AEOLUS
wide expanse of the Thames estuary and headed for the
white ranks of wind turbines in the London Array, the
world’s largest offshore wind farm.
In medieval times, the shifting sandbanks of the
estuary made an experienced pilot essential. The fi rst
buoy was not placed in the Thames estuary until 1629.
Today, though, the safe channels are clearly marked by
buoys and we piloted ourselves.
We sailed closer to the wind farm than strictly
necessary, because as Anthony remarked, “We couldn’t
possibly gybe, because we were having lunch.” Then,
headed southwest to join the Prince’s Channel up the
estuary, we found an intriguing cluster of two-storey
steel platforms on tripod legs. They looked like
science-fi ction invaders from another planet. These
were the Shivering Sands Army forts, one of three sets
of anti-aircraft platforms built in 1942 to defend
London against German air raids.
In the shipping channel now, we had to watch for
container ships. These big vessels move deceptively fast.
Darkness fell and as we left the neon of Southend-
on-Sea casino to starboard, the estuary narrowed into a
river. Around the fi rst big bend in the river, we made for
Gravesend, the traditional fi rst stopping place for
international shipping bound for London. Vessels
would anchor here, drop off their Channel pilot and
pick up a ‘mud’ pilot for the last stretch to the heart of
London. We moored to a buoy for the six hours of the
ebb tide and caught some sleep.
We set out the next day into a light southwesterly
breeze with working sails up – main, staysail, jib,
main topsail and fl ying jib – working our way past
London’s container port at Tilbury and later
beating under the Queen Elizabeth II (Dartford)
Bridge, ancient marshland on both banks.
Rainham marshes on the north side is a wildlife
sanctuary but developers want to turn
Broadness Saltings and Swanscombe marshes
on the south bank into a theme park attracting
15 million visitors a year.Our one non-Edwardian navigation aid was a
charting app on a smartphone, which came into its
own now that the river was narrowing and we needed
to know the depth on every bend. In 1904 we would
have had a sailor standing outside the shrouds
swinging a 14lb (6.4kg) lead weight into the water to
measure the depth. Two more tacks and all of a
sudden we had arrived in London. Now there was
other traffi c to contend with: tugs pulling barges,
small freighters and the Woolwich ferry.
We tacked to the southern side of the river and
tacked again to make the Thames Barrier. The barrier
has four 200ft (61m) and two 100ft (30m) openings to
sail through, but its stainless steel domes look very
solid from a small sailing boat.
We strained to see the dot matrix displays which
show which side to pass. Beyond, we caught our fi rst
sight of London’s skyline: the pyramid top of One
Canada Square at Canary Wharf, the upturned curve
of the Gherkin and the blunt arrow of the Shard.
We rounded the white dish of the Millennium Dome
on Greenwich Peninsula and scanned the horizon for the
turret of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park to
work out when we would cross the Greenwich Meridian,
0 degrees longitude. We spotted the building but missed
the Meridian, partly because we were busy tacking seven
times in little more than a mile, and partly, we discovered
later, because the line now runs 102.5m (336ft) east of
the Observatory, as scientists have rebased navigational
charts on a more sophisticated model of the earth.
On this stretch of the Thames, every vista tells a
story. On Greenwich Reach, the classical
colonnades of the 18th-century Royal Naval
Hospital, later used as the Royal Naval College,
mark an era when British Naval power built a
worldwide empire on the inhuman Atlantic
trade in slaves and sugar and scarcely less brutal
trades in cloth to India and opium to China.
In dry dock beside the Naval College, the
restored clipper Cutty Sark embodies the late 19thAbove, left
to right:
Approaching the
Thames Barrier;
safely past the
bascules of
Tower Bridge;
entering St
Katharine Docks