Tales of London's Docklands Read online

  The people I worked with in the docks were all ex-servicemen, men who had been involved in battles wherever battles had been fought by British forces during conflicts that went back as far as the South African War at the end of the nineteenth century. Others had served in the two world wars or had been involved in battles fought in India, Persia and Palestine between 1918 and 1939. The Malayan Emergency, Korean War, Cyprus, Kenya and Suez were yet to come for many of those released from military service on the ‘Z’ Reserve List. They were hard, tough men with phenomenal stamina and a bloody-minded sense of humour. They looked after their own people at work just as they had had to look after each other in the services. When they took part in sports, they played as hard as they worked. It was a great honour and privilege to have known them and been accepted on equal terms by them.

  My first morning’s work as a docker was to whitewash quayside bollards. At midday I was paid off and returned to the Dock Labour Board compound for the afternoon muster. Then I was sent to a job removing 4-hundredweight drums of arsenic from rail trucks. My brother was the ganger and welcomed me with: ‘Ah! Henry, you’ve run into a bit of luck. We’ve got 250 tons to strike out of open rail trucks. If we get the job finished by half past four we may be transferred to the next shed and get two hours’ overtime striking freight off lorries.’

  My brother made sure we finished the job by half past four, and we did transfer to the adjoining shed and worked till 7 p.m. We hoisted our tonnage to 400 tons that afternoon. In those days the Port Authority piecework rate was 2s 6d per deadweight ton per eight-handed gang or two-fifths measurement, whichever was the greater, or so we were led to believe. That was 3d 3 farthings per man for each ton of cargo handled. Not too bad for a first afternoon; I wasn’t to be that lucky again for several years.

  The tales that follow are still vivid in my memory, more than four decades after the accident that took me away from working on the docks. They are colourful glimpses of a world long since disappeared. However, to save any possible embarrassment to relatives or friends, the names of the characters who appear in these pages have been changed.

  1

  DOCKERS OR FILM

  STARS?

  Eric was a year younger than me. Although we had been to the same school in Gravesend and I had encountered him as a boy, we came from different areas within the Borough and never got to know each other for two specific reasons. First, his father was a shipwright, employed by a ship repair company that operated within Tilbury Docks and on vessels on the River Thames. He was therefore classed as an artisan in full-time remunerative employment. This meant Eric was prime candidate for the A and B forms when we were at school. The second reason we didn’t get to know each other was that I was a docker’s son. Dockers were not considered to be in full-time remunerative employment, as they were subject to the vagaries of shipping cycles. That meant there were possibly periods when they were obliged to sign on the dole. So, I, my father’s youngest son, languished in C forms until my last term at school when I reached the pinnacle of my academic career, as it then stood, by being elevated as a senior schoolboy into Form 4, the top class. But this was undoubtedly due to a change in national policy under the Education Act of 1944, rather than to the intentions of county authority education policy or of the school staff, who had been totally indoctrinated by previous statutes, which were designed to provide a minimum level of education for the children of the labouring classes.

  When I left school, I had a variety of jobs before entering the docklands of the Port of London. Eric, however, had been sent to train as a chef in the Grosvenor Hotel, London. Of course, I had failed my medical for conscripted military service on account of an injury sustained during the war when I was an evacuee; it had left me with a stiff leg. Eric, on the other hand, had passed his medical with flying colours and been selected for service with the Royal Navy. During his national service he had volunteered to join one of the naval gun teams that take part in the military displays at the Royal Tournament. Unfortunately, he had fractured his skull during practice and had had to be invalided out of the service.

  Eric came to work in the docks shortly after me and we often worked together. He had grown from being a skinny, lanky boy at school into a 6-foot 3-inch man with dark, Italianate features. Women found him to be handsome, so he had no trouble picking up girlfriends. He was also articulate in his speech and suave in deportment. He used his hands to explain things, just like Frenchmen tend to do. He should have been a salesman; he would have been able to sell refrigerators to Eskimos living in the Arctic Circle or electric fires to Africans living on the Equator. I was about 6 feet tall and a good bit broader than Eric, but had nowhere near his obvious handsome features and inherent charm. So, naturally, people spoke to him rather than to me.

  Now, I have to admit, we younger men were a bit rebellious both in the docks and outside. The reason for this was, unlike our fathers and grandfathers, we had been educated up to the three Rs level and had a modicum of an idea we were human beings. Therefore we were averse to being treated as brainless beasts of burden by port employers in the docks and as social lepers outside. The reception we received was caused exclusively by adverse propaganda encouraged by consecutive governments, port employers and the media press barons, who were always looking for scapegoats to take the pressure off, or to divert attention away from, government political blunders or employers’ industrial misdeeds. We also resented being cheated out of some of our piecework earnings. Payments were due to us for tonnages of cargo loaded or discharged from ships, and day-work money for quay operations was being withheld by shed foremen and ship’s charge clerks. In addition, ship workers failed to pay us for lost time for day-work done outside piecework operations. Of course those people were umbrageous at being challenged about their integrity, or lack of it, and when dissenters such as us offered our services to them on the free call, none of the ship workers or quay foremen would give us a job if they could possibly avoid doing so. In consequence, we were forever left ‘on the stones’ (unemployed) or were sent out of sector (our designated docks) to other docks within the Port of London or even to another port.

  Now, in order to overcome this problem, I had to think which jobs were the most important within the industry. After watching the ship workers who were left on the call stands waiting for men, I concluded that crane drivers and winch drivers were the kingpins on which everyone relied: without crane drivers it was almost impossible to do any work aboard ships in the enclosed docks, and without winch drivers no work could be done afloat on the river. It was, therefore, imperative that, to get a job in the docks, Eric and I had to get a crane driver’s licence.

  I must point out that it was not easy to get a licence to drive Port Authority quay cranes. There was a whole gambit of regulations and procedures to go through. One had to find a sponsor among the employers, be examined by the Port Authority’s medical officer and passed grade 1 fit. Then one had to undergo a strenuous three weeks of training sessions under the tutelage and supervision of expert crane drivers employed by shipping companies or labour contractors. Then one had to be passed out as competent to drive any of the various types of crane owned and operated by the Port Authority. Competence-testing for crane drivers was carried out by the chief mechanical and electrical engineers, who were responsible for, and in charge of, all Port of London Authority mechanical appliances.

  In my endeavour to obtain a crane driver’s licence I went to see the manager of Maltby’s Stevedoring Company in Tilbury Docks. He was a big man in every sense of the word. But, unlike most of his contemporaries in the stevedoring business, he was reasonably intelligent. He had, unlike them, been educated at a public school and an Oxford college, and it was rumoured he had a university blue in boxing, but this was probably a story put about to intimidate those mortals with little faith in their own fighting abilities. (If so, he was on a loser there, because I wasn’t aware of anyone in the docks who couldn’t fight in those days, especially in
London, where all schools had physical education teachers who taught boxing as part of the curriculum, as did all the boys’ clubs in and around the capital.) He had served as a colonel in the Royal Engineers, Docks Battalion during the Second World War, an experience that quite possibly expanded his knowledge of our peasant society, but which had also made him a bit of an authoritarian. Yet, even with the flaws in his social and educational background, he was not averse to reasoned and intelligent argument and persuasion. It certainly wasn’t too difficult to acknowledge that he was more of a gentleman than the rest of the stevedoring and shipping line company managers, even if he did speak as though he had a plum in his mouth and smoked an old cherry wood pipe.

  Maltby’s office was in Tenants Road, Tilbury Docks. There I was greeted with, ‘What do you want?’ by a pale-faced clerk who was sitting on a high stool at a high desk in a small dingy outer office – an office that was reminiscent of Scrooge’s counting house in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

  ‘I want to see your governor!’ I replied. (All managers of shipping and labour contracting companies that operated in the docks were called governor. It was by force of habit one referred to them as such.)

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘Just tell him the Dock Labour Board manager has sent me to see him.’ (He hadn’t, of course, but the office clerk didn’t know that.)

  That got the pale-faced youth mobile. He slid off his seat with dexterity and verve to rap sharply on an adjoining door that was marked with the designation in large letters, ‘THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE’, under which some wag had written in letters not much larger than the small print on a written guarantee the words, ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE’. He went in. He quickly came out and gestured me to go in. I was shown into a large, well-lit office, a complete contrast to the one outside. A swivel chair, set behind a large, long mahogany desk, revolved to face me. Very comfortably installed in it was the Governor himself, in the flesh.

  ‘I understand the Dock Labour Board manager sent you to see me?’

  ‘Well, sir, not in so many words, sir. I’ve come on my own initiative to ask if you could, sir, see your way to, sir.’

  ‘Cut out that grovelling bullshit. It doesn’t suit you. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to obtain a Port Authority crane driver’s licence.’

  ‘How did you know I need more crane drivers?’ he asked.

  ‘Simply because your ship workers are always the last people off the call stand, and when they’re asked what they’re waiting for, it’s always crane drivers.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘if you can find a mate to train with you, I’ll put you on a three-week training course with my crane drivers. You’ll be paid the day-work rate while you’re training. When you find a mate, report to the cashier in the outer office. He will make all the arrangements. Right?’

  ‘Yes, right,’ I replied.

  ‘Clear off then,’ he ordered, ‘and come back and report to me when you have passed your crane driving test and you have got your licence.’ That was it.

  I went off and found Eric in the Tilbury Dockers’ Club. I explained what had transpired between the governor of Maltby’s and me. We went back to the office together and saw the cashier. He telephoned the Port of London general office and got a date for a medical examination, which was to be conducted at Trinity Square, opposite the Merchant Navy war memorial and the Tower of London.

  The day of the medical examination came, and I met Eric on the Gravesend ferry terminal. We crossed the river to the Tilbury Riverside rail terminal and purchased tickets, using our dockers’ rail warrant, to Fenchurch Street station. We walked from Fenchurch Street to Trinity Square and found the medical officer’s surgery in the Port Authority building. We were given a through examination. I passed, even with my stiff leg, and that was a shock to Eric, because he was failed as he had varicose veins.

  After the medical we left Trinity Square, looked round the Merchant Navy war memorial, and then made our way to a restaurant Eric had known when he had been a trainee chef at the Grosvenor Hotel, before his call up for national service with the Royal Navy several years before. Eric had said the prices would be a bit stiff in this restaurant, but as we were getting a travelling and subsistence allowance to attend the medical examination, we could put it down to expenses. We walked in and waited to be shown to a table. A waiter came for our order. Eric said we wanted a pot of coffee and some pastries. We were quickly served and sat talking for some time, slowly drinking coffee and devouring the pastries. While we were sitting there, several different waiters came to take a look at us. I wondered what was so obviously wrong, but Eric stayed pie-faced until it was time to leave. Then he said, ‘You go on, and I’ll pay the bill.’

  A steam ferry approaching Gravesend Riverside terminal to discharge road transport vehicles conveyed from Tilbury Riverside landing stage, 1950s. (Author’s collection)

  I walked a short way from the restaurant and it was several minutes before he came out with a Cheshire cat grin all over his face.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  He said, ‘You may find this hard to believe, but they think you are Robert Beatty, the film actor, and I am Bonar Colleano, the film star.’

  ‘Well! You would be the star, of course. What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them we were travelling incognito looking for sites to make a film. I signed a few autographs for them and promised I’d have a word with our studio director to see if he could use them when we are in the area filming.’

  ‘And they fell for it? I don’t believe you! By the way, how much were you charged for the coffee and pastries?’

  ‘They were on the house, for as the head waiter said, “After all, we can’t be seen to charge two prominent film actors who have chosen to grace our premises with their persons, now can we?”’

  He pointed at me, and the stupid sod said, ‘You, Robert Beatty!’ and he never stopped laughing all the way home.

  2

  KIPPERS – HAVE A

  BOX ON ME

  Tilbury Docks was built for the East and West India Dock Companies. It was constructed on marshland that stretched from the Thames riverside, opposite Gravesend in Kent, to the town of Grays in Essex. The lock that allowed ships to enter and leave the docks was built to handle sailing vessels, the first coal-burning cargo ships, short sea traders, sailing barges and lighters. It was opened in 1886.

  To operate the lock gates, massive pumps were used, and these had a dual purpose. They not only opened and closed the gates, but also provided power to hydraulic cranes on the quayside. These antiquated, water-powered cranes were installed in 1886 and were still being used for ship loading and discharging operations in the 1950s.

  In 1928, a New Lock Entrance was constructed and opened to shipping. This allowed the largest vessels then in service to enter and leave the docks. Consequently, bigger, higher, more up-to-date electric cranes had to be installed to handle the cargo from these modern vessels. The new cranes had longer jibs for employment on overseas traders (tramp steamers) and luxury liners of the P&O and Orient lines. These ships were passenger- and cargo-carrying vessels that steamed between the Port of London, the Far East and Australia. The hydraulic cranes were therefore obsolete for use on larger ships; they were shoved to the end of the quays and to Tilbury Dock Basin (a tidal extension of Tilbury Docks open to the river) to be used for servicing short sea traders (small ships plying their trade round the coasts of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean).

  When I entered the port transport industry as a docker in 1954, hydraulic-powered cranes had been in service in Tilbury docks for seventy-eight years. The seals on the old pumping systems had worn out and not been replaced. There was a continuous shower of water spurting from them when they were in use. This only subsided when the mains valves were closed to cut off the water supply. Under Port Authority by-laws it was illegal to light an open fire within the dock precincts, or even to light or smoke ciga
rettes. Nonetheless, in winter, braziers were lighted under the hydraulic cranes to stop them from freezing up.

  To get a hydraulic crane to operate, one had first to turn on its main water supply, which was installed under a heavy plate in the quay, then climb up a vertical 30-foot ladder into the crane cabin; then luff (move) the jib full in with a luffing lever; then climb up another ladder to release the jib by removing a securing pin; then climb back down the ladder to the front of the crane cabin to release the slewing pin. Now the crane was ready to work, with a bit of luck and with God on one’s side. (At night the whole process had to be carried out in the reverse order.) These machines were a nightmare to operate and control.

  Perhaps I should mention here the drill required when a ship entered the locks, the gates were closed, and the hydraulic pumps in the pumping station were put into play to fill or empty them. First, the crane driver was supposed to bring his crane round with its jib in line with the quay; he was then supposed to replace the slewing pin, luff full in and run up the ladder to replace the luffing pin; then wait for the power to be restored when the lock was filled or emptied. However, there was no signalling device to warn crane drivers of the lock master’s intentions, so when the hydraulic power began to fail, the driver was forced to take any action he thought appropriate to forestall an accidents or damage to the crane or cargo, but unfortunately this could not always be avoided.