Father Thames

England is not a country of great rivers. No mighty Nile winds lazily across desert and fertile plains in its three and a half thousand miles course to the sea; no rushing Brahmaputra plunges headlong down its slopes, falling two or three miles as it crosses half a continent from icy mountain-tops to tropical sea-board. In comparison with such as these England’s biggest rivers are but the tiniest, trickling streams. Yet, for all that, our little waterways have always meant much to the land. Tyne, Severn, Humber, Trent, Thames, Mersey, Ouse—all these, with many smaller but no less well-known streams, have played their part in the making of England’s history; all these have had much to do with the building up of her commercial prosperity.

One only of these rivers we shall consider in this book, and that is old “Father Thames”: as it was and as it is, and what it has meant to England during two thousand years. In our consideration we shall divide the River roughly into three quite natural divisions—first, the section up to the lowest bridge; second, the part just above, the part which gave the River its chief port and city; third, the upper river.

However, before we consider these three parts in detail, there is one question which we might well ponder for a little while, a question which probably has never occurred to more than a few of us; and that is this: Why was there ever a River Thames at all? To answer it we must go back—far, far back into the dim past. As you know, this world of ours is millions of years old, and like most ancient things it has seen changes—tremendous changes. Its surface has altered from time to time in amazing fashion. Whole mountain ranges have disappeared from sight, and valleys have been raised to make fresh highlands. The bed of the ocean has suddenly or slowly been thrust up, yielding entirely new continents, while vast areas of land have sunk deep enough to allow the water to flow in and create new seas. All this we know by the study of the rocks and the fossil remains buried in them—that is, by the science of geology.