Where better to go than the Thames, with its spacious reaches and tranquil backwaters? They found that they had seriously miscalculated. Jerome tells of the bedlam at Molesey Lock, where 'you could not see any water at all, but only a brilliant tangle of bright blazers, and gay caps, and saucy hats, and many-coloured parasols, and silken rugs, and cloaks, and streaming ribbons, and dainty whites'. Often it was plain pandemonium, with punts and skiffs forcing their passage in every direction. 

Another Victorian writer, Richard Jefferies, in his essay 'The Modern Thames', pointed out that to survive you had to pull and push and struggle for your existence on the river, convinced that yours is the very best style of rowing, and that everyone else should get out of your way. If you were in any doubt about your rights, the only course of action was drive hard into other people's boats, forcing them into the bank. Most important of all, you should never look ahead, but pull straight on. It was a capital sport, too, to splash the ladies with a dexterous flip of the scull and do your best to soak their summer dresses - see the Victorian engraved illustration below (and in the 'Leisure and Pastimes' category on this website) of a party on the river being serenaded by a violinist.

Steam launches were the bane of life on the river for Jerome’s narrator. They carried crowds of trippers and never gave way to small boat, and ruined the easy life of the river. The narrator admits to a deep loathing of steam launches, for there was a 'blatant bumptiousness' about them. The boat trip Jerome describes was continually punctuated by lordly whistles from the decks of steam launches demanding that they get out of the way. Jerome's narrator nursed a deep desire to 'lure one to a lonely part of the river, and there, in the silence and the solitude, strangle it.'

Courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection

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