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SOUTHWARK TALES 1

ROTHERHITHE and the New World colonies

In September 1620, Captain Jones famously sailed the Mayflower from Rotherhithe and carried 102 'separatists' 3000 miles in a ship the size of a double-decker bus. The nine and a half week journey cost only one life (and prompted two births) but nearly half of the adventurers died within 3 months of stepping ashore.

The rest were saved by the intervention of two Native Americans, Samoset and Tisquantum. Captain Jones made it back and died a year later to be buried at St Mary's, Rotherhithe. There was no sentiment for the Mayflower which was broken up for scrap shortly afterwards.

Captain Jones' memorial at St Mary's

ROTHERHITHE and a new world of engineering

In 1825, Marc Brunel, assisted by his son Isambard, started work on a tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping. 18 years later, the world's first underwater tunnel was complete and the 'shield' system for modern tunnel construction established. The inspiration for the engineering was said to have been a wood boring mollusc (shipworm) which Marc had observed gnawing its way through naval shipyards.

The project was not a commercial success as a foot tunnel and in 1865 it was sold to a railway company which put it to the use which it enjoys to this day.

The tunnel was the precursor of the first Tube railway, the Tower Subway (1869-70) built in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. But it lasted only 3 months as a funicular railway and a further 16 years as a foot tunnel before closing in 1896.