Historical accounts of the Age of Sail almost invariably focus on ship-captains and battles of the Royal Navy. This walk instead focusses on how the maritime working class — men, women and children — lived and worked on sailing ships. Two ships associated with Rotherhithe are examples: 17th-century Mayflower and 18th-century HMS Temeraire.

It was called The Wooden World: sailing ships with hundreds of workers aboard, living for months and years away from home. Seamen, collectively known as Jack Tar, were among the first large groups of wage labourers, moving from ship to ship, seeing the world and bringing to England language and customs of faraway places. The walk tells how they lived on board, in the doldrums and in battle, how they coped with difficult conditions and abusive captains and how children and women joined the ranks. Their peripatetic lives included jobs in the Royal Navy as well as on merchant ships (including privateers) and pirate ships.

Dozens of naval and East India Company ships were built at Rotherhithe. Mayflower was berthed at Earl’s Sluice before transporting Separatist Puritans to the New World in 1620. Temeraire was built in Chatham, fought at Trafalgar and ended its days in Beatson’s Yard in Rotherhithe. This walk focuses on the village and northern riverside of the district.

This is a two-guide walk with me and Rob Smith, seen below after a recce in Maldon.

L aura Agustin is an historian, author and qualified guide interested to bring out the lives of unnamed Londoners, the ‘ordinary folks’, highlighting issues of gender, sex and class.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura’s longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.