The Thames has at all times been a river of goals. In centuries previous sailors and explorers, merchants and adventurers, have all journeyed down the river from London to seek their fortunes or their future, while others from afar have sailed up the river on a similar quest or enterprise. For all of them the low Essex shore was always their first and final glimpse of England.

Up till the middle of the last century British ships crusing out of the Port of London dominated the commerce routes of the world. The Cunard Queens dominated the Atlantic. Royal Mail Lines carried passengers to Brazil and South America, with some of their ships pushing up the Amazon as far as Iquitos. P&O and Orient lines serviced Hong Kong and Japan and Australia. The brand new Zealand Delivery Line sailed to Australia and New Zealand. The liners of Union Castle circumnavigated Africa. All those as soon as acquainted names have disappeared now, and modern container ships and plush cruise ships have changed nearly the entire old passenger-cargo lines that after flew the Red Duster into each ocean of the world.

Times have modified, but there is still an endless variety of transport utilizing the Thames, and as you begin to go the Essex shore the river is now overshadowed by the magnificent, Queen Elizabeth 11 Dartford Suspension Bridge, which was opened in 1991. Automobiles flow continuously overhead on the congested arc of the M 25, and four concrete towers with their spider-internet tracery of cables soar into the sky.

Nevertheless, the remainder of the lengthy, flat Essex shoreline, which many a younger sailor used to observe with both the slight tang of quick homesickness, or the buoyant elation of homecoming, remains to be pretty much unchanged. Most sailors had their minds mounted on the more exotic places on the far finish of each voyage, but they were lacking something, for there is way to be explored and loved alongside the Essex side of the great river.

Cruise ships still come as much as Tilbury, where the outdated passenger liners used to select up and disembark passengers before making the final lap as much as KG5 or Victoria docks, however Tilbury has expanded and is now the principal container port for the Port of London. Additionally it is the positioning of the large, star-formed, moated and earth-walled fort that is the best preserved of all the fortifications that have been as soon as strung out along each river banks to guard London’s most weak gateway.

There was a blockhouse here at the time of the Spanish Armada, and the present Tilbury Fort was constructed to change it within the late seventeenth Century. It was commonly garrisoned by the Napoleonic wars and via the primary World Warfare. There has always been the attainable risk of an enemy fleet, our mercantile rivals the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, and eventually the Germans.

The big artillery pieces nonetheless point out from the east and west gun strains alongside the embankment and the day I strolled there a Royal Navy destroyer and an previous, purple-sailed Thames crusing barge have been both moving up the river. The Navy ship gleamed grey and sleek within the sunshine, brisk and direct about her business, whereas the barge tacked slowly and lazily, a nostalgia image of a bygone age.

Follow the river and you will come to Canvey Island, which is related to the mainland by the bridge at South Benfleet. The island was once a lonely wasteland of mudflats and tidal inlets, till the land was reclaimed and protected by a sequence of embankments and drainage dykes built by a Dutch Engineer in 1623.

Despite this the island remains to be weak to distinctive tidal flooding. In 1953 the terrible mixture of North Sea storms and Spring tide surge that devastated the whole of the jap counties coastline swamped Canvey and drowned 58 folks. Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped it from filling up with summer cottages and camper sites. Small pleasure craft abound, because it is especially widespread with the boating fraternity.

Canvey is now additionally the location of a huge petroleum refining industry, a big conglomeration of massed storage tanks and writhing pipelines, just like the silver steel entrails of some distorted industrial monster laid bare.

Among the finest views of the entire island is from the ruins of Hadleigh Castle, which overlook the huge sweep of the estuary. Hadleigh Castle was constructed within the eleventh Century to guard the mouth of the Thames and for centuries its nice stone towers and partitions stood equal to the duty. Sadly, at present only the south east tower stays nearly intact, with a few crumbling walls marking the rest of the site, and the break up wall of the north east tower standing like some great shattered tooth.

A few miles additional down the river is Previous Leigh, once a small fishing community overlooking a small marshy inlet, the village has now been just about swallowed up by the growth of sprawling Southend. Nonetheless, the flavor of Outdated Leigh continues to be there, with its cobbled high avenue and rows of fisherman’s cottages and a handful of fishing boats moored up among the pleasure craft at its old wharves.

There is an old black clapboard sail maker’s loft at Victoria Wharf, which is now a primary Support Put up manned by the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade, and the scene here seemed to sum up Previous Leigh. A small pleasure yacht was moored on the quay and nearby was a small sandy seaside where households performed and sunbathed.
Not far away was the Essex Yacht Club, where scores of younger people have been bobbing around in brilliant-sailed small boats, or wrestling with them up and down the slipways on both side of the Bembridge, an ex-cruising pilot cutter that now serves because the clubhouse. Club racing events are monitored from the previous wooden bridge where there are wonderful sea views over the bows.

In the course of the Georgian period the south end of Prittlewell was changing into a small, fashionable seaside resort for the effectively to do. It was a spot of sedate seaside huts where ladies in knee and elbow length bathing suits discreetly emerged to paddle their toes. From there it expanded rapidly.

With the approaching of the railway in 1856 Southend was only an hour away from the capital and promptly turned the favourite holiday resort for the East End of London. The city is practically divided by the far protruding pier, with on either side the amusement arcades, fast rides and the youngsters’s paradise of Journey Island. Right here and to the left of the pier is the wild, brash and noisy face of Southend, the middle of all of the shiny lights, fish and chip retailers and fun. Go to the proper and you’ll find the more genteel aspects, with all of the peace and sweetness of its many manicured lawns and cliff high flower gardens.

Go up from the promenade and walk alongside the Royal Terrace, the place the Royal Hotel was built in 1791 to commemorate a go to by Princess Caroline, the spouse of the then Prince of Wales. Her go to helped to determine even more firmly the fashionable repute of Southend. The terrace was restored in 1978, and in summer there may be normally a massed array of glorious, colored hanging baskets decorating the fashionable hotel fronts.

Additional along the white statue of Queen Victoria, flanked by palm timber, overlooks rich red and yellow rose beds. Beside her there is an elegant Victorian bandstand the place waltzing couples glide gracefully on sunny afternoons. Opposite is Prittlewell Square, Southend’s oldest surviving park, with its excessive splashing central fountain framed in white wrought iron entrance gates. In every single place there are sumptuous flower beds.

In Priory Park stands the outdated Prittlewell Priory which was as soon as a Cluniac monastery and is now a museum. Beside it stands the solid gray Crow Stone, which once stood on the seashore at Chalkwell to mark the eastern extent of London’s jurisdiction.

Down on the Western Esplanade is where the annual London to Southend Traditional Automotive Rally finishes, usually with three hundred or more vintage autos assembled there on the large day. This is simply one of the large annual occasions on this pleasure-geared seaside resort, ranging from the Old Leigh Regatta and the Thames Sailing Barge Match, each held out on the river, to the excessive-flying Air Present within the skies above.

If you can’t face an hour’s brisk walk a full size train now takes you out to the far end of the pier, which was virtually always my last glimpse and first sight of the mouth of the Thames. The pier was inbuilt 1889, and has survived seven boat crashes and three fires. One and a third miles long, it’s the longest pier on this planet.

Rows of fishermen cast their traces over the rails, hoping to haul a fats bass or mullet up on to the deck boards, and there is a pier head viewing tower with broad-ranging views. From here something from a cockle boat to an oil tanker could hover into view.

Shoeburyness occupies the final elbow of land before the shoreline turns away to the north. Until the center of the 18th Century it was a smuggler’s haven of misty marshes and hidden creeks. Then got here the Royal Artillery Garrison and college of Gunnery and the village began to develop. Between the wars its safe bathing beaches made it another vacation spot.

Plans have been put forward for one more future barrier right here to span the complete mouth of the Thames. London and the marshlands of Essex have always been vulnerable to flooding, due to the slow increase of river and sea ranges over the centuries, and now that price of improve is accelerating resulting from International warming.

The Thames Barrier high up the river at Greenwich which was formally opened in 1984 is not thought of sufficient protection for the nation’s capital. More flood and storm tides of the 1953 variety are predicted as a excessive probability, and the continuing battle in opposition to the hungry sea will continue. If the proposed barrier is constructed it is going to be a massive structure stretching far into the marshes on both side which can change the shore and skyline for ever.

Nonetheless, for the moment the Thames has reached the chilly North Sea with out further hindrance. Having began far inland in the Cotswolds, passing by way of the great coronary heart of London, and caressing the winding Essex shore, the river still flows by in all its many moods, timeless and steady, on its romantic strategy to the far, huge world.