OUR ANCESTORS vert water into mill races] and other obsta- cles.”106 In addition, the River Thames was the main commercial and passenger transport artery in the country, “and therefore the re- sort of rough characters.”107 During the 18th Century, traffic on the river passing by Eton College consisted mostly of transport barges and cargo and passenger boats powered by oars. Given that Windsor Castle was an im- portant center of governmental and court business, “there was a constant service of rowboats between Windsor and London, the fare for a single journey being given as 8s. “These boats had from two to four row- ers, held half a dozen passengers or more and were provided with a tilt or awning. The time taken over the journey is, perhaps significantly, not stated, but as the distance was then some [41 miles 65 km to the Hous- es of Parliament], and the boats are unlikely to have averaged more than three miles [five kilometers] an hour, it can hardly have been short.”108 The shoreline below the castle walls was filled with bustling establishments for the servicing and letting of commercial boats on this busiest of British transportation corri- dors. Beyond a few isolated swimming holes, the Thames hardly seemed an inviting place for children to play. Pound Locks Toward the end of the 18th Century, however, the river quickly became far safer with the replacement of the area’s traditional single-gate flash locks with modern pound locks, so-called because they consisted of a pair of gates which created an enclosure or “pound” between them. 106 Ibid, pp. 23, 97 107 Ibid, p. 97 108 Ibid, p 98 The operation of pound locks is quite straightforward in theory. The gates at one end open. One or more boats enter, and the gates close. Sluices at the bottom of one set of gates are lifted, allowing water to flow gradually into or out of the enclosure be- tween the closed gates, and when the water level in the pound has been matched (up or down) to that of the river in front of the boats, those gates are opened, and the boats calmly continue on their way. For a river flowing down its natural gradient too rapidly for commercial traffic to negotiate upstream easily, the introduction of pound locks transformed the stream into a series of “steps:” flat, placid, easily naviga- ble reaches between the locks, the water lev- el above and below each set of locks differ- ing by several feet or more. Note the rowing craft within the lock in the illustration on the following page. The difference in river level above and below Romney Lock, situated within sight of Eton College and Windsor Castle, shown in the background, was and still is quite a bit more than the height of a man standing. The important innovation of the pound lock system was that it left the river flow above and below largely unaffected by the workings of the locks. No more flash floods. Those same locks remain in place into the 21st Century, more than 200 years later. Etonians Take to Boats Rowing historian and Eton master E.L. Churchill:109 “Rowing seems to have been among the amusements of Etonians at least as early as the middle of the 18th Century. [my emphasis]”110 109 V. Nickalls, p. 34 110 Byrne, p. xviii 39
