Lighterman

Lighterman

For centuries, St Ives served as one of the busiest inland ports on the River Great Ouse. Situated where the Fenland waterways met the farmland of Huntingdonshire, the town was a natural transport hub for goods travelling to Cambridge, Bedford, and local markets.

At the heart of this trade were the lightermen, a tough, highly skilled, and distinct class of river workers who managed flat bottomed wooden barges known as lighters. They spent their lives navigating tricky waters and harsh weather to keep St Ives connected to wider trade networks. Here's a look at what life was like for a lighterman, along with the stories of local St Ives men who worked the river.

Lightermen & horse-knocker boys at St Ives, c1900.

Origins

The term lighterman comes from the main job of their boats, which was to lighten larger sea going vessels. At coastal ports like King's Lynn, heavy merchant ships arriving from Europe or London drew too much water to reach shallow wharves. Lightermen rowed their broad, shallow barges out to anchored ships, offloaded cargo and brought the goods ashore.

As river trade grew from the 1600s, lightermen worked further inland. Along navigable rivers like the River Great Ouse, they carried freight directly between King's Lynn and inland ports such as Ely, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, and St Ives.

History

By the early 1800s, a system of locks, sluices, and staunches controlled water levels across the Fens. Cargo transport relied on gangs of lighters.

Four to six wooden lighters were chained together in a line, guided by a master lighterman. The head boat featured a small cabin where the crew slept and ate during long trips. Sometimes a whole family lived on board, sleeping on the riverbank when weather permitted.

Hundreds of lighters travelled the river daily, turning towns along the banks into thriving trade hubs. Inland markets depended on these convoys for winter coal and building supplies, sending grain, malt, and butter back downriver to coastal ports.

Training

Becoming a master lighterman required years of hard physical labour, training, and a deep knowledge of the river. Young boys, starting as young as ten, served apprenticeships under experienced relatives or local lightermen. Initally they would be horse-knocker boys, looking after the horses and leading them along the towpath.

Apprentices memorised every part of the river. They learned to read water depth from surface ripples, spot hidden sandbars, navigate dangerous currents near sluices, and predict how weather changed water levels. They were taught to manage tow horses, tie heavy knots, handle iron chains, and use long wooden poles called quants to guide heavy craft around tight bends.

Only after years of physical endurance, composure during river crises, and flawless navigational skills was an apprentice recognised as a full lighterman. After proving their endurance and skill, apprentices were finally qualified to command their own gang.

Duties

Life for a River Great Ouse lighterman was physically punishing. A single trip from King's Lynn to St Ives took a week or more, depending on wind, water currents, and delays at locks.

Lightermen loaded tons of cargo by hand using sacks, baskets, and wooden wheelbarrows. They guided horses along towpaths. When paths ended, they pulled heavy gangs themselves using shoulder harnesses or pushed off the riverbed with long poles. Between hauls, they caulked hull seams with pitch and oakum to stop leaks, pumped out bilge water, and repaired ropes and iron chains.

Dangers

A lighterman's life was full of danger, yet few learned to swim. Falling into cold, murky water in winter was often fatal, especially when wearing heavy woollen clothes and iron shod boots. 

The inquest into the drowning of lighterman William Carrington reveals a series of absurd details following his fall from a river barge, highlighting the lack of basic first aid knowledge. The farce begins with boatman George Langley explaining that they unbuttoned Williams's tight leather collar, which he had worn continuously for two years as his personal remedy for toothache, much to the Coroner’s bewilderment.

The primary farce lay in the well-meaning attempt to revive him. Bystanders held Carrington up by his heels and laid him face down on a sloped bank with his head pointing downhill to let the water run out of his mouth. Witness Thomas Garner thought William was still alive when retrieved because he nipped Garner's finger.

When the Coroner pointed out that upside-down positioning would actually choke and kill a victim, a juror defensively insisted the act was done purely for kindness. The inquest underlines a widespread ignorance of first aid in 1901. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

Winter floods created more danger, turning calm rivers into raging torrents, smashing lighters into bridge piers or sluice gates. Bitter freezes trapped crews in tiny cabins for weeks with little food. Heavy iron chains and solid oak hulls were equally dangerous. Snapping towlines or shifting cargo could break limbs and crush hands in an instant.

Benefits

Despite the dangers, river trade brought clear social and financial rewards. Lightermen enjoyed real independence, working away from factory overseers or farm owners. This freedom created a proud, independent, self reliant community.

Skilled master lightermen earned higher and more dependable wages than farm labourers. As essential links in the trade network, they earned genuine respect in riverport towns for their strength, technical skill, and vital work.

Decline

The golden age of River Great Ouse lightermen began to end in the mid 1800s with the arrival of steam railways. Trains offered speed, cheaper freight rates, and continued movement in times of drought, flood, or winter ice.

In 1847, the Eastern Counties Railway linked St Ives to Huntingdon and the national network. Almost overnight, high value goods and fresh farm produce moved from river barges to steam trains.

Heavy cargoes like gravel, road stone, and timber kept a few lighters working through the late 1800s, but the trade shrank steadily. Fewer sons followed fathers onto the river, and by the early 1900s, motor transport replaced lighter gangs for good.

Colourised James Hunter's St Ives, c1848. Courtesy of the Norris Museum.

Lightermen of St Ives

The riverside area around The Quay, The Waits, and St Ives Bridge bustled with activity. Lightermen lined the quayside, unloading coal into warehouses or loading grain from nearby farms. The arrival of a gang of lighters at St Ives Quay was an event. They brought news, stories, and energy from the coast into the heart of town.

Local lightermen were highly skilled at guiding heavy boats through the narrow arches of the historic bridge and navigating changing water levels at St Ives Staunch. They also avoided collision with other lighters. At the busiest times, it was possible to cross the river by hopping from one lighter to another.

When approaching St Ives, a change of riverbank was required to dock at the Quay. The towline attached to the horse was loosened, allowing the horse to be led across the bridge. Once on the Quay, the towrope was tightened and the horse pulled the lighters into position, the horses ending up somewhere in Manor Mews.

Tracing the whereabouts of St Ives lightermen is a challenge. Sometimes they were aboard their lighters in the middle of nowhere on census night, so may have gone unrecorded. Here are the lives of three St Ives lightermen, sometimes called watermen.

FREDERICK RICHARDSON was born in St Ives in 1857. By age fourteen, he was working as a waterman's boy. On the night of the 1871 census, he slept aboard a lighter with three others moored near St Ives bridge, alongside three other lighters manned in two cases by waterman's boys, the third by a waterman.

The dangerous nature of river life caught up with Frederick in 1898. While steering the lead barge in a chain near Denver Sluice, a sudden jerk from the towhorse caught the line around his arm, pulling him overboard and dragging him underwater for 15 yards with the rope around his neck.

Suffering severe breathing difficulties, doctors at Littleport performed an emergency tracheotomy, but Frederick's injuries proved fatal. He died two days later from asphyxia. A post-mortem revealed extensive fractures to his larynx and neck cartilage.

CHARLES COULSON was a waterman born in Ely. In 1861, aged 23, he lived with his wife and baby daughter in his mother-in-law's house in Bull Lane. She was a waterman's wife, so Charles possibly worked for his father-in-law.

By 1871, Charles lived in Wellington Lane, shared with his wife and six children, the youngest aged one month. In 1881, he was a waterman foreman. As river traffic declined, Charles adapted, finding work as a brewer's labourer by 1901. In total, he and his wife Ann raised thirteen surviving children from sixteen born.

Raising a large family brought recurring trouble with local authorities over school attendance. Between 1886 and 1894, Charles and Ann were repeatedly summoned to court regarding their children. Ann often defended their absences, explaining that eleven-year-old Nellie was needed at home to help care for her younger siblings, or was unable to attend school in consequence of having very bad hands.. Though magistrates dismissed early cases following promises of compliance, repeated absences eventually resulted in fines.

Charles died in 1929, aged 92.

THOMAS GOODJOHN, or GUDGEON as he was also known, was born in Great Paxton around 1809, but considered St Ives his home. In 1841, aged 30, he worked as a waterman and lived in Fish Street with his wife and two young children. By 1861, three more children had joined the family at their home in Lamb Yard.

By 1871, Thomas was selling coal. At 63, he may have needed a break from the heavy physical demands of working on the river. He lived with his wife, Mary, in Butchergate Buildings on East Street. Mary died in 1883, and by 1891 Thomas, 82, was relying on parish relief.

Thomas had a remarkably long criminal career. It began in 1848, convicted of stealing planks, earning him two months hard labour. In 1850, local miller Potto Brown charged him with damaging his mill by drawing water. Thomas claimed he was following his master's orders, but the court fined him £1 (today £120).

Thomas was in the workhouse between periods of employment. In 1854, he assaulted the workhouse porter and absconded wearing a stolen set of clothes. His punishment was 42 days of hard labour, which included ten hours a day in total silence on the treadmill, the same as walking 17,000 uphill steps a day. Designed to break a prisoner's spirit, the ordeal failed to deter him. In 1858, he absconded again to avoid a summons for using obscene language.

Frequent appearances at the Priory Road courtroom followed. He received three months hard labour for stealing knives in 1870, a month for failing to maintain himself in 1871, and two months for assaulting the workhouse master later that year. In 1872, he served six months for stealing from his own father.

By 1879, when he was caught committing another minor theft, the judge at Huntingdon Assizes noted that Thomas had been in Huntingdon prison 21 times. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. Twenty years earlier, his crime would have landed him in Australia as a transportee.

He was released in 1885, but the offending continued. Fines for drunkenness were followed by threats to smash Dr Grove's face in 1888. By 1891, when charged with stealing clothes, Thomas openly told the court he was glad he was going to gaol again; he had done one seven years and could do another, and thats what he'd taken the things for. With over 30 convictions to his name, his turbulent life finally ended when he died in the workhouse in 1894, aged 87.

To learn about other old St Ives occupations and the St Ivians who worked in them, click Old St Ives Occupations.