Thames watermen and lightermen

BBC Learning English

London Life

Thames watermen and lightermen

[Barge FX]

William: A sound familiar to all Londoners - a noisy

boat moving along the River

Thames.

[End FX]

My name’s William Kremer and this is London Life. The

people who move boats along this part of the Thames have a

very old job. They’re called watermen and lightermen. But

what’s the difference between a waterman and a lighterman 1?

Listen to this short news clip 2 for the answer:

Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship 4 to

qualify 5 as a Thames waterman (carrying passengers) or a

lighterman (carrying freight 6), and that regime 7 has been in

place since the sixteenth century.

William: Don’t worry if you missed some of that,

you’ll be listening to the clip again.

The answer is that watermen are in charge of boats which

carry passengers, so, people. Lightermen are in charge of

boats which carry freight. Freight is
simply anything that is transported but which isn’t alive

– so, it could be building supplies, or food, or products

from a factory. Recently, watermen and lightermen have been

in the news in London. That’s because on January 1st
2007 an official change occurred that will affect their

work. The clip we heard just now is from a journalist who

is reporting on this change. Let’s listen to a longer

section of his report – and as you listen, try to work out

what the change
is.

Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship to

qualify as a Thames waterman (carrying

passengers) or a lighterman (carrying freight), and that

regime has been in place since the sixteenth century. Well,

not any more: from January 1st, it’s been replaced by a

new National Boatmasters’ Licence for Inland Waterways

which will reduce the qualification time to just two years,

plus six months of local training.

William: Did you catch it? Since the sixteenth

century – so, for the last five hundred years – if you

wanted to become a waterman or a lighterman you first had

to be an apprentice 3 for five years. Now, an apprentice does

an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship is a period of

training that you do while you’re working in a job in

order to learn all the skills of that job. When you have

done everything you need to do before you start the job

properly, you have qualified 8 for the job. Of course, there

are different ways to qualify for different jobs – maybe

for your job you had to study a course at college or take

an exam. But the traditional
way of qualifying 9 as a waterman or lighterman is by doing

an apprenticeship for five years – and this is what has

been changed. Listen again:

Journalist: It takes a five year apprenticeship to

qualify as a Thames waterman (carrying passengers) or a

lighterman (carrying freight), and that regime has been in

place since the sixteenth century. Well, not any more: from

January 1st, it’s been replaced by a new National

Boatmasters’ Licence for Inland Waterways which will

reduce the qualification time to just two years, plus six

months of local training.

William: The journalist said that the old regime, or

system, of apprenticeships has been replaced by a

Boastmasters’ Licence, which will allow people to qualify

in just two years, plus six months of training.
 
[STING]

Next we’re going to hear a conversation between a

journalist and Bert Andrews, a waterman whose family have

been doing the job for nearly a hundred years. How long was

Bert’s apprenticeship?

Journalist: So you studied for seven years to get your

licence. Seven years is an awfully 10 long time – you can

become a doctor in seven years.

Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined 11, but

erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,

I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still

learning today.

William: He was an apprentice for seven years. It

takes seven years to qualify as a doctor but Bert said he

wasn’t ‘that way inclined’ – which means he either wasn

’t interested in becoming a doctor or he didn’t have the

natural talent that the job needed.

Now if you were listening very carefully to Bert, you might

have noticed some interesting grammar. Listen again:

Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined, but

erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,

I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still

learning today.

William: Bert is talking about the apprenticeship he

did as a young man, but instead of saying ‘I did seven

years’ he says ‘I done seven years.’ Bert is using the

subject together with the past participle – done – in the

same way that we would normally use the past tense. Now, he

isn’t an English student who has made a mistake with his

grammar, this is just the way he talks naturally. Bert
 
has a strong Cockney accent – the traditional accent of

London’s working people. He also says ‘me father’

instead of ‘my father’ – which is also quite common in

spoken English. Listen again:

Bert: Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t that way inclined, but

erm… The minimum is five years, at the moment. Personally,

I done seven on me father’s advice and erm… I’m still

learning today.

William: If you go to the London Life page on

bbclearningenglish.com you can listen again to the full

news report that we featured in today’s programme and also

listen again to today’s vocabulary. You’ll also see some

links to find out more about the Cockney accent. Goodbye!

[STING]