Word: rivermen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...pull upstream to Chelsea. Traffic on the grey river ignored them, and they had to thread their way with care. Only a handful of spectator launches followed in their wake, but the six oarsmen were competing in the world's oldest boat race. After 2½ centuries, Thames rivermen still prize Thomas Doggett's loud livery and silver badge. The assurance that they will do so "forever" remains unbroken...
Bottles & Stones. A race between rivermen had more meaning when Mr. Doggett first donated his trophies. The Thames was London's main thoroughfare; some 40,000 wherries navigated its surface as modern taxicabs navigate the Strand. Theaters in particular relied on watermen to bring their audiences, and Doggett, an Irish comedian, had a very practical affection for the hard-working rowers. London sportsmen soon developed just as practical an affection for the race...
...Chelsea with the tide, not against it, as Thomas Doggett's contemporaries used to do. No longer will the Speaker rush from the Chair in the House of Commons with the members in tow (as Charles Shaw-Lefevre did to watch the 1848 race). But to young rivermen, winning the race is still their greatest ambition...
...those that were still on duty seemed ready to quit at the drop of the company's hat. To keep the roster full Nasser has offered the pilots fantastic salaries, had his emissaries in a score of countries place ads in newspapers, proselyte in person among canal and rivermen...
...crest touched 30.24 feet. Then, slowly, the waters crept back down the markers on the rivermen's gauges. But the flood, even as it fell, showed its awesome power. The suction of the receding waters pulled huge chunks of muck from the levees. On the Omaha shore, the river forced its way into sewer outlets and gushed out with enough strength to lift a truck-trailer off the street and to buckle 120 feet of concrete pavement. Army engineers quickly dropped a lattice of steel I-beams across the sewer outlets, then jammed up the barrier with sandbags...