eastlondonhistory.com

Last week we saw how the unlikely trio of master mariner John Harriott, magistrate Patrick Colquhoun and philosopher Jeremy Bentham were responsible for the formation of the Marine Police Force on the River Thames. Having swiftly proved to Parliament that his new river force was saving the docks a huge sum in pilfered goods, Colquhoun found himself in charge of a publicly funded police force.

The Marine Police took a lease on a riverside site at Wapping and set about appointing permanent officers, with a Superintendent of Ships Constables in charge of five Surveyors, men who would patrol the river by both day and night, rowed in open galleys by Thames Watermen. A further four Surveyors would visit ships being loaded and unloaded, while Ship Constables would watch over the dockers. There was also a Surveyor of Quays with two assistants and 30 Police Quay Guards.

It was an unwieldy setup, and it was hard and dangerous work, but by the 1830s, the Marine Police had grown to having three stations (Waterloo and Blackwall had been added) and 15 boats. In 1829, Robert Peel formed the Metropolitan Police and in 1839 the new force amalgamated with the river force, which was now renamed Thames Division.

A disaster in 1878 was to force change from the river police’s use of rowing boats … though it was a long time coming. On 3 September that year, iron ship the Bywell Castle ploughed into the pleasure steamer Princess Alice at Galleons Reach. The paddle boat, returning with 800 holidaymakers from a day trip to the Kent coast, was snapped in two and sank with the loss of more than 600 lives. It was the greatest ever loss of civilian lives in UK waters. The inquest found that Thames Division were woefully underpowered with their rowing galleys, and the first two steam launches came into service in the mid 1880s. By 1898 there were eight more, but it was 1905 before the 28 row boats were finally phased out. In 1910, motor launches joined the fleet.

The late 20th century had its own river tragedy, and again it forced a change in how the Thames was policed. At ten minutes to two on the morning of 20 Auguest 1989, the dredger Bowbelle collided with the pleasure boat Marchioness close to Cannon Street Railway Bridge. The river police were swiftly on the scene, getting to the collision inside six minutes. Four police boats, assisted by the passenger boat Hurlingham plucked 87 people from the waters of the Thames, but 51 people died, and the inquest that followed demanded change.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency ( MCA ), the Port of London Authority ( PLA ) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution ( RNLI ) worked on setting up a dedicated Search and Rescue service for the tidal River Thames, taking over at least part of the role that the River Police had fulfilled for more than two centuries. And on 2 January 2002, the RNLI opened four new lifeboat stations at Gravesend, Tower Pier, Chiswick Pier and Teddington. And the river police (now called the Marine Support Unit or MSU) work in tandem on rescues with the RNLI, the Coastguards and a London Fire Brigade boat.

Today, the job of protecting the London Docks from pilfering is no more - because of course the London Docks are no more, having long since moved downriver to Tilbury. But to this day the river police operate out of the same Wapping High Street address that has been their home for more than two centuries, and now has 22 boats in its fleet. The beat of the MSU covers 14 miles of river, between Hampton Court and Dartford Creek. Above Hampton Court, the Surrey Police patrol the river along with the Environment Agency. Below Dartford, the Essex and Kent Police take over, with an Essex marine unit based at Burnham-on-Crouch police station.

Two of the founders of the river police have been remembered in the names of police launches. The John Harriott was in service from 1947 to 1963, while a Targa duty boat currently bears the name. Police launch Patrick Colquhoun patrolled the Thames from 1963 to 2003. Jeremy Bentham, strangely, has never been thus commemorated. Perhaps his ‘auto icon’ sat on display at University College London is memorial enough.

The Marine Policing Unit at Wapping is a sophisticated and unique branch of the Metropolitan Police. The men and women in boats have to liaise with the Port of London Authority, Special Branch, Customs and Excise, the Coastguard service, London Fire Brigade and Immigration. And their motor launches are a familiar sight, speeding from the Wapping River Station that has been its home for more than 200 years.

It’s all a far cry from the early days of the unit, when officers ventured into the docks in rowing boats, and often had standup fights with dockers … who resented the new coppers curtailing their ‘bonuses’. For the story behind the river police is of theft from the docks on a grand scale, and a curious genesis involving Spitalfields philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Bentham was a fascinating and contradictory figure. A lover of freedom, he also famously he devised the panopticon - a prison where the inmates could be observed at all times (while never being aware that they were being watched. His philosophy of utilitarianism is brilliant but controversial. To put things simply, the theory says that the worth of an act is judged by its contribution to the sum total of human happiness: many have argued that, logically, utilitarianism could lead to great individual unhappiness for the individual. Yet he was startlingly liberal for his day - a proponent of animal rights, equal rights for women, gay rights and an end to both slavery and the death penalty.

But we’re not here to argue philosophical theory, we’re talking about ships and crime. Bentham also saw himself as an intensely practical philosopher - hence the panopticon. Hence too his interest in the problem of thievery at the docks, where merchants in the Pool of London were losing half a million pounds in filched cargo each year. The great thinker was persuaded to work on a solution by Magistrate Patrick Colquhoun, alongside Essex Justice of the Peace and Master Mariner John Harriot.

Within weeks, Colquhoun had a plan to put to the merchants. Armed with £4200 put up by the West India Merchants and the West India Planters Committees, the magistrate recruited 50 men to police the 33,000 dock and river workers - Colquhoun claimed 11,000 were on the make, a figure surely plucked from the air.

So was born England’s first professional police force, and they were hated. Just like the earlier Bow Street Runners (founded in 1749) and the later Metropolitan Police, they would be considered an infringement of Londoners’ liberties; the idea of a police force seems to have been viewed by many rather as identity cards are now. The Marine Police Force was pilloried as an idea suitable for France or Germany, but not for the free men and women of England.

Colquhoun’s ‘11,000′ may not have been far off mind. Soon after the force began its work on 2 July 1798 a mob of 2000 attempted to burn down the Wapping Police Station with the officers inside. The fight that ensued saw the first English policeman killed in the line of duty, with the death of the unfortunate Gabriel Franks. One of the forces’s current launches is named ‘Gabriel Franks’ in his memory.

The crux of Colquhooun’s plan was in giving his men a salary, unlike the Bow Street Runners, who relied on a (rather erratic stipend). By putting the river men on a regular wage he could make them full time, demand higher standards of professionalism and, arguably, reduce the likelihood of corruption. The brilliance in involving Bentham in this plan was that the founders used utilitarianism to sell the marine force to local businesses. They used a cost-benefit model, effectively saying ‘for every pound you cough up to fund our police force’ you’ll make more than a pound back’.

And it worked. A year in, Colquhoun reported back that his men had ‘established their worth by saving £122,000 worth of cargo and by the rescuing of several lives’. Possibly some made-up figures again there from Mr Colquhoun, but the authorities figured that such furious resistance must mean the police were hitting a nerve, and Government acted to transform the freelance agency into a public police force. Colquhoun had not only invented the idea of the publicly funded police force, he had also introduced the idea of crime prevention (rather than simply capture and punishment) for the first time. Again, this rankled with many, who argued that a free Englishman should be free to commit crimes and then be caught, rather than being snooped on by officers. But the authorities loved it of course, and the model was copied around the world.

Next week: Fights, rescues and tragedies … how the river police developed.

I stumbled across a terrific documentary on BBC1 last night, covering the work of the doughty officers who work out of Wapping’s River Police station. The programme, which the BBC in an admirable lack of hype had simply called River Police followed them over the course of a day, with handheld cameras. The work, unsurprisingly, largely seems to consist of talking people down off bridges or fishing them out of the water if they’ve already jumped.

Superb footage of the Thames by day and especially by night - this was a lovely little film, quite old fashioned in feel, and touching on a part of the city that all of us are aware of but rarely see. If you missed it, don’t worry. Courtesy of the magic of the internet and digital media you can watch River Police on your computer screen or download it to watch later. Just click the following link:

River Police on BBC 1