Join Thames mudlark Alessio Checconi, young heritage professional Nadia Hirsi, maritime historian Anna McKay, museum curator Hannah Stockton and PhD researcher Ben Weddell (chair) as they discuss the secret lives of ships and the people who lived in, worked on and interacted with them. How did the presence of ships (and shipbuilding and breaking) on the Thames alter the riverscape? What was life like on board - or in the riverside communities that emerged nearby? And what happened to the timbers of ocean-going vessels when they came to the end of their lives?
Discover untold histories from the Thames that have been revealed by archival research, family history and objects salvaged from the foreshore by mudlarks – from the use of prison hulks to hold convicts before deportation to the lives of East African seamen who settled on the banks of the river. Together, our panel of historical experts and Thames explorers piece together remnants of London’s maritime past.
Dr Alessio Checconi is a geologist, palaeontologist and licensed Thames mudlark with a deep passion for archaeology and history. With a background in Earth Sciences, Alessio has taught at university level and published research in the fields of sedimentology and palaeontology. He is also known to many as London Madlark, and spends his free time exploring the muddy foreshore of the River Thames at low tide, in search of ancient artefacts. A prehistoric flint blade, a Roman hairpin, a medieval pilgrim badge or a child’s leather shoe: these simple objects become unlikely storytellers, revealing long forgotten anecdotes of Londoners past. History, he writes, isn’t shaped solely by kings and emperors. It is also written by countless everyday lives, people just like us, who left so many quiet traces behind.
Nadia Hirsi was born and raised in the East End and is the descendant of a Somali seafarer. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by the lives lived on the Thames, the stories the river can tell us, and the history held by each dock and beach. Nadia has worked with Greenwich + Docklands International Festival as Marketing and Audiences Officer and with Tower Hamlets Archives on a project tracing people of African heritage living in the East End during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Her work also consists of community and audience engagement. This includes working on the Actors Touring Company production, Bodies of Water (2024). Most recently, she was part of Thames Festival Trust’s heritage project Lost & Found, during which she researched a ceramic sherd depicting a scene from the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Nadia is a graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London in Drama and Theatre Arts.
Dr Anna McKay researches the lives and experiences of prisoners across the British maritime world and is based at the University of Liverpool. Her PhD on prison hulks - battered ex-naval warships hastily converted as floating prisons - was awarded in 2020. Originally conceived as a short-term solution to a prison housing crisis, hulks were used by the British government for decades, spanning the late 18th and 19th centuries. Their fascinating history has been largely forgotten - this is the story of empire, prisons, and society as a whole.
Dr Hannah Stockton is Curator of Maritime London and the Merchant Marine at Royal Museums Greenwich, where she has been for 7 years. Her role works with a range of collections, from sailor’s craftwork and oral histories to the Cutty Sark. Her research background in histories of London and the Thames contributes to the other strand of her work at Royal Museums Greenwich, concerning local maritime histories and how they are represented within the collections and the museum sites more widely.
Ben Weddell (Chair) is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership student with Royal Museums Greenwich and the University of Reading. His PhD research focuses on shared identity and nationality in communities connected with seafaring, including those along the Thames, in the late 1700s.
Lost & Found is a Thames Festival Trust project made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
