Whereas today’s black cab drivers can cosy up in green shelters dotted around the capital, London’s Medieval taxi drivers had less salubrious pit-stops, the oldest of which is right here in Southwark.
‘The Ferryman’s Seat’ on Bear Gardens is an unassuming flint slab next to Pizza Express on Bankside, near Shakespeare’s Globe. It’s a fascinating historical insight into an era when getting a taxi often meant a rickety boat ride across the Thames.
Ferrymen are thought to have worked the Thames since the Roman era but by 1555, it had become a formalised trade. Just as taxi drivers must learn ‘The Knowledge’, seven year apprenticeships saw trainees gain an encyclopaedic understanding of the Thames’ complex water currents and tides.
By the 18th century, with riches pouring in courtesy of the British Empire, the Thames was running a roaring trade. But with London Bridge being the only major Thames river crossing until Westminster Bridge’s construction in 1750, goods and passengers often relied on ferrymen.
Highly adept at navigating the Thames’ notoriously strong currents, these watery ‘wherrymen’, as they were also known, would stand along the Thames banks crying ‘oars, oars, oars’ to attract customers.
‘The Ferryman’s Seat’ shows how tough these men’s lives must have been. As a tiny alcove, barely protruding from the wall, it would have offered minimal protection from the wind and rain that raged over the boggy Thames banks.
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Ferrymen also suffered from insecure employment. Just as Uber drivers have pushed many cabbies out of work, returning navy soldiers would often try and take up work on the Thames, frequently leading to violent altercations between regular and newcomer.
In times of war, ferrymen were often the first to be pressed to crew on royal navy or merchant marine vessels. And in winter, Londoners could sometimes simply walk over the frozen river to the other side, bringing the ferrymen’s trade to a standstill.
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Given these harsh conditions, perhaps the 2,000 plus ferrymen who worked the Thames in Medieval London should be forgiven for their menacing ways. They gained a reputation for being a “rough, saucy, and independent lot” and even had their own mysterious ‘water dialect’.
The advent of huge steamboats signalled the beginning of the end for the wherryman, who struggled to compete with hulking boats capable of carrying tonnes of cargo. But the ‘Ferryman’s Seat’ remains an ancient reminder of the modern cab-driver’s watery forefathers.
