Spitalfields Life

Bobby Prentice, Waterman & Lighterman, is a well respected personality along the river. Today he is the skipper of a pleasure boat ferrying tourists between Hungerford Bridge and Greenwich, but his relationship with the Thames is lifelong and profound. Bobby holds the record for the Doggett’s Coat & Badge Race, is one of the Vintner’s Company Swan Upping Team, and his legendary prowess as a rower even includes successive attempts to row the Atlantic Ocean. Amiable and possessing a striking natural gravity, there is no doubt that Bobby is a hardy soul.

Originally, Watermen were those who took passengers across the river, and today it is necessary to win your Doggett’s Coat and Badge – in the annual race held each June – to be able to call yourself a true Waterman. In a critical distinction, Lightermen were those who transported goods, lightening the load of cargo vessels with their barges which were called “Lighters.” Both professions are of ancient origin upon the Thames and, in his career, Bobby has been both a Waterman & a Lighterman.

On a sparkling September afternoon, I joined Bobby and his son Robert in the cabin of the Sarpenden and – as we slid down river from Hungerford Bridge along King’s Reach and through the Pool of London, passing under Tower Bridge – he outlined his relationship with this powerful watercourse that defines our city.

I was born and bred in Wapping, all my family come from Wapping. In 1969, at the age of sixteen, I was apprenticed to my father Robert. His father Robert was a Lighterman before him and his father Robert before that, which makes me the fourth as far as we know – there may well have been other Robert Prentices before – and my son Robert is also a Lighterman. We worked for the Mercantile Lighterage Co and in those days Fords at Dagenham did a lot of manufacturing, and we used to deliver knocked down kit ( that’s all the parts to assemble a car) to West India Dock, London Docks, Royal Albert Docks, Victoria Docks, Tilbury Docks and to Sheerness on the Medway for export.

I chose to do it, but my father didn’t want me to because the docks were already closing. When I wanted to leave school at fifteen, he encouraged me to stay on a year to get my exams. But I loved every minute of being on the river. I joined Poplar & Blackwall Rowing Club at ten and I spent all my youth on the river. I had the river in me. I used to go and work with my father as a little boy, just as children do today – I often have my grandchildren on the boat with me.

I did a five year apprenticeship, and a lot of Watermen & Lightermen still apprentice their children for five years, even though you can get a boat driver’s licence in two. My grandfather bought me my first sculling boat for £100 in 1968 and I won the Junior International Championship in 1970 and 1971, and represented Britain in the Youth World Championships. I won the Doggett’s Coat & Badge  in 1973, then the double sculls at Henley with Martin Spencer, and subsequently Martin & I won three Home Internationals for England and two National Championships.

When I finished my apprenticeship, I spent my first two years in West India Dock. Once I got my licence, it enabled me to tow barges behind tugs and much more. I was one of the “jazz hands,” which is like being a journeyman. At twenty-two I got moved down to Grays in Essex and became a Tug Skipper, but in 1982 the Mercantile Lighterage Co folded as a consequence of the decline of the docks. The only lighterage left now is “rough goods’ – London’s waste, and my youngest son does that –  towing the barges down to Mucky Flats and Pitsea Creek. This current business, Crown River Cruises, started in 1986, we began with one boat and we’ve got five now, and we do scheduled services. I still row.

Yet no-one who works on the Thames can ultimately resist the tidal pull of that great expanse of water beyond and in Bobby Prentice’s case this attraction led him to try to cross the Atlantic in a rowing boat.

Like most nutty things I’ve done it started in a pub. We’d been to a Doggett’s function and one of the lads suggesting rowing the Atlantic and I said , “No, I’ve finished serious rowing.” But then I went for a walk along Hadrian’s Wall and came back, and I decided to do it. We entered the Atlantic Race in 2005 from Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua and we set off a fortnight before Christmas in bad weather. It was hard mentally, but I made an agreement with my wife that I’d call her every Sunday at six on the satellite phone and I looked forward to it.

After seven weeks rowing, it became a lottery who was going to capsize next – “bombing” we call it. The boat was so small, you’re literally living in a coffin. Then, early one morning, we bombed out and spent forty-nine hours in a life raft. My wife handled it very well when they called to say I was “lost”  – “He’s done that before,” she said, “He’ll be back.” When I was in the life raft I’d just had my weekly call and the satellite phone was at the bottom of the ocean. They didn’t know where we were and the beacon we had was faulty, we didn’t know if it worked. I was lying in the raft and my elbow blistered from trying to hold the beacon up the satellite. I was trying not to sleep because of the hypothermia and hoping someone had picked up my signal, which only gave a seven mile vicinity of my position. We were picked up by 160,000 ton tanker called “The Towman.” The ship was searching an area of 1500 square miles. It was an oil tanker with an Indian crew, they were lovely people. After ten days on the ship, we ended up in Gabon and were repatriated to Heathrow.

We decided to have another go in 2008, this time with four in the crew, but we had several breakdowns and aborted after ten days, ending up in the Verde Islands. So I thought, “That’s the end of it, I’m never going to do it again.” Then Simon Chalke approached me and said, “We’re building a twelve man boat. and we want to go for the Atlantic record.” I had turned fifty-six at the time and I said, “It’s not fair on those in the crew who are twenty,” because the rota was six hours rowing and six hours rest. But Ian Couch, the skipper, had already rowed the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and he wanted me on board, so I went for it. It was hard to tell my wife, but when I broke the news, she said, “Tell me something I didn’t know.”

I’d gone out in late November for training and come back again for Christmas. We were on standby waiting for the weather to clear, and then I got the call on Boxing Day and we set out a few days later in very early January. We didn’t break any records but we landed in Barbados after thirty-eight days, further South than we intended because of the weather conditions. I still haven’t been to Antigua.

And then, even as I was still reeling from this account, Bobby shook hands and hopped off the boat at Tower Bridge leaving me in the company of his son Robert, the skipper of the ship, for the rest of the trip to the Thames Barrier. “So are you planning to row the Atlantic too?” I asked, wondering if this challenge might now become a rite of passage for successive Robert Prentices. “I wouldn’t discount the possibility,” he declared with relish as he stood with hands upon the wheel, his beady eyes twinkling excitedly at this enticing possibility.

I sat beside Robert on the bridge and he spoke animatedly as we travelled on through Limehouse Reach, Greenwich Reach, Blackwall Reach, Bugsby’s Reach and Woolwich Reach. He told me about the porpoises, dolphins and hundreds of seals he sees on the river, and how the whale in Westminster was not the first on the Thames because he saw one at Purfleet.

One Robert Prentice had disembarked, another Robert Prentice took his place at the wheel – the fourth and fifth Robert Prentices respectively – Watermen & Lightermen steering vessels through time as the mighty Thames flowed on.

Robert Prentice, fifth generation Waterman & Lighterman.

You may also like to read about Swan Upping on the Thames

“When I was twelve my father said, ‘What are you going to do in life? You need to learn something.'” recalled Clive Phythian, Head Cutter at Alexander Boyd when I dropped by to see what he had in hand last week. He spoke as he worked at the cutting table in the small tailoring workshop that he shares with his son Steven at the rear of the shop in Artillery Passage. “

I learnt a little but I couldn’t say I learnt a lot” confessed Clive with laconic reserve, considering those Saturdays spent in his grandfather’s tailoring shop in Walthamstow which were the outcome of that conversation with his father. “At twelve you’d rather be outside running about,” he acknowledged with a sympathetic smile, “but it gave me the discipline and I saw how hard he had to work.”

Every Saturday, I worked with him and, as I grew older, I had clothes made for me which was absolutely fantastic – I was the envy of my friends. At the time, my father was Head Cutter at Blades in Savile Row. When I was fourteen, I used to go up there with him and I started making the baists (first fittings) of jackets and waistcoats. I had my eyes opened to what goes on there, and my father said, “I’m going to try and get you a place at the London College of Fashion on a three year City & Guilds tailoring course.” I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I won cups for my work too.

Prior to leaving, I had two interviews, one with Davis & Sons, traditional bespoke West End tailors, and the other was with Gieves & Hawkes in Savile Row. I went to Gieves & Hawkes! When you are a young person, you see a bigger company and you think you are going to go places, and I worked there nine years – a fantastic experience. There were nine cutters and I managed to learn so much from them, they were a fount of knowledge. In some respects, I have forgotten some of the things I learnt at Gieves & Hawkes, but I expect they are still slotted away somewhere in the back of my mind. From there, I went to work for my uncle who had a very successful business in the City, Aspers in Cullum St, by Lloyds of London. You could say he poached me from Gieves & Hawkes because he offered more money. The West End is the more elegant side and you have more time, whereas in the City people always want it yesterday.

Then my father moved from the West End and set up his own business in the City too. I knew I would always work for my father, so there came a time when I said to my uncle, “I’m going to work with my dad,” and it put his nose out of joint – but you can choose your friends, not your family.The company my father bought was J.G.Chappels near Fenchurch St Station. I enjoyed working alongside him, and my brother joined the company as well. But then my father father died, and although my brother and I ran the business for another three years, we got tired of it. So we decided to take a gap year and I went to do tarmacking. When I was a young kid, my uncle used to work in tarmacking and I helped him out, so I had the knowledge. It was much to my wife’s disgust, but we needed a year out to get our heads back together.

One of my friends, Stuart Lemprell, was Head Cutter at Timothy Everest and he gave me a call and said, “Do you want to come back in?” So I said, “Yes.” I enjoyed working there for four years, until new people arrived who wanted to computerise things, so I said, “I’m off.” I’ve got morals. I don’t want a computer to do what I do. I don’t need a computer, my knowledge is in the tape, the square and the yardstick.

I came and spoke with Boyd, and I’ve been here as Master Cutter at Alexander Boyd ever since, more than five years now. The role of the Master Cutter is very important, without the knowledge of someone who knows how a garment is put together and how it should be cut, you’re not going to get a good product. You have to measure, but if your eye tells you it’s not right, even if the measurement is correct you know it’s wrong.

I get immense satisfaction from seeing a client put on a garment I have made and walk out of the shop with a big smile on his face. I love cutting. I’ve been doing it thirty-six years and I’m still learning. Cutting is my passion. You have to have that… something. Steven has it. He’s inherited it from my grandfather who was a tailor, and my father, and my uncles, Roy, Terry and Paul, they were all tailors, and my aunty Pam, she was a tailor too. So I suppose you could say it’s in the genes.”

“Dad’s always said, ‘Do what you want to do,’ there’s been no pressure to become a tailor,” Steven Phythian confided to me with unaffected honesty, when I joined him at the counter where he was cutting patterns for trousers. It was quite a different story from his father, yet the result was the same – though Steven revealed he had worked in Argos, as a car valet and as pizza delivery man, as well qualifying as a locksmith, even applying to the police force, in the ten years after college before he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps and become the fourth generation to work in tailoring.

“It will be quite a long process,” he admitted with calm acceptance, just six months into his apprenticeship, “Five years before I can fully understand all aspects of cutting. But as my father says – even after more than thirty years – he’s still learning.”

So I left them there, both absorbed in their work in the quiet of the tailoring shop, the atmosphere broken occasionally by customers coming and going. Whenever I walk through Artillery Passage in future, I shall always cast a glance in their window to catch a glimpse of Clive & Steven at work. Almost the last tailors in Spitalfields – a place that once the centre of tailoring – yet I think we may be assured these two will be here for many years to come.

Clive Phythian in Men’s Wear, February, 1977

Steven Phythian, September 2011

Clive Phythian’s three piece co-ordinate in Walnut dogtooth check that won first prize in the IMBEX Student Fashion Competition, 1977.

Clive Phythian, Master Cutter at Alexander Boyd, September 2011.

Clive & Steven Phythian

Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman