The Thames has forever been a waterway of dreams. In hundreds of years past’’japan campers’’mariners and pilgrims, traders and globe-trotters, have all ventured down the stream from London to look for their fortunes or their fate, while others from a remote place have cruised up the waterway on a comparable mission or endeavor. For every one of them the low Essex shore was dependably their first and last look at Britain. Up until the center of the last century English boats cruising out of th...