Leontyne Read Free

not experienced when it came to handling boats and he had the true professional attitude to electrical and mechanical machinery which, if he did not understand how to mend, he would find someone who really did. He kept himself amazingly fit by going for long runs along the towpath at dawn every morning and eating masses of honey with everything. He had two grown-up sons and a very pretty daughter. I had run into him through my contacts on the river and had liked him as soon as I met him as he was clearly a gypsy at heart like me and we got on at once. By the end of the trip, I had the greatest respect for him and his appreciation of the natural beauty through which we travelled, which was far more intense than many an Oxbridge mind I have encountered. My journey would have been a lot more difficult and far less fun without his good humour and stamina.
    At the beginning of September 1987, I was well enough to start trials again and get the
Leo’s
rig correctly fixed. The biggest problem was the lack of sufficient power. The best and cheapest remedy seemed to be a bigger propeller, but a bigger propeller meant a stronger gearbox; this, in turn, meant a more powerful engine, and that I couldn’t possibly afford. In the end I decided not to waste any more time, but to concentrate instead on raising the finance for the voyage which would also have to cover the cost of the six-cylinder Gardner engine that I was planning to get, reconditioned, from a London bus.
    During the winter months, many little things were being finished off on the barge and I was slowly getting the boats into a condition which, if not exactly shipshape, might be described as working. The hydraulic steering on the boat had sprung a leak and we were at one time drifting without steering under Tower Bridge. Fundamental mechanical problems like this had dogged our progress, but that is often the way with dress rehearsals for a successful show.
    At last, after a winter of biting my fingernails, the moneywas raised from a British television company, Central Television, and now all that had to be done was to fix a date for our departure.
    Our first night on board, in April 1988, was not without mishap. Ray was not yet with me, and, until he could join me, I had taken the services of another waterman, Reggie, a man with a huge and apparently random knowledge of geographical place names. As he moored us up, at Fisher’s Wharf by London Bridge, and tied our warps round a pillar, he reeled off the names of the big towns on the Don and the Volga. ‘No problem,’ said he. ‘When the tide goes down, just check the ropes, and all will be well. I bet you can’t tell me what the Russian port at the mouth of the Danube is called.’
    All was well on the descent, a fall of about eighteen feet, and I sank gratefully into bed, forgetting that in tidal terms what goes down must come up. I awoke, about 3.00 a.m., to find that for some reason the porthole in my cabin was covered with water, and I was falling to the bottom of my bed. I soon discovered that the warps had stuck on the pillar and that the barge was being held under as the tide rose swiftly around us. I rushed for the carving knife which, in those days, was still razor sharp. I had only to touch the blade against the bar-tight rope for the whole forty-odd tons of barge to shake itself free and bob up again from its undignified posture. Rattled, I returned to bed, realizing that for all the charm of Reggie’s randomly acquired geographical trivia, I could rely on no one but myself for the safety of the boats.
    The next evening we slipped down to the Thames Barrier and tied up next to the
Sir Aubrey
, a large river-tug, which had been built when the river was busier for towing long strings of barges. I talked to Ron Sargeant, the doyen of a famous waterman family on that part of the river. Hisforebears had built up their business a century or so before by rowing down to the mouth of the