mph). There are pairs of transit markers at various points that can be used to check speed - a boat travelling legally taking a minute or more to pass between the two markers.

The non-tidal River Thames is divided into reaches by the 45 locks. Each reach is associated with the lock below it. See Locks on the River Thames for a full list of all locks, each of which has an article containing a description of its respective reach.

[edit] The river as a boundary

The river itself 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 boundary between Oxfordshire and Berkshire was also moved at that time.

[edit] Crossings

Main article: Crossings of the River Thames

Famous crossings over the Thames include:

• Dartford Crossing
• Blackwall Tunnel
• Rotherhithe Tunnel
• Thames Tunnel
• Tower Bridge
• London Bridge
• Millennium Bridge
• Blackfriars Bridge
• Hungerford Bridge
• Westminster Bridge
• Teddington Lock - (Cyclists, pedestrians and wheelchairs only)
• Windsor Bridge
• Maidenhead Railway Bridge
• Marlow Bridge
• Folly Bridge

[edit] Tourism

The river is popular with tourists. There are many sightseeing tours in tourist boats, especially in the lower reaches past the more famous riverside attractions such as the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London. One of the largest operators on the River Thames is French Brothers who are based on the non-tidal Thames at Windsor, Runnymede and Maidenhead.

[edit] Sport

There are several watersports prevalent on the Thames, with many clubs encouraging participation and organising racing and inter-club competitions.

[edit] Rowing

The Thames is the historic heartland of rowing in the United Kingdom. There are over 200 clubs on the river, and over 8,000 members of the Amateur Rowing Association (over 40% of its membership). Most towns and districts of any size on the river have at least one club, but key centres are Oxford, Henley-on-Thames and the stretch of river from Chiswick to Putney.

Two rowing events on the River Thames are traditionally part of the wider English sporting calendar:

The University Boat Race is rowed between Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club in late March or early April, on the Championship Course from Putney to Mortlake in the west of London.

Henley Royal Regatta takes place over five days at the start of July in 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.

Other significant or historic rowing events on the Thames include:

• The Head of the River Race and other head races over the Championship Course
• The Wingfield Sculls for the amateur sculling championship of the Thames and Great Britain
• Doggett's Coat and Badge for apprentice watermen, one of the oldest sporting events in the world
• Henley Women's Regatta
• The Henley Boat Races for the Women's and Lightweight crews of Oxford and Cambridge Universities
• The Oxford University bumping races known as Eights Week and Torpids

Innumerable other regattas, head races and bumping races are held along the Thames which are described under Rowing on the River Thames.

[edit] Sailing

Sailing is practiced on both the tidal and non-tidal reaches of the river. The highest club upstream is at Oxford. The most popular sailing craft used on the Thames are lasers, GP14s, and Wayfarers. One sailing boat unique to the Thames is the Thames Rater, which is sailed around Raven's Ait.

Clubs in and near the London section of the Thames include:

• London Corinthian Sailing Club near Hammersmith Bridge
• South Bank Sailing Club in Putney
• Ranelagh Sailing Club in Putney
• Docklands Sailing And Watersports Centre at Millwall Dock
• Capital Sailing School at Millwall Dock
• The Surrey Docks Watersports Centre at Surrey Quays.
• The Ahoy Centre in Deptford
• Thurrock Yacht Club in Thurrock
• Greenwich Yacht Club in Greenwich
• Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge
• Thames Sailing Club in Surbiton
• Hampton Sailing Club in Hampton, London
• Little Ship Club near Southwark Bridge

Clubs Upstream of London Include:

• Goring Thames Sailing Club in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
• Upper Thames Sailing Club in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire
• Cookham Reach Sailing Club in Cookham, Berkshire
• Medley Sailing Club in Oxford, Oxfordshire
• Dorchester Sailing Club near Dorchester-on-Thames, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Clubs in the Lower Thames Include:

• Gravesend Sailing Club in Gravesend, Kent
• Erith Yacht Club near Erith, Kent

See also:

• The Thames Sailing Barge Trust
• Sailing on the River Thames by the The River Thames Alliance, a partnership between public and private sector organisations set up to help manage the future of the non-tidal Thames.

[edit] Skiffing

Skiffing remains popular, particularly in the summer months. Several clubs and regattas may be found in the outer suburbs of west London.

[edit] Punting

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.

[edit] Kayaking and Canoeing

Kayaking and canoeing are popular, with sea kayakers using the tidal stretch for touring. Sheltered water kayakers and canoeists use the non-tidal section for training, racing and trips. Whitewater playboaters and slalom paddlers are catered for at weirs like those at Hurley Lock, Sunbury Lock and Boulter's Lock. At Teddington just before the tidal section of the river starts is Royal Canoe Club said to be the oldest in the world founded in 1867.

[edit] Meanders

A Thames meander is a long-distance journey over all or part of the Thames by running, swimming or using any of the above means. It is often carried out as an athletic challenge in a competition or for a record attempt.

[edit] Culture

[edit] 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 by William Morris is mainly the account of a journey through the Thames valley in a socialist future. Another is featured in The Amulet of Samarkand from The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, when Nathaniel plans to toss a can of tobacco into the Thames in order to imprison Bartimaeus. 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 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.

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 Britannia 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).

Samuel Pepys recorded many events relating to the Thames in his diary and was disturbed while writing it in June 1667 by the sound of gunfire as Dutch warships broke through the Royal Navy on the Thames.

In poetry, T. S. Eliot references the Thames at the beginning of The Fire Sermon, Section III of "The Waste Land". It could be said that the references make for a spiritual reverence of the river, as the river is referred to as "sweet". However he also refers to the area as "brown" and throughout this poem the semantic field evokes feelings of decay with its references to detritus. William Blake makes reference to the Thames in his famous poem London:^[20]

I wander thro' each charter'd street,/ Near where the charter'd Thames does flow

In this instance, it could be said that the Thames is a boundless and free notion; but Blake seems to be showing here a disdain for its apparent 'chartered' nature. Joseph Brodsky wrote a poem entitled "The Thames at Chelsea".

[edit] Visual arts

John Kaufman's sculpture The Diver:Regeneration can be found sited in the Thames near Rainham.

[edit] Music

The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered in the summer of 1717 (July 17, 1717) when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed for King George I on his barge and he is said to have enjoyed it so much that he ordered the 50 exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.

The Sex Pistols played a concert on the Queen Elizabeth Riverboat on June 7, 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee year, while sailing down the river.

[edit] Cinema and Television

A boat chase on the Thames forms the long opening scene of the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. The offices of MI6, Britain's external spy agency, are right on the river in a building known as Vauxhall Cross.

The theme of the Thames being completely drained was used in the Doctor Who episode "The Runaway Bride". This theme was also used in the Hollywood Blockbuster Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), where a huge hole in the riverbed beside Westminster Bridge and the London Eye stranded the items formerly floating on the river. Traversed on an episode of Top Gear season 10 episode 5.

[edit] See also

• Port of London
• Thames Barrier
• Crossings of the River Thames
• Locks on the River Thames
• Weirs on the River Thames
• Marchioness disaster
• The Diver
• Torso in the Thames
• River and Rowing Museum
• Rivers of the United Kingdom
• Swan Upping
• UK topics
• Thames Town
• Thames Television
• London Stones beside the river
• London River Services

[edit] Miscellaneous

• ** Polar explorer and endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh became the first person ever to swim the length of the Thames. His journey started on 17th July 2006 close to the source of the river in Gloucestershire and ended 147 miles (237 km) later in London. Pugh undertook the challenge to raise awareness of climate change.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Ackroyd, Peter (2007). Thames: Sacred River. Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0701172843. 

[edit] External links

• The River Thames Guide - Covers all of the Thames and many aspects including Accommodation, Thames Information, etc.
• A guide to the River Thames Above Teddington - Information on boating, fishing, walking and places to eat, drink and stay.
• The Thames Estuary Partnership
• River Thames
• Article includes map of the River Thames catchment area
• Thames Gallery at the River and Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames
• The Thames Path
• etymology of Thames
• The Thames Path National Trail
• The Thames from Hampton Court to Sunbury Lock
• Photos of the Thames at central London
• Independent Guide to the River Thames and its famous Tow Path
• Walks along the Thames Path
• Source of the Thames from Google Maps — this map stops tracing the river at Ashton Keynes, south-west from Kemble
• Michael Pead :: Photos of the River Thames
• Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide - by John Eade
• Physiography, T.H. Huxley, 1978 The physical geography of the Thames River Basin as seen by Huxley in 1878. Full text free to read and search, Courtesy the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Library.
• The Mirror of the Sea, Joseph Conrad at Wikiquote. From the estuary to the Port of London by boat in 1906, when the port was the commercial heart of the British Empire.
• London's River - An intriguing journey down the Thames in rare archive film.
• Hammersmith London Regatta
• [1] For more information on the Air Race.
• River Thames - A Brief History Article explaining the Thames' History over 400,000 years.

v • d • e River Thames, UK
Counties	Gloucestershire · Oxfordshire · Berkshire · Buckinghamshire · Greater London
Mouth	Thames Estuary
Settlements	Ashton Keynes · Cricklade · Lechlade · Oxford · Abingdon · Wallingford · Goring-On-Thames · Reading · Henley-on-Thames · Marlow · Maidenhead · Windsor · Eton · Slough · Staines · Weybridge · London · Dartford · Tilbury · Southend-on-Sea
Major tributaries	Churn · Leach · Cole · Coln · Windrush · Evenlode · Cherwell · Ock · Thame · Pang · Kennet · Loddon · Colne · Wey · Mole · Brent · Wandle · Effra · Westbourne · Fleet · Ravensbourne (Deptford Creek) · Lee · Darent · Ingrebourne
Major crossings	Dartford Crossing · Blackwall Tunnel · Rotherhithe Tunnel · Thames Tunnel · Tower Bridge · London Bridge · Millennium Bridge · Blackfriars Bridge Hungerford Bridge · Westminster Bridge · Teddington Lock · Staines Bridge · Windsor Bridge · Maidenhead Railway Bridge · Marlow Bridge · Folly Bridge (all)
Longest UK rivers: 1. Severn 2. Thames 3. Trent 4. Great Ouse 5. Wye 6. Tay 7. Spey 8. Nene 9. Clyde 10. Tweed 11. Eden 12. Dee

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