The Tilbury Ferry
A voyage back in time
There it was, a vessel from the past soon to sail off to the End of the World, tied alongside the world’s oldest cast iron pier. The ‘Thames Swift’, a trimaran built in the 1980s in Gravesend, was preparing to depart as dawn slowly pulled back the night blanket of grey. The emerging light revealed a grubby white and blue vessel emblazoned with the legend, ‘Jetstream Tours’. Rust streaked its sides and bits of old rope lay discarded upon its flat roof.
I’d taken a fast and flash train from St Pancras International to Gravesend (20 minutes) in order to journey into a past which like endangered newts, is facing total extinction. You might recall those pre-Thatcher days, when service was a snarling term, offered by resentful, soon-to-strike men (and sometimes women) on grubby, barely-working modes transport.
The ferry was due to leave in five minutes. The automatic door to the pier appeared to be locked. Notices were plastered all over it, detailing the many restrictions as to who could and could not use the ferry. In time-honoured style, many were yellowed and their corners curved from the glass.
No one answered my calls. I danced in desperation in front of the doors hoping to catch an automatic beam. A man having an early morning fag in the nearby park had watched this performance from a bench and with two minutes before departure time, he got up, and whilst drawing heavily on his tobacco, walked with weary steps and forced the door open for me. He did not say a word, and returned back to his bench.
‘Single or return’? said the gruff, smoke rich voice of the Master of the boat. He wore thick spectacles, was heavily wrapped in warm clothes and a life jacket was tightly tied around his middle.
‘Single. Please’
‘£4’.
In time honoured tradition, the seats were hard, the gold coloured material rough and prickly. Window ledges were properly covered in decades of grime and the windows so smeared that passing ships were seen as mere shadows. There were no pesky health and safety announcements, no noise at all in fact, other than the throb of the engine. The ceiling was un-fashionably low, telling of a time when men were shorter.
The pilot ploughed his way across the rolling Thames and the boat slewed about on the waves. The Aasfjord, a huge tanker from Gibraltar, appeared to starboard, and its course seemed to coincide with ours. Neither captain was in the mood to give way. The shadow of the black tanker’s hull loomed larger. Our wake did not deviate from straight. Nor did the Aasfjord’s.
I looked around for life jackets. An old sign screwed above the window said that they could be found under the seat. Under my seat, a canister of wasp and fly spray rolled with the pitch and a length of climbing rope slid across the linoleum styled floor. As the light of day diminished behind the towering hull, I turned around and found a pile of orange life-jackets stacked behind me. I breathed again.
We made it across the grey-brown river and we bumped quite head-jerkingly hard onto the wooden jetty at Tilbury. As we disembarked, there were no thank yous, neither were there any superficial pleasantries wishing one a nice day. At the end of the jetty was a pub called, ‘The World’s End’. There were times in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when one thought the world really was going to end. This short journey transported me, not just across a river, but also to those forgettable and grubby times when we thought we were at the End of the World, to which one must now cross a river to visit.
The Ferry Service has since been discontinued as from 1 April 2024