"A boat of dirty and disreputable appearance" is floating on this river at the beginning of "Our Mutual Friend"
We are in 
a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance on the Thames, ... Hexam is so 
much a part of the putrid river he plies that he appears, Dickens .... with the 
problem  and sewage was only the start: there remained the matter of... [DOC] [TLE] Sketches, Dispatches, Hull Tales and Ballads - University of Hull [PAR] palled on my spirit'  and there was still the river crossing to make by small 
steamboat ... from Oliver Twist (1838) to Our Mutual Friend (1864-5), which opens 
with the image of 'a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in 
it,' floating between Southwark and London .....