Robert Spellman goes on a Silver Raven Thames cruise in London from Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge.
“The water is actually quite clean, or cleaner than it looks,” says designer Kate Woods. “It’s brackish, and the brown colour is from the silt. But if you scoop up a glass, it will almost go clear.
“Not that I’d drink it, of course. And the smell is so distinctive, not unpleasant at all, a little bit like the sea.”
Kate speaks with a feeling for the Thames I’ve not met before, as though it’s a spirit friend. Indeed the river and the Woods family go way back, making Kate an excellent companion to glide along with on the water.
Silver Raven
We’re aboard the Silver Raven, an elegant sliver of engineering and design that launched earlier this year, whose furnishing and interiors are the work of Kate. It is the UK’s first electric sight-seeing catamaran and its beat is the three-mile stretch between Tower Bridge and Westminster Bridge.
There’s a lot of glass, giving passengers panoramic views, and the onboard guide for its 40-minute Tower of London River Tour delivers colourful stories from the previous thousand years of the capital’s past. What’s more, these have been written by none other than Horrible Histories star Martha Howe-Douglas, who, sure enough, has added a good dose of the revolting and the grisly.
“Let’s face it, people love this stuff” says Kate. “So you get to hear about things like The Great Stink and Dead’s Man’s Hole.” (Respectively, the sweltering summer of 1858 when banks of age-old sewage along the river cooked in the heat and the now caged-off alcove beneath Tower Bridge that acted as a mortuary in Victorian times because corpses would wash up there).
The 39-metre Raven was conceived of by the Woods family, whose relationship with the river goes back to at least 1866 and Kate’s great grandfather’s employment as a Thames Waterman – one of the many boatman who would taxi passengers and their luggage between points along the river. The role never left the family, and today Kate’s brother Tom is waterman to King Charles, a job that is more about pageantry than anything else, Kate tells me.
But the modern family story really begins in 1947, when her grandfather Alfred established Tower Bridge Quay as a base for sight-seeing tours, and which is now the departure point for the Silver Raven. In the 1960s, Kate’s father Alan founded the Silver Fleet, a flotilla of luxury yachts for private charter, and which are moored at another riverine location – Woods Quay in front of The Savoy.
“Dad’s yachts have attracted some famous names,” says Kate. Brigitte Bardot, Sirs Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, Terrance Conran, and various politicians and royals all feature in the family story.
“My father was also canny when it came to colour, and chose red awnings for his sight-seeing boats because he knew they would draw the eye. The boats went on to appear on London postcards,” she says.
It’s a red, of course, that echoes throughout London. Busses, post boxes and the old telephone boxes. The seats of the Silver Raven have that same, unmistakable, lipstick hue.
“I thought with the big windows the red would really shine out,” says Kate. “There’s a nice synergy when you go under a bridge and a bus passes over. They’re made of eco-leather and crafted in Ayrshire.
“We worked with Naval architects on the overall structure, and I took a lot of influence from upriver, from elegant vessels from the 20s and 30s, which have long canvas awnings and a very long front.
“And instead of making it a two-deck vessel where you can pack more seats in, this was all about light and vision. Canary Wharf was also an influence, and hard-wearing elegance of airport interiors. The whole message is a calm, swan-like cruise.”
The boat is quiet, although not completely silent.
The project received funding through the government’s Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition, a £271million drive to support green maritime innovation.
“The government paid for the engine, we covered the rest,” says Kate. “And the boat was built in Cornwall by Pendennis, who were amazing. There were many offers from abroad but we wanted it built here, ideally in London. Limehouse would’ve been nice, but that’s no longer possible.
“The bar is hammered English pewter and the internal lights are from an old supertanker, which I reclaimed. All a part of keeping it clean and green.”
Well, amen to that.
For more information on Silver Raven, visit:
www.toweroflondonrivertour.com
Martha Howe-Douglas stars in Ghosts: The Possession of Button House, currently showing in cinemas throughout the UK
