Thames Barge Driving Race

Aerial coverage of the Thames barge driving race, from the crews rafting up before the start to a loaded lighter under oar on the tide.

A Thames lighter has no engine. It was never meant to have one. For most of the river's working life these barges were moved by the tide and by a pair of enormous sweeps, and the men who could do it were called lightermen. The barge driving race is what is left of that skill, run over a course on the tideway by crews who row a loaded lighter the way it was actually done. We covered the 2026 race from the air. The frames that matter are not the ones of the finish. They are the raft up before the start, where the barges lie alongside each other with their crews aboard and the lettering on the sides tells you who is still involved in the river: Trinity Buoy Wharf, the Port of London Authority, Cape Shipping S.A., a barge simply named the Union. The other frame is a lighter under oar. From the bank you see a barge moving. From above you see the sweeps out over both sides, the angle they are held at, and the support boat sitting off her quarter. It is the only viewpoint that makes the scale of the thing obvious, because a loaded lighter is a very large object to move with two oars. Nobody commissioned this. It is on the river once a year and we went.