Downstream

at the Tower he confessed he
‘had engaged’ to shoot His
Majesty as he went to swim
in the Thames above
Battersea. However, as
Colonel Blood was about to
take aim, ‘the awe of majesty
paralyzed his hand’ and he
changed his mind.
One of the earliest Thames
races reported by the press
took place at Battersea, some
150 years later, when in
August 1826 ‘a party of