Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Horse power




I have just begun to read Arthur Jacob’s 1986 biography of Sir Arthur Sullivan, & was rather taken aback to learn, from the description of the Lambeth into which Sullivan was born in 1842, that before Lambeth Bridge was built the two sides of the Thames were connected by a horse ferry. Although I spent years in the vicinity of Horseferry Road I had been completely unaware of this.

Then I began to wonder - was it literally a horse-powered boat, or was the term used, as we use ‘car ferry’, to describe a boat equipped to carry horses or horse-drawn carriages?

Well the term was used in both senses in the past: for example, at Dartmouth in Devon, the Lower Ferry, originally known as the Horse Ferry, was originally powered by two men with long oars, & converted to steam with a tug pushing the float in 1870.

I have not been able to find references to any ferry which was powered by a horse which remained on dry land – perhaps turning a capstan or winch to draw the boat across a river on a rope or hawser - but there are examples of horses actually in motion on the boat, going round a circle or using a treadmill. The most notable of these perhaps being the wreck found in Lake Champlain.

Although the account of the history of the Lambeth horseferry given in the Survey of London is not totally clear, it seems to have been a barge capable of carrying horses.

The Survey of London also records that in 1688, on a night so stormy and dark that the passengers could not see each other in the boat, Lambeth Ferry was used in one of the most dramatic events connected with the expulsion of the Stuarts when Mary of Modena, James II's queen, and the baby prince (afterwards the Old Pretender) in their escape from Whitehall on their way to Gravesend.

Horseferry Road is today home, among others, to MI5, Channel 4 & the Horseferry Road magistrates court, where many high profile cases get their first hearing.



Photo thanks to Sawley (Derbyshire) Photograph & Image Gallery
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