The Thames Barge Driving Race under oars' or "sweeps" and ride tidal river currents alone, up river. The event commemorates the skills of lightermen who moved freight this way along the Thames up until the 1930s and in a wider context it encourages ongoing interest in moving cargo via water and as a way to recruit younger people back into river trades.The teams are normally made up of employees of Thames Lighterage companies, Port of London Authority or are sponsored by local businesses. The best places to view the race are Tower Bridge, London Bridge and Westminster Bridge. During the 1970s Britain suffered a major
Thames Gateway Bridge Thames Gateway Bridge The Thames Gateway Bridge was a proposed crossing over the River Thames in east London, England. It was first mooted in the 1970s but never came to fruition. In November 2008, Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London, formally cancelled the entire £500 million scheme. In 2009, a new scaled-down project was launched involving a potentially new crossing between Tower Bridge and the Dartford Crossing. It was planned that the bridge should be built by 2013 and would have connected Beckton in the London Borough of Newham with Thamesmead in the Royal Borough of Greenwich linking the