Name Showery

SHOWERY is a 38ft tugboat built by James W Cook Ltd., Wivenhoe, Essex, for towing Thames lighters and for working in the East London Docks. Her original engine was a Ruston & Hornsby type MWKR, but she was fitted with her current Gardner 6lxb very early in her service life.

In 1958 she was taken over by Cory Lighterage Ltd., then in 1961 to Mercantile Lighterage Co Ltd. In 1983 she was sold to J. Read, then in 1987 to Hastings Brothers of Brentwood. This marks the end of her working life. She was known to have worked in West India Docks. 

In the 1990s, SHOWERY was sold to London artist Max Couper and renamed PABLO, as part of The Couper Collection London. Moored in Chelsea, the Couper Collection consisted of a fleet of nine traditional Thames lighters and a Thames Tosher tug, making a floating arts centre and exhibition space.  From 1992-2014, they hosted exhibited artwork & installations by Couper - created in situ on his Thames studio barges over 3 decades - and a programme of live events, exhibitions, discussions, art education, children’s artwork & ecology.  

PABLO was retrofitted with sides and davitts and exhibited as part of Couper’s solo exhibitions and performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp in 1996. In 1997 Couper sailed PABLO from London to Germany for an installation at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover, when, from a crane, an imprint of her hull was cast out of clay and sand, within the Sprengel Museum itself.

Her history after this is fairly unknown until around 2019 when she was purchased by the Tower Bridge moorings at Reeds Wharf. In 2026 she was sold again and has moved to Cody Dock on Bow Creek in East London, where she is temporarily moored before being put on hard standing in mid 2026 to be fully restored and potentially used as a working tug boat again.