I was fascinated by watching the tugs on the London River, (or Thames just to clarify.)
Tugs towing lighters and bringing them alongside in a tideway, tugs bringing ships in and out of the Royal Docks. I shall never forget watching a young skipper bringing his almost new Sun tug at full chat into the entrance to the Royals to take a stern line of a ship leaving. Seeing him turn his tug in its own length between the piers of the entrance, taking the hawser and then towing the vessel out into the tideway, all in a matter of minutes is still fresh in my memory. It would have been in about 1968, before all the traffic moved downriver with the introduction of the container terminals.
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