A trade open to all
|Dockers unloading a collier, 1808. © NMM|
Dock work drew people from many different backgrounds. In the early days of the docks, the men would have been recruited from the porters who worked on the riverside quays. Later on, men from all over Britain and Ireland arrived in London seeking work.
As a large part of the work was unskilled, requiring brute strength to fetch and carry goods, it was open to anyone seeking employment. Sometimes people worked in the docks for a short period at particular times of the year or if their own trade was in depression.
Mayhew's Wapping visit
|Old dock hands. © NMM|
Henry Mayhew visited the London Docks at Wapping in 1849 and described the variety of men seeking work there:
‘He who wishes to behold one of the most extraordinary and least known scenes of this metropolis should wend his way to the London Dock gates at half-past seven in the morning. There he will see congregated within the principal entrance masses of men of all grades, looks, and kinds.'
'There are decayed and bankrupt master butchers, master bakers, publicans, grocers, old sailors, Polish refugees, broken-down gentlemen, discharged lawyers' clerks, suspended Government clerks, pensioners, servants, thieves - indeed, everyone who wants a loaf and is willing to work for it. The London Dock is one of the few places in the metropolis where men can get employment without either character or recommendation’.
|Unemployed men gather outside the West India Docks. © NMM|
Henry Mayhew, ‘Labour and the Poor’ in the Morning Chronicle, October 1849.
A close-knit community
Dockers often formed themselves into gangs for loading and unloading ships. Gangs varied in size according to the job, but usually they were made up of 11 to 13 men. Where possible they tried to keep these gangs together on a regular basis as their safety often depended on other members of the gang, especially when handling cargoes in confined spaces or in difficult conditions.
|Dock gang at the King George V Dock, c. 1957. © NMM|
People preferred to work with members of their family or with friends that they could trust. This created a close-knit community of workers with strong bonds of loyalty and solidarity. There were many well-established families in the docks. Usually, the oldest member would be in charge of the gang.
|Discharging frozen mutton and lamb from Australia on the Clan Macdougall. © NMM|
Until the 1970s most cargo in London was ‘break bulk’, carried in small units such as sacks, barrels or pallets (a portable wooden platform used for storing or moving cargo).
|Pallets of oranges from the Strathbrora (1967) at King George V Dock. © NMM|
Most ships spent half of their life being loaded and unloaded in ports. Large numbers of dockers were needed to work at dockside or to operate cranes. Each docker had a hook that he used to pick up items, while the cargo was hung under the crane by means of hooks, slings or nets.
|London docker's case hook. © NMM|
Once a cargo had been unloaded from a ship and placed onto the quayside it would be moved to a warehouse by relatively unskilled dock labourers. However, the actual process of loading and unloading cargo from ship to shore was carried out by gangs, with one or two men to each hatch. A hatch gang would be divided into hold men and deck men.
|Frozen meat from New Zealand being discharged at the Royal Albert Dock, 1949. © NMM|
The gang system
Although many dock labourers were employed directly by the dock and shipping companies much of the work of the gangs was organized through contractors. These were often men who had been foremen in the docks for many years. They would arrange for a ship to be unloaded at a fixed price per ton.
|Deck gang discharging Chittagong tea from the Clan Munroe (1918). © NMM|
The contractors would go to 'gangers' who would choose two gangs of men. The first would work on the ship while another gang carried out tasks on the quayside such as trucking goods, warehousing and weighing. Sorting and weighing were carried out under the supervision of the foreman, and did not involve specialist workers.
|Unloading cases of New Zealand apples at the Royal Docks. © NMM|
An unpopular system
|Landing oranges at Fresh Wharf, London Bridge. © NMM|
The gang system was very unpopular amongst the dockers. An article in The Times of 29 August 1889 explained why:
'The complaint of the men is, first, that they are compelled to bribe, treat, or fawn upon the [gangers] who have the selection of the workers. Secondly, and this is the gist, excessive amount of work is got out of them in return for a disproportionately low scale of pay.'
'It is true that the hourly wage paid by the gangers is no lower than formerly. But for this wage the men complain that they are overdriven. It is the ganger's interest to employ as few hands as possible for a given piece of work, and yet to get the work done as quickly as if it were adequately manned.'
|Dock labourers at the East India Docks, 1889. © NMM|