William Henry Dodd (died 1881), "The Golden Dustman", raised the status of Thames bargemen, and aimed to improve the performance of the

Thames sailing barge A Thames sailing barge is a type of commercial sailing boat once common on the River Thames in London. The flat-bottomed barges with a shallow draught and leeboards, were perfectly adapted to the Thames Estuary, with its shallow waters and narr ...

s. 1863, 1864 and 1865 saw the first Thames barge races. These continued unbroken until 1938. There were two classes, one for stumpies (under 80 tons) and one for heavier (under 100 tons) topsail barges. They were fiercely competitive – and soon new barges were being built, using the improved techniques learnt, just to win the next year's race. The Medway races started in 1880. They were begun in 1863 by a wealthy owner called Henry Dodd. Dodd was a ploughboy from Hackney,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, who made his fortune carrying the city's waste to the country on the barges. He may well have been the model for

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

's character the Golden Dustman in ''

Our Mutual Friend ''Our Mutual Friend'', written in 1864–1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quo ...

''. On his death in 1881, Dodd left £5000 for future match prizes.

References

;Bibliography * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dodd, Henry Date of birth unknown 1881 deaths English activists Thames sailing barges