page_title: Thames steamers
section_title: Cargo tugs and steamers
hierarchical_section_title: Thames steamers / Cargo tugs and steamers
caption_attribution_description: English: SS Suntrap (1940) at Woolwich bound for Nine Elms Reproduction ID: P30225 Maker: Unknown Date: 9 September 1931
context_page_description: Steamboat services started on the Thames in around 1815 and for nearly 25 years were the main use of steam to carry passengers before the emergence of railways in the south of England. During this time at least 80 steamers are recorded in the Thames and the Steamboat Act of 1819 became the first statute to regulate the safety of the new technology for the public. Wooden boats driven by paddle-wheels, they managed during this time to establish themselves as faster and more reliable than the earlier use of sailing and rowing boats for passenger transport within the Thames estuary.
  The early lead in practical steamboats established by William Symington in 1803 with the Charlotte Dundas in Scotland was not maintained, and the first steamboat passenger service was established in the United States in 1807 by Robert Fulton with his North River Steamboat on the Hudson River, using an engine manufactured in Birmingham. The first service on the Thames that can be established properly is the Margery in 1815, though the Richmond may have started taking passengers in 1813.
context_section_description: The first steam tug on the Thames was the Majestic in 1816. The use of tugs to guide sailing boats bringing passengers and cargo up the London river increased the efficiency of operations enormously and the paddle wheel showed off its maximum advantage. Paddle tugs could apply full power quickly in either direction and by having separate engines for each paddle wheel could virtually turn on the spot.
  The Port of London, which was handling 12,000 coastal vessels and over 3,000 overseas vessels annually by the end of the eighteenth century, quickly became dependent on steamers. Previously, gangs of men in rowboats drew the sailing vessels to port against wind and tide. By 1830, the use of steam tugs became part of the battleground between the competing dock companies as the London and St Katharine dock companies used steamships to tow vessels up-river past the West India Docks. By 1860, screw tugs were beginning to appear, but paddle tugs continued to be constructed throughout the nineteenth century and only finally disappeared in the 1920s with the advent of diesel propulsion. One steam tug survives at West India Docks, the ST Portway. Another, the ST Challenge, is due to return to the Thames in 2018. She will be berthed at Trinity Buoy Wharf.
  Timber and wheat came from Russia, tea from China to Butler's wharf, Sugar to Tate and Lyle, and refuse was taken downriver. Fish was hauled by trawler to Billingsgate Market; wine came from France and Portugal.  Millions of tons of coal were hauled annually to London from the North East to provide town gas and eventually electricity from plants at Deptford and Battersea. Vessels servicing the upper plants had to have tilting funnels to clear London Bridge and other crossings farther upriver. Parts and raw materials were hauled to the Ford Factory at Dagenham; beer was exported from Aldgate. Chemical plants and oil refineries, including Shell and BP, dotted the lower river.
caption: Gas Light and Coke Company's SS Suntrap at Woolwich in 1931, steaming upriver to Nine Elms Gasworks
exif: {}