I bought my first boat the weekend of the first test of the barrier. We were at the Londone apprentice Isleworth waiting for the tide to refloat post survey it was a long wait. The confusion of the water foul was obvious they however took full advantage of the extra feeding time and we refloated on the following tide. Spectacular, eerie and a longer than expected lunchtime drink. Hats off to all involved in this great achievement.

Brilliant video! Amazing that everything was made in Britain. Thanks for uploading.

This is great! I just found out about the existence of the Thames Flood Barrier today & figured there was likely some interesting archival video to be found once I learned how much the sucker cost (and my sole source of curiosity as the Wiki article, while comprehensive, is also extremely dull reading). Plug or not, this is exactly the type of video I was hoping to find, so thx for the upload! Also had to mention the quip "The Bank of England might've faced unheard of problems with liquidity..." being a great pun delivered with type of deadpan, sharp narration I regard as singularly British was so brilliantly dry that it gave me a nosebleed, lol.

Very interesting especially for someone who knows nothing about engineering! I’ve always been fascinated by the Thames Flood Barrier.

Fantastic footage of an old friend, as a young man i worked on various parts of the Thames Barrier at Port Clarence, really proud to be part of this brilliant engineering achievement

One of the things that fascinates me with this presentation is everything is mentioned in metric units, something the UK was still very new to at the time.

Something keeps fascinating me about this, probably because of how important it is. Thanks!

Can't have an engineering video from this era without naff futuristic synth music.....

Love this video and it's extremely informative too. The music after 11:16 got me expecting a deep sexy voice to accompany that load bearer... "ohh yeahh" Adept for how superb this wonderful piece of engineering is. 🤩👌

Architecture ahead of it's time

Excellent video.

Awesome

music by Boards Of Canada.

So the mandate was it must be pleasing to the eye... and it is considered so because? Are they supposed to imitate ships?

The Sunters Scammel's look the business.

And to think... since then we have discovered we are/have been accelerating and worsening the de-glacial period... And that Ladies & Gentlemen is why you always go overkill in engineering redundancies (Not over-engineer as that is a different thing)... as there is no such thing as "too safe" when it comes to building.

Can we not have something similar in the English Channel to stop the boats full of economic migrants ?