MV Royal Iris - derelict Mersey ferry at Woolwich

The MV Royal Iris, which has been laid up on the Thames at Woolwich since 2002,  is looking in an evermore sorry state after a fire in April 2025.

The ship, built on the Clyde, was one of the ferries across the Mersey from 1951 until 1991. In its hey day it included a dancehall where the Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers and other Merseybeat bands played. After it retired there were various plans to convert it into a floating nightclub that never materialised and it has been left getting increasingly derelict by the Thames-side Studios (Warspite Road SE18), opposite the Silvertown Tate & Lyle works.

 

HMS Belfast: Housing Protest (1981), Spandau Ballet and some seagulls

HMS Belfast is a 1930s built Royal Navy warship that has been permanently moored on the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge since 1971. It is managed as a tourist attraction by the Imperial War Museum. I am not a big fan of military hardware and remember a not so exciting trip there when I was at school, but no doubt there are interesting stories to be told about it not least its manufacture in the Harland and Wolff shipyward in Belfast -a notoriously sectarian workplace where Catholics had been violently expelled from their jobs - and its wanderings through the last days of Empire.

Not to mention that time it unwittingly hosted an early gig by Spandau Ballet in July 1980. The story is that they booked it as a private graduation party for some Oxford students. As remembered by their manager Steve Dagger: 

'Our host began to suspect he had been misled as the band’s equipment started to arrive and became agitated. His mood blackened as he saw the nature of the crowd that was arriving. This was the combined forces of hip London Blitz/club culture at its finest. There were Elizabethan inspired crossdressers, there were Soul boys, Rockabillies, there were Fritz Lang futurists, there was Boy George, Marilyn, Phillip Salon in their prime and one man in a wedding dress with fairy lights who asked Graham if there was a plug socket he could use to illuminate. Rusty Egan, the DJ from the Blitz and our great friend began his set of electronic sounds. It got worse still as the party got started and as the crowd became boisterous with drink, drugs (there was a lot of acid and speed ), and a degree of sex... Legendary club promoter Dave Mahoney, Polecat band member Phil Bloomberg, and others, although on the guest list, stole a rowing boat, and boarded the Belfast from the river. As the fire eaters that Chris had booked arrived and combined with his discovery of 2 men having sex in the engine room, it would be fair to say that our host went mental' (Source:  Spandauballet.com). The ship also featured in 1980s videos for Kelly Marie’s It Feels Like I’m in Love  and Depeche Mode's People are People.

Spandau Ballet on board ship

Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) below deck

In  April 1981, HMS Belfast's eyecatching properties were put to use in a short protest demanding that the nearby Hays Wharf site be converted for housing not offices. Peter Tatchell, who took part, later recalled 'We bought a group concession in the name of the East Dulwich Tennis Club and then strung huge banners from the bridge.’  Tatchell can be seen between two banners in photo below, seemingly with the slogans 'Homes not offices' and 'houses on Hays Wharf'. At the time Tatchell was secretary of Bermondsey Labour Party and was soon (1983) to face  a virulently homophobic campaign when standing in the notorious Bermondsey byelection of 1983. The Hays Wharf campaign was not successful, though as highlighted in the excellent SE1 Stories exhibition and pamphlet, community action in that period did achieve some victories which is why social housing was built close to the riverfront from Waterloo to Rotherhithe.

photo by George Nicholson

Anyway today you can meet some interesting gulls chilling out by the boat and note how the Royal Navy appropriated their colouring for camouflage.

Black headed gull - in winter plumage with a whte head

Herring Gull

 Post prompted by a couple of pleasant encounters with seagulls in January 2025 and seeing the SE1 Stories exhibition at the Castle lesiure centre in Elephant and Castle.

'Mutiny at Woolwich Dockyard' (1802) - attempted escape by hulk prisoners

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many ships no longer fit to sail the seas were converted into floating prisons. In the London area these 'prison hulks' were located in the Thames by Woolwich and Deptford.

This account of an  'Mutiny at Woolwich Dock Yard' (Morning Post, 2 August 1802) describes an attempted escape by prisoners who had been brought ashore from a prison hulk to work: 'for several months... above five hundred men have been employed in erecting a new wall at the back of the Governor's house. For some time, it since appears, they had planned an escape'.

On a Friday morning, 'about a dozen of these desperadoes went up to the keeper, armed with clasp knives, and demanded the key of the inner gate. The keeper refusing to deliver it up, he was knocked down, and the key taken by force from his pocket'. About 'fifteen or sixteen got into the outer yard' but still faced a 26 foot high wall, which only four managed to climb. By this time the keepers were armed, and two of convicts were shot, one killed. 

The army was mobilised from the nearby garrison, and 'the whole military force, about 2000 men, was placed at every avenue leading out of the town. The horse were stationed in Hanging Wood and its environs, and the foot marched instantly to the Dock-yard... After a very strict search of several hours in the Hanging Wood and the town, the whole were found concealed in different places about the Dock-yard. The four supposed to have have escaped into the wood were found by the military concealed under a quantity of timber in the front yard, near the principal entrance from the high road, and one of them refused to leave the place of his concealment until a shoulder ran his bayonet four inches into his shoulder. The offenders were carried to the dungeon and chained down until they receive their punishment'.

(The Hanging Woods covered an area that included what are now Maryon and Maryon Wilson Parks)

Morning Post, 7 August 1802

Conditions aboard the hulks were notorious. Writing in the last days of their use, Henry Mayhew and John Binny ('The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life', 1862) devoted a detailed chapter to 'The Hulks at Woolwich':

'The idea of converting old ships into prisons arose when, on the breaking out of the American War of Independence, the transportation of our convicts to our transatlantic possessions became an impossibility. For the moment a good was effected, for the crowded prisons were relieved; but from the time when the pressure upon the prisons ceased, down to the present, when the hulks may be said to be doomed, all writers on penology have agreed in condemning the use of old ships for the purposes of penal discipline...

Some idea of the sanitary condition of these establishments, even so recently as 1841, may be gathered from the report of Mr. Peter Bossy, surgeon of the "WARRIOR" hulk, off Woolwich, which shows that in that year, among 638 convicts on board, there were no less than 400 cases of admission to the hospital, and 38 deaths!There are still officers in the Woolwich hulks who remember a time when the "Justitia"... contained no less than 700 convicts; and when, at night, these men were fastened in their dens - a single warder being left on board ship, in charge of them! 

Even so late as 1849, we find the "Unité", hospital ship at Woolwich, described in the following terms- "In the hospital ship, the 'Unité,' the great majority of the patients were infested with vermin; and their persons, in many instances, particularly their feet, begrimed with dirt. No regular supply of body-linen had been issued; so much so, that many men had been five weeks without a change; and all record had been lost of the time when the blankets had been washed"'.

'A view near Woolwich in Kent showing the employment of the convicts from the Hulks'
(the hulks are the ships without sails in the background, not sure of date of picture)

Vauxhall Horse Sculptures

'When suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by

horses, horses, horses, horses

coming in in all directions

white shining silver studs with their nose in flames,

He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses'

(Patti Smith)

I believe that Jason deCaires Taylor's horse sculptures on the Thames shore at Vauxhall (close to where what remains of the River Effra joins the Thames) have now gone after being displayed there throughout September. The sculptures were only fully visible at low tide, with the title 'Rising Tide' alluding to global warning.

Tales from the Riverbank with London Dreamtime + Irish tales at South East London Folklore Society

Really enjoyed 'Faeries of the Minesweeper' on 22 August from London Dreamtime. A tale of the fairies in a mill at Deptford Creek from Vanessa Woolf was interspersed with songs from Nigel of Bermondsey; costumes and settings were designed by Lucy Williams. Starting out by St Pauls Church we wound our way to a railway arch by Crossfields Estate and then across the Creek to finish up on the Minesweeper Boat.

Vanessa and Nigel on the Minesweeper, sadly didn't manage to get a good picture of them
with the many twilight ducks flying over.

They are back in action on another boat on Sunday 21 September (3:30 pm - 5:00 pm) with 'A Trip down the Thames in Story and Song' on HMS President, the 1918 ship redecorated as Dazzle Ship London by  artist Tobias Rehberger.The event is sponsored by the Londonist and is part of this months's Totally Thames season of events on and around the river. HMS President is moored at  Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0HJ.

Nigel is also busy next Thursday 11 September (8 pm) - hosting South East London Folklore Society at the Old Kings Head in Borough High Street. Guest this time is Thomas McCarthy, the Irish Traveller, Folk Singer & Storyteller. He has a repertoire of over 200 traditional songs that he sings unaccompanied. He also has an extensive story repertoire from which he shall be drawing from at SELFS. Expect to meet fairies, hunchbacks, banshees, druids, Finn McCool and Cuchulain (Facebook event details)  I've caught Tom singing a few times, including at Kit & Cutter, and he's a great talent.

Thomas McCarthy

Bob Hoskins RIP - by the river

Farewell Bob Hoskins, a great London actor, so here he is (mostly) by the River Thames:

By Tower Bridge in the Long Good Friday

with Helen Mirren in The Long Good Friday

with Helen Mirren by St Thomas Hospital SE1 in Last Orders

with Michael Caine in Last Orders... scene shot in the Larkhall Tavern in Clapham

on the South Bank in the video for Jamie T's Sheila

with Helen Mirren in the Duchess of Malfi at the Roundhouse in 1981
- went to this on a school trip, it was amazing

See also: Shiraz Socialist; Dangerous Minds

History Corner: Transportation from Deptford to Australia

The Deptford riverside has been the starting point for  many journeys across the oceans, some of them freely chosen adventures, many of them not. One destination was Australia, where convicted prisoners were shipped off to penal colonies from the 1780s (the practice formally ended in 1868, though it had become rare by that point).

Reg Rigden's The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford (a pamphlet published by Greenwich Council in 1976), mentions one such voyage. On the 11 December 1814, Mary Langridge, Sarah Morris, Maria McIntyre and Ann Roberts were 'put on board the Northampton at Deptford'.

According to the Australian site Convict Records, 110 prisoners - all of them women - were taken on that voyage arriving in New South Wales in June1815. The ship went from Deptford to Portsmouth, from where it set sail on New Year's Day 1815. It was an eventful voyage, with the ship being temporarily captured by an American ship off Madeira. It made its way via Rio de Janeiro to Port Jackson, with four women dying during the voyage. On the way home, the Northampton went to China, returning to Hastings with a cargo of sandalwood. 

Just one voyage amongst so many, but showing clearly how Deptford in that period was a key point in the international  circulation of labour, commodities, ideas and much more. Globalisation is nothing new in South East London on Thames.

Deptford Dolphins Thames Swim

I was slightly sceptical about whether the self-proclaimed Deptford Dolphins were actually going to manage to swim out from Watergate stairs to the nearby crane derrick in the Thames (as previewed here). But two of them made it on 22 September, and there's a film to prove it. They are already thinking of doing it again for next year's Autumn Equinox - with the swimmers to be awarded the Deptford Dolphin badge pictured above.

The Dolphins in the Master Shipwrights House garden after the swim

This was another project of the emerging Deptford Alternative Sports Club, as some of those involved with Deptford Three Sided Football Club seek further adventures. The next planned action is kayaking the River Ravensbourne down to the Thames at Deptford Creek from its junction with the Pool river in Bellingham Park - no date has been set because it all depends on there having been plenty of rain to make the river fully navigable.

Estuary and Stevedores

I went to the Estuary exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands, featuring the 'work of 12 artists who have been inspired by the outer limits of the Thames where the river becomes the sea' with its 'dramatic landscape – desolate mudflats and saltmarshes, vast open skies, container ports, power stations and seaside resorts'. It's on until 31st October, and is well worth a visit (admission free). I particularly liked Jock McFadyen's Dagenham (below).

In the permanent collection I also noticed a trade union banner from the London docks, specifically from Branch No.6 (Rotherhithe) of the Amalgamated Stevedores Labour Protection League. According to the Museum: 'This banner was created to commemorate the founding of the trade union following the Great Dock Strike of 1889. The large painted panel depicts a London stevedore shaking hands with an Australian 'Wharfie' or dock worker, in front of the figure of Britannia. The image recalls the financial support given to the London strikers by their comrades in Australia during the strike itself'. The banner was made made by George Tutill in the early 20th century. 

Incidentally the word stevedore derives from the Iberian words ofestivador (Portuguese) or estibador (Spanish), meaning a man who stuffs, in the sense here of a man who loads ships

Deptford Panorama 1844

The Grand Panorama of London from the Thames (1844) was a twelve feet wood engraving, a printed version of which was circulated to subscribers of the Pictorial Times newspaper.

The Deptford sections clearly show St Pauls Church, the buildings of the Deptford dockyard and to their west the Royal Victualling Office. The ships include a number of hulks - vessels no longer fit for the sea used variously as floating prisons or for quarantining people with small pox.

History Corner: Every Brick Tells a Story

On the Thames beach at Deptford there are various industrial archaeological fragments, each with their own history. Here are three bricks I came across recently.

This first brick is marked 'Glenboig'. The Glenboig Fire Clay Company was founded in 1865 in the central Scottish village. It had its own clay-mine as well as the factory which made the bricks. In 1901 clay miners staged a long and bitter 10 month strike; in 1909, four miners were killed in a roof fall. Glenboig bricks were exported all over the world, this one ending up on the shore of the Thames.

Thistle Bricks also came from Scotland, and were manufactured by John G Stein & Co. Its mine was in Castlecary.

A 1940 catalogue shows that Thistle bricks were designed for use at high temperature, such as in furnaces, and were composed of Silica, Alumina and Ferric Oxide.

The London Brick Company (LBC) was founded in 1900, not in London but at Fletton near Peterborough, where bricks continue to be made from 'Oxford clay' to this day. Brick production brought many Italian workers and their families to the area - in 1960, around 3,000 Italians were employed there by London Brick. 

So now you know, these bricks are not just random refuse. An experienced brick spotter would be able to date bricks such as these by changes in the lettering and fonts over time - not sure I have the time for that just now.

Ahoy Centre Fundraisers to Cross the Channel

On the 11th August, seven volunteers are rowing from Dover to Calais (about 22 miles) to raise funds for The AHOY Centre on the River Thames in Deptford. You can make donations to one of the rowers, Craig Robinson, here: http://www.justgiving.com/CRAIG-ROBINSON1

Despite living so near to the River Thames, many young people locally barely have a sense of it and very few get the opportunity to be out on it in a boat.  The AHOY Centre runs sailing, rowing and powerboating courses for local kids most of whom have never been out on the water before. My daughter spent some time there via her school and had a great time.

The Ahoy Centre, Borthwick Street, SE8
(picture by Nigel Chadwick at Geograph)

Into the blue

A little teaser -where is this mysterious blue labyrinth?

And what lies at the end of it?

Update, Monday 16 April:

As a couple of people identified correctly in the comments thread, this passageway is on Watergate Street, Deptford and leads to Watergate stairs down to the River Thames (or the beach at low tide).

The wooden passageway has been constructed to maintain access during the building works at the adjacent Paynes and Borthwick Wharves site. Work has restarted there after a delay of several years, and the passageway has been repainted blue. It gives the approach to the river a certain majesty, though the previous paint scheme had a certain poetry too - white boards extensively decorated by local youths for whom this is a place to hang out: