River Ouse Bargeman

by Lewis, David;

  Watson was also involved in the munitions trade in the First World War. The factory at Barlby was involved in the production of poisonous phosgene, and Watson was also party to the setting up of a large munitions factory at Barnbow to the east of Leeds, and received a telegram from the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, thanking him for his contribution to the war effort.

  A final OCO subsidiary was Selby Warehousing and Transport (or SW&T), which owned parts of the business for legal reasons. It ceased to function in the 1940s, but is mentioned by Laurie in his songs in Appendix 2. After the war, Watson continued his philanthropic ventures, donating £50,000 to the Leeds General Infirmary in 1921. He was created Baron Manton in 1922, but died of a heart attack whilst riding out to hunt before he could take up residence at his newly acquired estate in Warwickshire.

  Although much of the BOCM works closed in the 1990s, the factory buildings at Barlby remained intact until the early part of this century. The Barnbow factory became Vickers, and, whilst now disused, the site can still be seen from the railway line to the east of Leeds on the journey from Selby. The bulk silos on Barlby Road were only demolished in 2008, with the majority of the factory buildings following in the next couple of years. The allotments are still tilled and the Recreation Ground where local Olympic athlete Stanley Englehart trained for the 1932 Games is still in place. However, there are plans for a large housing and light business development on the site. Whilst it is good that a derelict site is brought back into profitable use, such a development will wipe away many traces of what was one of the largest and most important industrial enterprises in the north of England.

  Chapter 3

  A BARGEMAN’S LIFE ON THE OUSE IN THE 1920s

  After the First World War, Granddad Bill went skipper of the Leeds Eclipse, one of Watson’s dumb barges, but Sam became skipper of the first dual purpose oil and solidscarrying barge, the Selby Vega. All of Watson’s dumb barges had celestial names; a full list is given in Appendix 1. Laurie still has Sam’s work log from 1919–1934, a fifty-page volume documenting Sam’s day-to-day experiences and serves well to show the kind of working conditions an Ouse bargeman endured in the 1920s.

  Sam’s log starts in earnest in 1920, by which time the effects of the First World War had subsided to some extent, and so to a degree, working conditions had returned to ‘normal’. The factory at Barlby was getting back towards full production. Consideration of one of Sam’s round trips on the Selby Vega gives an idea of what a bargeman’s work involved. This page of the log book, and in particular the trip starting on 18 March is a good example of such a round trip. Sam got paid every time the boat completed a round trip to Hull and back. By comparing the dates when he got paid, you can see that the average round trip took about ten days. No two trips are the same – different ships, different cargoes, different tugs and a different set of conditions on each occasion.

  Laurie’s parents, Elisabeth and Sam Dews. (Laurie Dews)

  Extract from Sam Dews’ log, 1920. (Laurie Dews)

  So, what happened on the trip that began on Thursday, 18 March? Sam went to the Shipping Agent’s office to pick up his payment for the previous load of 172 tons of ‘PK’ or Pine Kernels. As the barge could hold 200 tons, the vessel had been comfortably, but not dangerously, full. He got paid £11/12/4d, or in decimal terms, £11.62, a return of about 1/5d or 7p per ton.

  This can be estimated at around £300 and £1.75 per ton in 2016 values. Out of this the mate has to be paid his £2/10/-(£2.50, £75 today). Having picked up his money, Sam was directed to his next job, loading groundnuts in their shells, from the SS Hurliness. The Hurliness was typical of the boats that the barge trade served. It was a 3,000-tonner, built in 1899 and belonged to the Reardon Smith line, who were involved in the coal trade to South America, from where these ground nuts may have been sourced as a return cargo. Fortunately, the Hurliness seems to have been berthed close to the Vega. Were she not to have been, then Sam and his mate would have either needed a tug to be taken to the appropriate dock, or had to use sheer muscle power to manoeuvre the barge across the dock using warping line and boat hook.

  It took at least a day to load, but the barge finally was full of cargo. Unusually, the tonnage is not recorded, but by comparison with money received from other cargoes on the same page, it must have been close to the limit of 200 tons. Before Sam could consider the job done, he had to secure his load. Pine kernels had to be kept dry, so Sam would have to make sure that his hatch covers were securely on to stop any rain coming in, and that they were secured against any movement by hammering the battin’ irons in. In other words, Sam had to batten down the hatches. Sam also had to position his barge to allow for rapid exit onto the river when tide time came along. Tide time was about an hour after the flood had passed the docks, and it made sense for the tug and its barges to catch the tide. But there were usually four barges linked to an OCO tug, and there were many barges in the lock waiting to be tugged to many other destinations apart from Selby. So, before Sam could rest, he had to moor up close to the other Selby barges, expending more muscle power on boathook and warping line, ready to rope up to the tug in time for tide time.

  Blacktoft Jetty in 1947. (Susan Butler/ Howdenshire History)

  As it was a weekend, we must presume that the barge was moored up in the docks for two days awaiting a tug. Bargemen didn’t always have the weekend off. It was very much a matter of fitting in with the shifts of the dockers, the availability of a tug and the state of the tide, but generally speaking, bargemen were keen to get their cargo moved and unloaded, as the sooner they did that, the sooner they got paid. Looking at the previous weekend, it can be seen that the days were taken up with loading and being tugged up to Selby.

  On Monday 22, the tug Midge – a veteran built in 1861 – took on the tow. Laurie refers to the tug Robie as being the main player in moving the dumb barges between Hull and Selby, but from studying the extracts of Sam’s log, it becomes clear that the OCO barges were pulled by many vessels. The Midge was, at the time, owned by Charles Kent of Hull, so presumably was hired by OCO for this trip. The weather conditions weren’t favourable, so the convoy had to take refuge at Blacktoft Jetty, about half way between Hull and Selby. The jetty here is substantial and a well-known ‘refuge’ for ships if weather conditions were poor or the water level was falling. There was also a pub handy!

  As Sam describes arriving in Selby on the night tide, the barges must have waited a good few hours at Blacktoft, as there is an approximately twelve-hour gap between flood tides. Although it must have been a long day, unloading began straight away, and was complete by the Tuesday. Since the boats came up on the night tide, and it was March, presumably it was dark when the Vega passed through Selby’s bridges. Passage of Selby’s bridges called for smart navigation, sometimes using the anchor as a drag to aid steering. In this case there must have been a mishap, as, after unloading, Sam picked up an anchor from the bridge men.

  Once unloaded and fully-equipped, the Vega would be tied up at one of Selby’s jetties to await a tug back down river. This happened on Wednesday, travelling empty to Albert Dock, to begin loading with pine kernels, before getting paid £12/6/3d for the groundnut cargo on Friday, 26 March.

  So, a ‘normal round’ of nine days, including two days enforced rest, the dangers of fog, working all hours to unload, losing an anchor and a tow back empty brought in just £350 at today’s values.

  Throughout the previous year Sam recorded the weight of each cargo carried and how much he got paid for that transport. By tallying that data, it can be seen that from February 1919, when the log begins, until the end of the year, the Vega carried 2,577 tons of cargo, mainly of different vegetable products that OCO could crush for oil. These included: linseed, also supplied to crushing mills in Gainsborough, Beverley and Hull; ground nuts; palm kernels; ‘beans’, probably soya beans; copra, the dried flesh of the coconut; black seed; Bombay seed; cotton seed, which could be both black or white so Sam’s reference to ‘
black seed’ is presumably black cotton.

  Bombay and cotton seeds are effectively both seeds of the cotton plant and black seed could be an Asian seed from a plant belonging to the buttercup family, or just black cotton.

  Sam was paid £255/12/11d (£255.65 or about £7,000 in 2016 values) for carrying that cargo. That’s an average rate of almost 2/- (10p, £2.75 in 2016 value) per ton. Later in the decade, the rate of pay was gradually reduced, in line with the recession and depression of the later 1920s.

  A second extract takes us forward a year to 1921. At the top of the page, Sam is still running the Vega, but on 7 July he took charge – without any ceremony noted in the log – of his new boat, Selby Taurus which served the Dews family for much of the next thirty years. The Taurus was built at Thorne rather than Beverley, and carried solely dry goods rather than the dual capabilities of the Vega. A full list of construction details is given in Appendix 1.

  A decade earlier, Soapy Joe had promised Bill that he would supply everything that was needed on the Leeds Comet. We don’t have that inventory, but Laurie does still have the original inventory for Great Uncle Abe’s Selby Virgo. Sam would have had to check and sign that everything on this comprehensive list was present, correct and shipshape, and was responsible for keeping it that way. Items would be replaced for free if they suffered fair wear and tear, but if something was broken, lost overboard or stolen – all of which happened on the Taurus in the next fifteen years – the replacement cost came from the skipper’s pocket.

  Most of the equipment is obvious, but there were some more obscure but vital items on the list.

  • A marlinspike is a device used to help the bargemen splice pieces of rope or wire together.

  • A stower (pronounced stour) is a long oar/boathook used to help navigation around the docks.

  • A stern chase lamp is the rear light to hang on the barge whilst under tow.

  • Seed scoops were used when unloading seed, being shovels with a circular cross-section and raised sides to enable a good shovel-full of seed to be moved into the bucket loaders.

  The rope’s dimensions are given firstly as length in fathoms with one fathom being equal to six feet, then girth in inches. The largest rope is therefore 150 feet (50 yards, 45 metres) in length, probably made of hemp, and rounded like a wellmuscled leg; quite a weight to drag on board when wet, cold, icy or all three.

  Although Laurie talks about his work being centred on Alexandra Dock, in Sam’s time, Taurus worked at many different docks in the Hull area. For instance, whilst on 23 June Taurus is at Alexandra Dock, on 3 July, having tripped to Selby and back, she is at Victoria Dock. This diagram of the docks in Hull shows the many and various docks available for the bargemen to load and unload cargo at.

  Initial inventory for equipment supplied as new with the Selby Virgo. Gilyott and Whitakers were Shipping Agents in Hull. (Laurie Dews)

  Diagram of layout of the docks in Hull. (Author)

  Sam’s cargo on the first trip on the page is recorded as coal, so either Sam was taking a job outside his work for OCO or was supplying fuel for the factory. The cargo on 22 July is recorded as being ‘oil’. Given that the Taurus did not have the bulkheads needed to safely carry liquid oil, this oil may have been in barrels, or Sam may have been persuaded to take a risk for extra money, travelling the presumably quiet summertime river. This is a return cargo to Hull, so may have been a ‘hardened oil’ from the Ardol part of the OCO factory.

  From time to time Taurus has to be towed from one dock to another in the Hull complex. An example of this happens on 12/13 August.

  On 15 August comes some bad economic news; the pay rate is reduced by 1d (½p) per ton. That may seem insignificant, but if the original rate was 1/5 or 17d per ton, that represents a pay cut of over five per cent.

  Extract from Sam Dews’ log, 1921. (Laurie Dews)

  The Selby Taurus when almost new. (Laurie Dews)

  Five days later, there was some more shattering news – this time literally. There seems to have been a collision between the new Taurus and an older dumb barge in the OCO fleet, the Leeds Meteor. This happened at Willow Tree Rack, so presumably occurred during ‘singling out’. Luckily, the damage does not seem to have been too serious, as no further reports or repairs seem to have been required. The Meteor survived to do barge balloon duty in the Second World War. This round trip clearly wasn’t a happy one as on 23 August, it’s recorded that Taurus hit Hook Bridge on the return trip to Hull.

  Perhaps Sam was still getting used to his new craft. Lest all these collisions lead one to believe that these bargemen were very poor helmsmen, one must bear in mind the complexities of steering a barge in the currents and eddies caused by bridge supports.

  Taurus was 97ft (30m) long with a 17ft 10in (5.5m) beam. She could carry 200 tons of cargo with a 6ft 8in (2m) draught. The cargo hold had four ‘fore and afters’, one to each hold, with forty-eight hatchboards on each side and six tarpaulin covers. These fitted into batten lugs secured with battin’ irons and wooden wedges. The anchor had 30 fathoms (180 feet, 55m) of chain in two equal lengths.

  Plan view of the Selby Taurus. (Alice Prince)

  ‘Taurus’ was 97’ (30m) long with a 17’10” (5.5m) beam

  In late January 1922, there was more bad news. A collision with Robie caused damage to companion barge Leeds Solar in foggy conditions. Obviously, even if the Solar crew had a foghorn and fog bell in their inventory, they didn’t do their job satisfactorily. Navigating in the dark and foggy conditions must have required strong nerves and tremendous faith in your colleagues.

  It is difficult today to comprehend quite how physically and mentally demanding a dumb barge skipper’s job was. The captain of the 1920s had none of today’s electronic aids and safety devices. Sam had neither radar nor sonar to advise him of the approach of any other vessel on the tide-way, and no GPS to tell him his exact position: that knowledge derived from a waterman’s familiarity with his ‘route’.

  Sam’s craft had no power of its own: whilst its motion had to be faster than the tide’s velocity to allow the tiller to have effective steerage, that impetus derived entirely from the tug’s pull on the tow rope. The helmsman had to exert a strong force on the tiller to counteract the tendency for barges to be drawn together into the tug’s wake.

  A flotilla going upstream was likely to meet traffic coming down to Hull. The Ouse has many meanders and its banks are high, so that even in daylight it was difficult to detect oncoming traffic. At night time, in fog or in poor visibility, one had to trust to the mate looking out for the ship’s lights or listening out for a barge’s bell or a ship’s foghorn. The jetty at Blacktoft had its own foghorn to add to the sonic confusion. On UK waters, the ‘rule of the road’ was to pass ‘port to port’, so as craft approached each other, Sam’s barge was steered as far to starboard as was safe.

  Added to the complexity of all this manoeuvring was the state of the barge itself. Since it made economic sense to load a barge as fully as possible, it was likely that the freeboard was around six inches. Therefore, any journey between tiller at the rear and lookout at the front to ensure that your cargo, your wages for the next two weeks, was staying dry was carried out along decks likely to be awash with icy water.

  Extract from Sam Dews’ log, January 1922. (Laurie Dews)

  The proverbial cherry on the cake was provided by the tug’s exhaust. Either oil- or coal-fired, a regular blast of sulphurous fumes from the chimney acted as a ‘livener’ for the lungs.

  A skipper’s financial reward was no more than average for a skilled working man, and during the decade, fiscal conditions worsened. On 30 January, Sam records a reduction of 1d per ton carried, making a 10% reduction in tariffs over a six-month period.

  Our next extract takes us forward to 1924, this time to late February.

  Things had been continuing in their usual way until 16 February when Bill recorded, ‘Start of Big Dock Strike’. This was a dispute between dockers and their employ
ers, to which the bargemen were bystanders. The National Archives record the problem as stated to the Cabinet on 16 February, and the resolution that followed eight days later. Working conditions for dockers were generally very poor. They were usually employed on a casual basis, day by day and had little job security. There was often competition between gangs of dockers, which could sometimes break into violence. In Liverpool, for example, there were teams of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Manx dockers. Employers could use the rivalry between them to keep wages low. A strike was called in February 1924 when relations between unions and employers reached breaking point. The Minister of Labour made a full statement to the Cabinet as to the circumstances in which the Dock Dispute had been brought within sight of an immediate settlement, and of the terms on which it was hoped that a settlement would be reached. These terms included an increase to the wages of workers of 1/- (5p or £1.50 in 2016 terms) a day at once, and a second 1/- on the first Monday in June, along with certain changes in the terms and conditions of employment.

  At the time, dockers were being paid from 11/- to 13/- per day – or about £3 per week (about £100 in 2016 terms, but the £3 figure was slightly above average for a manual worker in 1924). The full pay increase would amount to something in the region of a fifteen per cent hike in pay. This may well represent the industrial power of the dockers; the Government, clearly concerned by the effects this strike could have on the public good had the wage increases not been accepted, prepared plans for the emergency distribution of food.

  Extract from Sam Dews’ log and the strike,1924. (Laurie Dews)