Tales of London's Docklands

by Henry T Bradford

  Bill Dyke was a large man. He had what the dockers called a ‘beetroot’ or ‘moon’ face because it was large, round and red. He was a jovial, lovely old man with a rustic sense of humour. He was one of the finest crane drivers in the port transport industry. That is, he was as careful, and considerate and as safe to work with as it was possible for any man to be. He never took chances with men’s lives in an industry that had a horrendous number of accidental injuries and deaths. Dock working was always a dangerous game of chance.

  Bill had been picked up in the Dock Labour Board compound as crane driver to a ship’s gang working on a general steam short sea trader at number 5 shed, Tilbury Docks, using an antiquated hydraulic-powered quay crane to load cargo at the main hatch. Short sea traders were constructed with the bridge, crew’s accommodation and engine room at the stern. This gave the crane driver good vision both of the quay and of the ship’s hold. Two pairs of winches and derricks were close to midships so they could service both hatches. A mast, with a wireless aerial attached, poked up high above the bridge from between the winches.

  The loading operation had gone well. The ship had finished taking on general cargo. The beams, hatches and hatch covers had been put in place and secured ready for sea. It remained only for a consignment of Scottish oakwood smoked kippers to be loaded for stowage into a cool chamber. Then the ship could cast off and sail out into the river into a golden sunset. Well, that was the theory.

  The kippers had been brought down from Scotland by road. A lorry was standing on the quay. The quay gang loaded the boxes of fish onto a loading board and covered them with a cargo safety net. As most people know, boxes of kippers are quite small (about 18 inches long, 10 inches wide and 4 inches deep). There were, therefore, several hundred boxes on the set as Bill Dyke lifted it and began to slew the crane round the stern of the ship. His intention was to land the set on top of the hatches close by the cool chamber. However, fate played its hand. A ship entered the locks and the hydraulic power went off just as Bill slewed the set over the top of the funnel. As the crane lost power the set of kippers came slowly to rest on the edge of the funnel. Two of the hooks holding the cargo board came out. The boxes of kippers began to slide off the cargo board and plummet down the funnel into the engine room. The air was quickly filled with blasphemies, oaths and threats in a language that no parson within earshot would admit to understanding, let alone a bishop – well, at least not in a public place, that is.

  It seemed a bit unreal at first, but everyone was soon brought back down to earth when the chief engineer, the second engineer, the donkey-man and the firemen came out of the engine room carrying boxes of kippers.

  ‘You’re supposed to put these bloody things in the cool chamber,’ shouted the chief engineer to the crane driver, ‘not down the engine room. What the bloody hell are we supposed to do with these?’

  Bill shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Anybody hurt down there?’ he asked.

  ‘No! Lucky for you there wasn’t,’ the chief replied.

  Bill shrugged his shoulders again and said, ‘Keep a box of those kippers for the captain’s tea. Tell him you’ve had a box or two on you, and so the crane driver said it’s only fair the skipper should have a kipper or two on him.’

  3

  THE TEABOY’S

  APPRENTICE

  On a cold morning in April I found myself in Tilbury Docks Labour Board compound on the look-out for a single day’s work. I got picked up by a Scrutton’s Stevedoring Company Limited quay foreman to work as the crane driver to a delivery gang. The gang had been allocated to load barges with chests of tea that were to be sent to the tea auction rooms at Butlers Wharf Warehouse on the South Bank of the Thames, close by London’s waterfront, just below Tower Bridge.

  The tea we were to deliver had been brought to Tilbury Docks from Calcutta in India and Colombo in Sri Lanka via the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel and the River Thames. It had come aboard the SS Ma’hout, a really old, worn-out vessel of the Brocklebank Line that was soon to be sent to a breakers yard to be cut up for scrap.

  A port health motor launch making towards a deep sea ocean trading ship as it is about to enter the River Thames, 1950s. (Author’s collection)

  The trade route the SS Ma’hout had followed had fascinated me since I was a very small boy, and not simply because of the large number of ships that sailed along that major seaway. My father, who had been a docker since his release from the British Army after the First World War, had occasionally spoken of the varieties of freight and exotic merchandise carried by ocean trading ships, but he had talked more of the vessels that traded with countries that had once been part of the British Empire; countries that were now self-governing free states within a democratically controlled Commonwealth of Nations (a real feather, if ever there was one, in Great Britain’s cap).

  Among the many different shipping companies that used the London to Far Eastern and Australasian sea routes were the Pacific & Orient (P&O) and the Orient passenger- and cargo-carrying lines, Blue Funnel Line, Clan Line, Brocklebank Line, City Line and P&O cargo ships, and there were also numerous foreign-owned tramp steamers. (These are vessels that trade anywhere they can or are contracted to pick up consignments of freight; they do not run to a set schedule, as is the case with liners, and they are mainly employed on charter party terms and conditions by merchants wishing to ship bulk cargoes, or by major companies for the shipment, or trans-shipment, of small consignments of freight to ports not on their liner-specified trade routes.)

  Between them, the shipping line vessels carried hundreds of thousands of tons of freight every year to and from India, Ceylon and the Far East, and to Australia, New Zealand, many ports along the East African coast and the island of Madagascar. On the outward voyage, they took with them every conceivable type of manufactured good, and quite often even the ship itself was an export, too. The vessels that traded with Far Eastern and Australasian countries bought home with them exotic cargoes of herbs and spices, ivory and wines, precious metals and gemstones, as well as all those things essential to everyday living, including tea from the gardens of Assam in northern India and Sri Lanka (formerly known as the island of Ceylon).

  The men I was due to work with were a tea-delivery gang. The crane drivers to such gangs invariably worked pro rata, which meant they could be paid off when their specific task was completed. In fact this arrangement was quite often a ploy by ship workers to retain the services of their crane drivers when they were expecting a vessel to berth: no work aboard ship could be carried out without crane drivers’ or winch drivers’ expert knowledge.

  Quay delivery gangs comprised twelve men: two barge hands, two pitch hands, two men to load the wheelbarrows and six wheelbarrow men to push the tea chests from the transit shed onto the quay. There they were placed onto a cargo board or a tea board to be lifted or slid into the stowage bay of a barge. When the time came to make tea for the gang, one of the wheelbarrow men was delegated to carry out this task, and that obviously reduced their number to five, with the subsequent loss of two chests of tea on each run from the tea beds in the transit sheds to the pitch on the quay. During the course of a single day this could amount to 100 chests of tea, and at the time of this tale, the piecework rate was £1 5s 5d per hundred chests of tea. Divided between twelve men, this was equal to 25½d per man per day. It was general practice for the wheelbarrow men to carry two, and sometimes three, chests (each weighing approximately 140 pounds) from the tea beds in a transit shed to their stowage, and this was more especially so if the gangs had a long walk between the shed and the lighter or barge that would be berthed alongside the dock quay.

  The daily productivity target for the tea-delivery gangs, set by the men themselves, was 300 chests of tea per man, to be moved from the transit shed into a barge between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., 3,600 chests of tea a day. As a result, they were very keen to press the pro-rata man into making the tea.

  I had been stan
ding in the crane cabin after removing the stern beam of a barge, waiting to hoist the first half-dozen sets of tea from the quay pitch by cargo board into the stern bay of an empty craft. There were no seats in any of the cranes, unless the driver struggled up three separate 20-foot vertical steel ladders with an old orange box or some other suitable packing case. We dockers invariably worked a ten-hour day, so you might think that providing a seat for the crane operators would not have been beyond the financial capability of the vehicles’ owners, but the Port Authority would not be persuaded that, even from an ergonomics point of view, seats should be installed in the 80-foot high-flying cranes. For, it was strongly emphasized by management, the Port Authority could not afford the cost of putting seats in cranes. However, it did not go unnoticed by the crane drivers that Port Authority administrative staff were not required to stand at their desks for their seven-hour day, five-day week.

  One sometimes wondered what was in the minds of the people who had been given responsibility for running the busiest port on this earth. After all, it could not have been business acumen, because management always appeared, to me at least, to be totally devoid of any business sense at all. Therefore, one had to ask oneself, was it some idiotic form of class prejudice that dictated management policies, especially as they related to the lack of the most basic facilities. These decisions and policies brought about inefficiencies in work practices and physical discomfort because of the lack of welfare amenities for all workers, particularly those dockers and stevedores employed as casual labour by shipping lines and stevedoring contractors. Was this the result of class prejudice? Who can tell. But if it was, I find it extraordinary that such petty-mindedness and childish snobbery from even the lowest members of Port Authority staff should have been allowed to stand in the way of the port’s industrial progress. The truth of the matter is that the responsibility for such industrial arrogance in labour relations and mean-mindedness in welfare provisions stemmed from the policies emanating from the Port of London Board, an authority set up in 1908 to administer all the docks in the Port of London (with the exception of the Regent’s Canal Dock), their wharves, warehouses and transit sheds, policing and river dredging. But here comes the crunch: the Port Authority Board, which was principally made up of ship owners, barge and lighterage owners and merchants, also had two trade union representatives to voice the interests of dock workers. It has never been recorded that they ever served any useful purpose as far as port workers were concerned.

  However, I digress from the story of the tea. The operation of putting the first two tiers of tea chests into a lighter or barge with the aid of a crane was called flooring out, as it raised the floor of the stowage by about 2 feet 6 inches per tier, after which the gang would use tea boards (short wooden boards with strong wooden blocks attached to them at one end that hooked onto the edge of a lighter or barge combing). This sped up the delivery operation simply because the barrowmen released their load directly onto the tea board. This cut out the need for the crane and temporarily made the crane driver surplus to requirements. Therefore, when flooring out was achieved, I was nominated teaboy for the morning break.

  Charley C. was well into his fifties. He was short and stocky and as physically fit as any man half his age could be. He had been a regular soldier before and during the war, first in the Essex Regiment, after which he had transferred into an Army Commando unit. Charley had a mind like a razor, and knew every trick in survival techniques you could think of, plus a lot more besides. Charley didn’t suffer fools gladly, as I was soon to find out when the ganger asked me if I would make the tea. Like a fool, I agreed. ‘See Charley. He’ll tell you what to do.’

  Charley was busily in transit, almost running, with two chests of tea on his wheelbarrow. ‘I can’t stop,’ he called out. ‘The tea box and stores are in the cooper’s workshop. Get the hot water out of the Port Authority foreman’s office.’

  I waved to let him know I understood, and set about my task. When I opened the tea box it contained thirteen mugs, three large tins of Libby’s milk, and a 2-pound bag of Tate & Lyle sugar, but no tea. I did no more, but got on my bicycle and rode out to the local general store to buy a quarter-pound packet of tea. I quickly returned to the transit shed with my purchase. It was getting near tea-up time, so I got more than a few dirty looks from the gang as I rode past them. I retrieved their battered old aluminium, gallon-sized teapot from the cooper’s workshop and went into the shed foreman’s office to get some hot water. I put about 2 ounces of tea into the pot and poured water from a wall-mounted heater onto the leaves before returning to the cooper’s shop. As I left his office, the PLA shed foreman gave me a quizzical look, as though he thought I was either stupid or mad, but he said not a word. I wasn’t to realize till later that I had broken a golden rule. I simply walked back into the transit shed where the gang had rigged up a table with some tea chests and cheerfully called out, ‘Tea-up!’

  As each man emptied his wheelbarrow onto the tea board at the barge he made his way to the cooper’s workshop, picked up a mug and filled it with tea, took a mouthful, spat it out and cried out.

  ‘Gowd help us! What the bloody hell is this?’ or words to that effect came from all directions.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked in all innocence.

  ‘This isn’t bloody tea. It’s mouthwash. Where did you get it?’

  ‘There wasn’t any tea in the tea box so I went to the shop outside and bought some.’

  ‘You did what?’ Charley cried out in despair. He began to wave his hand up and down the transit shed.

  ‘What do you think is in these chests? Why do you think they are called tea chests? No, then let me surprise you. It’s because they’re full of tea-leaves. We can’t work all day on this rubbish. It’s what office workers drink.’ Then turning round to face the other members of the tea-delivery gang, he said, ‘You lads go back to work and I’ll teach him’, he waved his finger at me, ‘how to make a real cup of tea. I’ll give you a shout when I’ve made a fresh cup.’

  The gang, still mumbling all sorts of vile and violent threats against my person, continued their tirade till confidence could be restored by the production of the genuine substance as brewed by Charley, who should have been crowned ‘King of the Tilbury Docks Teaboys’.

  ‘Now,’ said Charley, giving me my first lesson, ‘this is our tea caddy in which we keep our loose tea-leaves.’ He produced a large tin from behind a pile of chests. ‘These’, he said as he spread a hand around the transit shed which held thousands of chests of tea, ‘are tea chests. Each tea chest has a number marked on it and that number indicates which tea garden it came from. Now, when we ship these chests of tea to the auction rooms, buyers from different companies purchase them by the tea garden mark. Then they are sent to a tea tasters’ laboratory, where the different teas are brewed. Tea tasters, or whatsoever they may call themselves, then take a mouthful of each different brew, swill it about in their mouths, spit it out, wash their mouths out with fresh water, and then taste the next brew, and so on. The idea is that retailers may continue to sell the same-tasting product, such as Brooke Bond Divided Tea, Tetley’s Tea, and the various teas sold by the Co-op retail grocery shops.

  ‘Well, we haven’t got time to sod about doing that so what we do is: take two handfuls of tea-leaves from chests marked numbers 1 and 7; four handfuls from chests marked 3 and 10 – those teas, by the way, come from Assam tea gardens and other north Indian tea plantations; then we need a couple of handfuls of number 21 from Sri Lanka. Now, notice how I shove my hand to the bottom of the tea caddy and stir all the different teas. That’s my way of blending it. Right! That’s it. That will do. Our next job is to get the water. Come on,’ he said, ‘follow me.’

  He led me back into the Port Authority shed foreman’s office. ‘Sorry about this, Gov,’ he pointed at me. ‘He made a cock-up just now with making the tea. I’ve got to make a fresh pot.’

  Charley took a sixpence from his pocket and placed it in
a battered old Oxo tin that had a hole punched in the top, watched very closely by the Gov.

  ‘That’s the second pot you’ve had this morning,’ said the Gov.

  ‘Didn’t he pay when he came in earlier?’ said Charley.

  I butted in. ‘I wasn’t aware we had to pay for the water. I bought the tea, you know.’

  Both of them looked at me as if I was raving mad. Charley said, ‘We know you bought some tea, you idiot. Now for Christ’s sake just put another sixpence in the tea kitty or we won’t get a cup of tea this morning.’ I did as I was bid.

  We made our way back to the shed and the cooper’s shop. Charley opened a tin of Libby’s evaporated milk and poured the whole lot into the teapot, then added a mug of Tate & Lyle sugar. He stirred the lot together with a piece of wood, then called, ‘Beer-oh.’

  The barrows went to the ground, tea chests and all, as the gang hurried to get their first drink for three hours. They sat sipping the brew with relish and I have to admit it was the finest cup of tea I had ever tasted.

  ‘Well, son,’ said Charley, ‘what do you think of that? Now that’s a cup of tea, isn’t it?’

  ‘Marvellous!’ I had to admit. ‘Marvellous!’

  ‘Then there ends your first tea-making lesson,’ Charley said. ‘Now you can go back up in the crane and do what you’re best at. The lighterman is waiting for you to put the barge beam back on.’

  So I did.

  4

  BIG DAVE AND THE

  FERRY BOAT INCIDENT

  He was known as Big Dave for one simple reason: he was big. But he was also immensely strong. Some of the dockers who knew him well, and worked with him quite often, said he was as strong as a horse, and I, for one, wouldn’t doubt it. Big Dave was an easy-going, genial bloke, but he was not a person to be put upon, or to be made a fool of either. No one had ever seen him really upset, but it had to be assumed he could get very nasty if agitated.