Queenborough, the Dutch haven

The quay by the Swale at Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey. There are four trawlers making a living from here, including Two Suns (LO13) which has a retail outlet in the town. When the Dutch raided the Medway in 1667, they quartered in Queenborough. It was only in 1997 that they relinquished their claim to the island in a ceremony held in the town hall.

London Stone at Staines

This is the London Stone at Staines, marking the upriver  boundary of the City of London's jurisdiction over the Thames. When it was installed, the river was still tidal at this point. At Bell Lock, just upriver from here, the lock keeper said there had been hardly any river traffic and he was beginning to feel redundant. But that was before the weather broke.

Downriver the Corporation's boundary was marked by the Crow Stone in Southend and, opposite the London Stone in Yantlet Creek. The London Stone in Upnor, by Upnor Castle marks its limits at the mouth of the Medway,  just before it reached the naval dockyards at Chatham.

Whitebait book just published

This is the extraordinary tale of a fish that never was. 

Invented to dodge laws about catching small fry, whitebait became part of the London summer season. The well-to-do flocked to the grand riverside taverns of Blackwall and Greenwich to gorge on these fish that were made famous by the government’s annual Ministerial Whitebait Dinners. 

But Whitebait Fever was to take a heavy toll on the fish – and the Thames fishermen.

Here, for the first time, Roger Williams, author of The London Trilogy, unravels the history of whitebait, and exposes the hypocracy and the hype that for two centuries surrounded the little fish. 

Whitebait can still cause disagreements about what it actually is. 

This book aims to put the record straight. 

order@bristolbook.co.uk

Wildlife in Greenland Dock

Cormorants in Greenland Dock today, finding fish and depriving members of Rotherhithe Angling Club of their supper. Grebes active, too, courting dances and disappearing for ages under the water. Coots scattered like fallen fruit across the water. Hard to take a photo of the action with a pocket digital camera. What do the birds find beneath the water? Is there vegetation on the dock bed? What grows there? Are they made of puddled clay? Or brick? Do they leak?

Last glimpse of Greenwich Palace

This is what you can see today of the Tudor Palace of Placentia on the riverfront in Greenwich. Erosion over the past five years, which has seen the shore drop 50cm, has revealed one of the largest archaeological features on the river foreshore anywhere in London. Among bricks and bones, oyster shells and roof tiles, Tudor pins and clay pipes, the remains of the Tudor jetty and quay have been revealed. From in front of the west wing of the Royal Naval College, now the Trinity Laban Conservetoire (top left), it runs down into the water, its extremity submerged even at low tide. This is where royalty, from Henry VII to Charles I, stepped ashore, while beneath the embankment wall (bottom left) is a row of upright timbers half a metre high, and once infilled with chalk to create a quay that was apparently accessible in any tide. A mooring ring is embedded in one of the timbers (top right) and there is a section of collapsed brick wall (bottom right).

Lying on the outer edge of the great meander round the Isle of Dogs, the shore here is susceptible to erosion, which in recent years is thought in part to have been caused by the wash of the speedy Thames Clippers. Now, to protect the embankment from further erosion, the shore is to be covered with stones and sand, perhaps making a new beach. 

Anyone who wants to see the Tudor timbers should get down there soon. 

A prison ship for the Royal Docks

Is this the usage of docks to come? The World Travel Mart today began its three-day jamboree in the Excel building beside the Royal Victoria Dock, where the new Good Hotel has just opened. This former Dutch floating jail has become a 148-bedroom hotel with bar and restaurant. It’s a non-profit organisation with a policy of employing local people. Another, rather swisher, floating hotel, the Sunborn superyacht, has been berthed beside Excel since 2014.

At the WTM Greenwich stand Thames Clippers were talking of 2017 with new piers at Battersea Power Station and Canary Wharf, and their two new 170-passenger vessels being built by the Wight Shipyard on the Isle of Wight. And Visit Greenwich reckons the 2017 Tall Ships Regatta starting at Greenwich over next Easter Weekend and bound for Quebec will be a classic.

Southend's Annual Whitebait Festival

A blustery day in Southend for the Annual Whitebait Festival. The Afternoon Orchestra played We Do Like to be beside the Seaside, Gavin Dixon of The Fishermen's Mission led the service with prayers and hymns, including For Those in Peril on the Sea. Accompanied by the mayor, Cllr Judith McMahon, a basket of whitebait was then taken to the shore where it was hurled into the sea to the delight of the seagulls. A whitebait lunch followed in the hosting Sands restaurant, served to members of the Essex Chamber of Commerce, who have been running the event since it was revived in 1937

The photos are the last for my forthcoming book, Whitebait and the Thames Fisheries, which gives a history of whitebait fishing in the Thames, and details of the 19th century annual Ministerial Whitebait Dinners.