The dark river

Anyone who knows the Thames, at least the tidal section or 'London river', soon becomes fascinated by its deadly force. It might appear pretty from afar, but go close to it and you will see it sucking against pilings and bridge stanchions and surging through gaps, a brown blanket hiding decay and death on its riverbed. The river has changing colours and can sparkle on a summer's day. But the glints of light don't belong to the river. They belong to the world above it, and they flash a warning, like that of a poisonous animal. The sinister nature of the London River is something no witness could have failed to notice, and in fact this emotional reaction causes a distortion to the truth of how dangerous the river actually is. People often talk of undercurrents, and of the horror of falling in, and how you'd drown. There seems to be a preconception that the river is the stuff of nightmares with the unreal power to rob you of your faculties so that, once in, you'd flail around, mind poisoned, unable to swim or think rationally. As far as I'm aware, there are no undercurrents on a river like the Thames. I can only imagine undercurrents being formed by thermal layers caused by huge, moving bodies of water in the open ocean - like the Gulf stream. Unlike most people, I have fallen into the Thames many times and even jumped off the Albert Bridge on a hot summer's day. I have felt no undercurrents. What people don't generally realise about the Thames is that in summer, when the tide comes back in over mud baked hot by the sun, the Thames can be nearly as warm as a bath. There is certainly a strong current running in the middle of a tide - up to 3 knots, or even a little more on a fast spring tide squeezed through the centre stanchions of a bridge. The main danger would be getting swept under something like a moored barge, and I imagine this is how most deaths (including suicides) occur on the river. Nevertheless, the river does carry some scent of the many who have drowned in it over the years. Joseph Conrard believed the river, particularly its estuary to "appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination." He noted also noted the spookiness of being on such a black, industrial waterway, just a stone's throw from a city the size of London - but utterly alone. These days, the river is even more empty, and, allegorically at least, just as deathly: "It smells ancient because it is ancient. The water that flows back and forth over millennia accretes to itself the sweat of industry, the poison energy of progress and the tang of endless death."