From to nearly , people emigrated from the Caribbean to the UK. Until the mid s many migrants came by boat and made a train journey from their port of entry to London. The most famous of these boats was the Windrush docking at Tilbury. What is not so well known is that many boats docked at other ports such as Southampton where many of the newly arrived passengers took a train hauled by a Bulleid designed locomotive up to London.
As part of this Heritage Lottery Fund supported project run by the Watercress Line, two researchers have been tracing individuals with memories of this boat crossing and train journey. The accounts included here reflect the wide variety of life stories that have emerged during the project. The journey to London was often the first train journey that our informants had taken. It was likely from carriages like the ones we are restoring that they saw England for the first time, and it was a locomotive like ours that pulled them into Victoria or Waterloo to begin their new life in the UK.
This type of rolling stock played a role in this significant moment in British post-war social history. Most of these accounts are based on extensive interviews with final versions corrected and approved by each donor. Ruby told her story over the phone from Jamaica to her granddaughter Jessica who lives in the U. It is inevitable that for most of the people in these stories the actual train journey does not figure as their most significant memory.
The value of these accounts is that they are full of a wealth of information about the people who took those trains into London and their early experiences in the U. Read some of the accounts we have collected below. Coming to England in I was born in Dominica in the West Indies in I was 8 years old when I came to England.
My father worked in a factory making dog food. He made enough money to send for his wife my mother and my 2 brothers and sister. It was my choice to stay behind in the West Indies as I was very close to my Grandad and did not want to leave him. My family sent for me in I was dressed in my best clothes, and I remember wearing gold dangling earrings which were too heavy for my ear and was very painful. It was very early in the morning, I remember getting on a cruise liner the biggest boat I had ever seen in my life with lots of people dressed in their finest clothes men in suits women wearing hats handbags, pretty dresses and high heels.
