London river watch

The Thames enforcement body holding stairs, bridge approaches, ferry licences, flood alarms, corpse traffic and waterside contraband.

The watch that keeps the river and its stairs; its sergeants act at quarantine stairs and holding yards.

Named with it

• Captain Odo Mere · one of the masters of the river watches

At the table

Whatever is wet, or late, or sealed, its men hold to be half a lie before they look at it. Inland they are laughed at, until a corpse or an infected boat shows them to have been right. In Captain Odo Mere's river-watch notes the safest district is that whose rumours arrive while there is still time to test them, by which he means the district from which word of trouble comes in to the watch early enough to be checked.