Volunteer Views: Full Story
Lightermen
One of the best aspects of volunteering is the fascinating characters you meet on the viewing gallery or in the Visitor Centre. This Sunday just gone, for example had two old boys brought along by a younger (40?) guy, presumably a son. The two old boys, one reasonably sprightly, one a bit less good on his pins and using a walking stick, turned out to be Lightermen who had the Freedom of the River, retired tug drivers in fact, massively experienced in the ways of the Thames, very knowledge-able on barges and who knew our Bob Roberts.
These two were fascinating to talk to, and talk they certainly could! They had the whole viewing gallery monopolised with their memories and tales for a good part of one of my hours-about, finally wandering off (several hundred “Well, we should be off then”-s later) in search of a coffee, but they never made it, and when I swapped over with my oppo Richard, I found them holding forth at unreduced pace in the Visitor Centre to Richard. They’d dropped in out of curiosity and had then seen our rolling video of the Cambria being brought into Faversham creek in 2007, pulled along by a tug called Jester which of course they knew.
Even better, their apprentice-ships for Lighterman/Waterman had been done at Everard’s, so they knew all the Everard’s tugs, and were actually down this way looking at an old tug which is apparently alongside near the Shipwrights’ Arms at Hollow Shore (name of Meecher, or Meeching? I’m not sure – I didn’t make a note; I will have to go exploring). Amusingly, talking to “my 2CV bloke” today he’d been sailing out of Oare Creek on Sunday and had got talking to a group of three guys matching exactly this description and had held him in long conversation about this tug, one or the other of them having skippered her at some stage.
