The river was congested with traffic. During the Restoration era, there were about 3,000 watermen plying for hire along the river between Westminster and London Bridge alone. (There were as many as 40,000 between Windsor and Gravesend.)

The watermen operated a kind of taxi service, transporting people by wherry, a type of rowing boat which was wide at the centre and could carry at least eight passengers comfortably.

From a letter by the Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador, 1618:

"The wherries shoot along so lightly as to surprise everyone... They (the watermen) row like galley oarsmen, with extremely long oars, and are very dextrous at steering clear of each other."

The watermen's trade came under threat with the introduction of the hackney coach in 1565, followed by the sedan chair in 1634. The Waterman's Company succeeded in keeping hackney coaches out of London for many years (unless their journeys ended at least two miles from the river), but by the Reign of Charles II, hackney coaches had become firmly established in London and the competition for passengers was fierce.

verse by John Taylor, the "Water Poet":

"Carrouches, coaches, jades and Flanders mares,
Do rob us of our shares, our wares, our fares,
Against the ground we stand and knock our heels,
Whilst all our profits runs away on wheels."

extract from a pamphlet against coaches, published in 1679:

"Coaches and sedans (quoth the waterman), they deserve both to be thrown into the Thames... for I am sure where I was wont to have eight or tenne fares in a morning I now scarce get two in a whole day: our wives and children at home are ready to pine and some of us are faine for meanes to take other professions upon us..."

Yet another attack on stage-coaches, this time on the grounds of health, from England in the Reign of Charles II, David Ogg:

"What addition is it to men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftenstimes, sick, ancient, diseased persons, or young children crying, to whose humours they are obliged to be subject, and many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the crowds of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire, and afterwards sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out? To travel in rotten coaches, and to have their tackle, or perch or axle tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours, sometimes half a day to have them mended again? Is it for the advantage of business that a man when he sets out on a journey must come just at their hour or be left behind?"

As there was only one bridge across the Thames (see London Bridge), the city was dependent upon the river for the transport of supplies. As a result, crime on the river was rife. Though not as glamorous as their Carribean counterparts, there were pirates on the Thames. Gangs of armed men sometimes robbed cargo ships in broad daylight. Another common type of piracy was to cut a ship loose from its moorings under cover of darkness, then follow it downstream until it went aground and remove its contents before dawn. Throughout the 16th and 17th century, hundreds of thousands of pounds was lost every year to the river pirates.

Convicted pirates were sentenced to be hung "until three tides had overflowed them". This was usually done at Wapping, at a place that came to be known as "Execution Dock". From there the bodies would be transported to a gibbet downstream near Blackwall, where they were hung up as a warning.