Along the Mighty Thames

The Thames
The Thames is the longest river in England, running 352 kilometers from where it rises in the Costswold Hills in Gloucestershire to the North Sea. It is a little river compared to the 4,150 kilometer-long Nile, the 3,900 kilometer-long Amazon or the 3,800 kilometer-long Missouri and Mississippi.

Yet the Thames has shaped the history of England as no other river has. Without it, there would have been no London as we know it today. When the Romans first saw the Thames as London, they saw the forests come down to the marshy banks. They, like the tribes that lived along the Thames before their arrival, and all those who followed them, used the river as a highway, and they built the principal city of their newly conquered province on its north bank and called it Londinium.

Today, the Thames means different things to different people.
Rowers consider it a “sporting river”. In March of each year， thousands of spectators line its banks the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

Painters and writers regard the river as a source of inspiration. The Englishman，Turner， the Frenchman，Monet, the Italian, Caneletto, and the American, Whistler, painted it countless times and their impressions of the river in all seasons may be viewed in works that hang on the walls of museums throughout the wcrld. Some of the greatest of English poets— Pope, Spenser and Wordsworth— wrote poems praising the Thames. The river features strongly in the novels of such notable English writers as Dickens, Conrad and Joyce Cary, although the two most famous books about the Thames are a comic masterpiece called Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome and a fantasy for children called The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

For men of commerce, the Thames is a working river. More than a thousand ships a week put in at London's 152 kilometers of dockland， making London England's biggest port， especially for timber，paper， bulk wine and grain imports.

But while the Thames is a great benefit to London and Londoners, it can also be a dangerous enemy. Chief among its dangers is flooding. There were floods in 1894, 1915, 1928 (in which lives were lost in Rotherhithe and Pimlico and residents of Hammersmith had two metres of water in their basements), 1947, 1953 (when 58 people were drowned, many in their own homes ) and 1963.

To combat this danger, the Greater London Council, in 1972, built a barrier 523 meters wide to prevent the Thames from flooding. This is the worlds largest movable flood barrier, and consists of a series of enormous steel gates lying on the riverbed so that shipping can pass above them But in the event of a “surge tide” from the North Sea or a buildup of water caused by melting snow and rain in the spring, the barrier can be closed within thirty minutes of a warning. During this time, the gates on the river are turned 90 degrees so that they stand 18 meters above the river surface.

The Thames will continue to play an important part in the life of London and Londoners. As you read this passage, a 150-billion-pounds development for the area of the river called the Surrey Docks is under way, as is a similarly immense redevelopment scheme for the old St Katherine's Dock area. Large office buildings, skyscrapers and art and recreation complexes are rising to change the skyline of London.

Some Londoners are worried about the changes that are taking place along the Thames. Others point out that no matter what changes come about, Londoners will always be able to see reflected from the water's surface the House of Parliament, the South Bank Center, Embankment spiked by Cleopatra's Needle, offices, docks, pubs, parks, power stations and bridges. For these people, the Thames will always mirror the ebb and flow of London life.

According to the writer, people who lived along the Thames before the Romans' arrival had used it for transportation

The Thames has also been regarded as a source of inspiration to such great scientist as Newton.

The writer thinks the Thames is completely beneficial for Londoners.

The Thames' flooding may be caused by the rain in Missouri.

To prevent the Thames from flooding, the Londoners built a movable flood barrier.