Until the late nineteenth century, Worcester was a busy port. Traffic of many kinds came up the River Severn from Bristol and Avonmouth; the Worcester and Birmingham Canal from Diglis Canal Lock carried traffic to and from Birmingham and the Midlands. The Lock was the junction between the river and canal.
St. Clement's Church had been on the east side of the river, at the bottom of Dolday on the river bank; it was rebuilt in Henwick Road in 1823. Its rector, Rev. John Davies, was very concerned about the bad moral state of the boatmen on river and canal, numbering with their families "about 3000 souls". These people did not respond to his efforts to get them to come to church: "they were found averse to assemble at Church with the more respectable classes of the Community". So in 1842, with the aid of various grants and endowments, he fitted up an old Severn barge, The Albion, as a floating chapel for their use, and moored it at the old St. Clement's churchyard.
In 1844 John Davies, supported by the Bishop of Worcester, appealed eloquently to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for financial support to enable him to continue "raising this degraded class in the scale of religion and morals ... many of them not only themselves plunderers of the property of others but act as the Receivers of stolen goods on the different lines of canals intersecting the Kingdom." Many had been inmates of the City Gaol, some of them several times. John Dacvies claimed success "through the Divine Blessing, beyond anticipation." However, The Ecclesiastical Commissioners regretted they could not recommend any grant out of their funds.
The Religious Worship Census of 1851 reports that the Worcester Episcopal Floating Chapel had 170 places, all free, and that on 30 March the congregation at the morning service was sixteen and that at the evening service 114. Seats were reserved for boatmen; floods sometimes prevented the services being held. John Davies claimed that moral benefits had ensued.
In 1859, after John Davies's death, the barge was floated during a flood into the old St Clement's churchyard and used as a schoolroom; next to it a new Watermen's Church was bulit of corrugated iron, with a spire. A Preachers' Book records two or three services a day there between 1897 and 915, with collections rarely reaching two or thre shillings. A picture of the church appeared as an inset on the cover of St. Clement's Parish Magazine for some years, and a report on its activities with services taken by the curate, inside.
The old Albion and the Watermen's Church, by then derelict, were finally demolished in 1936.