Thomas Blackwood

A young pilot of the lower Thames, trusted with the local channels, soundings and tide knowledge that bring vessels safely between the estuary and the London basin.

The lower Thames is too shoaled, crowded and changeable to be crossed on a chart alone, and its pilots carry the local knowledge of channels, soundings and tides without which a vessel reaching London is at the mercy of the mud. Thomas Blackwood is one of them, and his name already belongs to the daily language of the lower waters alongside those of the Port-Reeve, the harbourmasters and the brokers. He is young for the trust placed in him, still in his twenties.

Older pilots say he sounds a channel twice where they would trust memory, and he has a name for bringing vessels up in fog when others would lie at anchor for the tide. He will not take a vessel through a channel he has not sounded that season, whatever the master offers.

Companies meet him when they need passage up or down the lower river in bad weather or at an awkward hour, or when a question hangs on where a particular vessel could and could not have gone on a given tide.

In person

Blackwood is twenty-six and looks it: a lean, wiry, weather-hardened young man with wind-tossed dark hair, a light short beard and an alert face with grey-blue eyes. He wears a heavy river coat with a waterproof pilot’s cape, boots and gloves, and carries a brass compass, sounding line, tide tables, river charts and a compact telescope.