River Ouse Bargeman

by Lewis, David;

  The next action was allowing the flotilla out into the river. The lock gateman closed the top gates, blew a whistle and then opened the cloughs in the lock gates, causing the water level in the lock to fall until it was the same level as the water in the river. The lock gates then opened. For barges going upstream, which most of them were, these gates were opened after the flood had been flowing for an hour or so, four hours before high water at Hull. Robie began to pull her fleet and when the rope on the leading barges pulled tight, then barges in the rear had their 100ft (30m) of rope called into action.

  ‘When all these tow ropes were taut, a cry of “All tight!” came from each barge. Robie’s skipper rang the telegraph for full steam ahead and down below the stoker shovelled coal to deliver the power.’

  Barges ready to leave Hull Docks. This image gives some idea of how busy and congested the dock area could become when it was time for the barges to go onto the river. (Yorkshire Waterways Museum)

  The barges, bearing a frosted paraffin lamp on the forecastle, and those in the rear another glowing dully red on their stern rails, headed off into the shipping channels of the often dark and foreboding River Humber. For barges carrying a liquid cargo, turning upstream was a hazardous moment. This manoeuvre placed the cargo temporarily broadside to the swell on the Humber. Once the tow was under way, a good trip would take about six hours all told. But that wasn’t six hours of rest and relaxation. Whatever the weather, at least one man had to be at the tiller keeping the barges apart and out of the tug’s backwater, whilst not allowing them to drift too far apart. Sometimes cross-ropes helped with this aspect. Generally, steering was done by a wooden tiller, a mighty piece of timber, with enough force behind it to push Sam Dews overboard! But it wasn’t just the direction of travel you had to watch out for. Skippers were paid by the weight of cargo carried, so the barges were filled until there was as little as 6in (15 cm) of freeboard. If you had to walk the length of the barge, more than likely you had to do it on a surface made slimy by the wash of river water, with the ever-present danger of slipping overboard. Furthermore, the barges were travelling at quite a pace. If you want to have steerage on a river, you have to be moving faster than the tide – otherwise you’re nothing more than a big stick. If the tide is running at six knots, when observed from the bank you have to have a speed greater than that.

  A Whitaker’s barge at Selby, riding very low in the water, showing the extent to which the freeboard of a barge could be reduced. (Author)

  Leaving aside those requirements, every now and then a big cloud of sulphurous smoke came out of the tug’s funnel as the stoker chucked some more coal on the fire to keep a full head of steam.

  Then, of course, there was the weather. On a pleasant summer’s day, it could easily be an enjoyable cruise. But the barge traffic was a year-round operation, and the Humber often experienced poor conditions. In cold weather, the spray from the river froze on the tow rope.

  ‘If the cold brought snow, on a winter’s day going upstream into the teeth of a gale or a howling blizzard there was no protection for the man at the tiller. We did about one-hour spells on the tiller wrapped in our big top coats and balaclava helmets to keep our ears warm. Under these conditions, after that hour you could end up looking like a snowman! A tot of rum from the cabin store helped you to warm back up. What a lovely feeling it was when your mate came to spell you and you could go down to the lovely warm cabin with a nice open coal fire glowing and the brass paraffin lamp glowing. I don’t think lads these days would put up with such conditions.’

  Then again, there was the opposite to wind and snow; fog, in many ways the most dangerous of all. You had to have total trust in the tug skipper and his crew keeping a keen look out. You had to have the confidence that the tug was pulling you along the correct channel, and that a string of barges was not coming downstream towards you. As Sam’s log shows, there were plenty of places where you could moor up and wait for conditions to improve, but time was money. You didn’t get paid until your load had been delivered. Should you moor up and be safe, but miss the tide and be delayed by twelve hours? Or should you be brave and push on and get paid a day earlier?

  Having mastered the skills of steering the barges, and being prepared for the vagaries of the weather, there were yet more skills to learn. The convoy had to navigate across and around shallows, through the turbulence created by bridge pillars and finally the complex unloading arrangements at Selby.

  Laurie started his barge career in 1937, and in the normal run of things would have been expected to serve out an ‘apprenticeship’ learning those skills over the course of the next few years. Unfortunately, that process was interrupted by another situation where a bargeman’s skill and strength was needed; the Second World War.

  Chapter 7

  WARTIME EXPERIENCES

  In 1940, Hull was, and remains now, one of the UK’s major ports, and as such a key site for the import and export of goods. The barge fleet extended that transport artery for many miles inland. In wartime, this made the city, the docks and associated waterways a major target for enemy attack in the Second World War. Geography made any attack a relatively simple task; on returning from sorties over the industrial heartlands of the West Riding, it was straightforward to follow the course of the rivers to Hull, where any bombs not dropped on Sheffield or Leeds could effectively be discharged. Between 1940 and 1945, Hull became the most severely damaged British city, with over 85,000 buildings, including ninety-five per cent of houses, damaged or destroyed. Of a population of approximately 320,000 at the beginning of the war, about half were made homeless. Much of the city centre was completely destroyed and heavy damage was inflicted on residential areas, industry, the railways and the docks. Despite the damage and heavy casualties, the port continued to function throughout the war. This vast destruction was not widely known, as broadcasters referred, for tactical reasons, to a ‘north-east coast town’ rather than name the city itself.

  Of course, commerce had to continue, so the barges kept plying their trade.

  ‘Not long after the war had started one night we were moored up in Hull and Harold Wray and I had been out for a drink. We kipped in his attic, and although we might have had a few pints, we were certain that Harold’s attic had had a roof when we went out. In the morning it seemed a bit bright and breezy; it turned out we’d slept through an air raid and Harold’s roof had lost a few tiles so that we could see broad daylight!

  ‘On another cold winter’s night in 1940, I was asleep on my own on board Taurus when I was woken by the sound of someone shouting out. I jumped out of bed, pulled a jersey and boots on, went up on deck and I could hear a bloke in the water of the dock, shouting for help. I slid down a rope into the cob boat and sculled across the dock. I got to the man who was making the racket, and when I got within reach he gripped the boat and wasn’t going to let go! I pulled him on board – and it was clear that he wasn’t English. I got him to the dock side where a policeman and air raid warden were waiting, and got him onto the quay. I sculled quietly back to the Taurus and got back in my bunk. “A good job done”, I thought. I guessed he was a German aviator who had parachuted out of a stricken plane and landed in the Docks, but never heard any more about it.’

  From the summer of 1940, raids on Hull became an almost weekly event. Twenty-one separate raids are listed as affecting the city between June and December 1940. Bargemen had a difficult choice to make; stay with your barge, hope to pick up more cargo, and so more pay, but with the danger of being in a wooden barge when incendiary bombs were being dropped. Hull-based men could take refuge by cycling home, but Sam and Laurie needed a return train to Selby, leaving the barge untended and not being in a position to earn money for a week or so. A tough choice.

  ‘After one raid in May 1941, Dad said he’d had enough and was off on the train home. I decided to stay, with my mate Johnny Roddam on the Selby Pollux. When the bombers came on the first night we managed to put out any fires with sandbags. J
ust after 11pm the next night, they showered the dock with incendiary bombs and set warehouses and several barges on fire.’

  The heaviest raids of the war in Hull to date took place on the city on the nights of 7, 8 and 9 May 1941. The air raid warning was sounded just after 11pm on 7 May and stayed in force for six hours. The raids on the next night went on for a similar length of time. Thousands of incendiary bombs and a great weight of parachute mines and high explosive bombs were dropped. Whilst the attacks were mainly concentrated on the centre of the city and the docks, all areas in the city suffered damage. There were many serious fires, causing extensive damage to business, commercial and domestic property.

  ‘The Taurus was set alight. Johnny and I tried all night to put the fires out, but we couldn’t, so we had to abandon her and get ashore. Many of the wooden barges began to sink as the fires began to burn their dry timbers. We could hardly breathe because of the smoke. Even a rail locomotive was on fire as an incendiary had landed in her coal bunker.

  ‘The Leeds Vulcan was moored by 21 bay in Alexandra Dock when a bomb exploded near the fo’c’sle blowing a hole in it, and the barge shot away across the dock like a speedboat. Luckily, no-one was on board.’

  The Leeds Uranus was moored outside Lime Street Dry Dock, took a direct hit and was completely destroyed. They say that pieces of the barge were found in the ruins of the nearby bombed out Alexandra Theatre. Other barges were sunk and yet others, including the Taurus, caught fire, but many were eventually repaired at Brown’s Dry Dock.

  ‘When they started dropping explosive bombs we had to dash into an air raid shelter. Before we got there, we saw a big grey cylinder floating down on a parachute that got caught on the jib of a crane. Johnny and I managed to find a barge that hadn’t been burnt out and nipped into the cabin to make a brew. When we came out there were these two soldiers taking out a fuse. Turned out we’d nearly been hit by a parachute bomb and we’d known nowt about it. I managed to cut off a piece of the parachute cord, and took it home and put it in the shed.’

  Laurie wasn’t the only one to make use of this unexpected supply of material. After all, there was a war on, meaning shortages, with clothing rationing starting in June 1941, so the chance of a bit of cotton or silk for a blouse from an enemy parachute was not to be passed up lightly.

  ‘When the air raid was over, we walked back to the Taurus and she was a smouldering wreck. We had lost everything. It was no use hanging around so we went off to the station to get a train home. Lots of people thought we had been killed. When we walked off the dock the police and wardens wondered where we had come from, as they wouldn’t let anyone onto the dock because of unexploded bombs.

  ‘The walk back to Hull Paragon station was a bit of a struggle over the debris from bombed buildings. All the wooden setts in the street were raised up and there were pools of water from the fire hoses. When me and Johnny finally got home to Selby, Mother thought we must have been killed as they’d been able to see the flames and bombs exploding, forty miles away in Selby. She played hell with Dad. “Why didn’t you make him come home with you?”‘

  BOCM mill in Hull ablaze next to the River Hull. (Hull Remembers)

  Many factories and mills on the river Hull were either gutted by fire or destroyed by high explosives. Rank’s Flour Mills, one of the biggest flour mills in the country, was devastated. Considerable damage was done to the docks and buildings on both sides of the Old Harbour were destroyed by fire and high explosives The raids left 400 dead and 758 injured.

  Dad couldn’t believe that the Taurus was burnt out. Whilst he was without a barge, he went to work in the BOCM stores in Selby and I went mate with Guy Dyson on my dad’s old barge, the Selby Vega but after one unsuccessful trip I left him, because he was tight with his money, and I went to work on other barges.

  Barrage balloons were one passive way that the city could be protected from aerial attack. Initially based at sites on land, the balloons were filled with highly-flammable hydrogen gas. The defence was not so much the balloons themselves, but various explosive devices that were attached to the wires that linked the balloon to the ground. The combination of explosive gas and explosive devices was extremely hazardous. Floating balloon sites using commandeered barges, moored to buoys at appropriate positions on the river were rapidly developed to protect the Humber Dock area. These creations were known as the ‘Waterborne’ and were crewed by RAF staff. Later on, barrage balloons were attached to fishing or coasting craft that the forces had taken over. These craft would move along the river in an attempt to stop enemy planes laying mines in the Humber. This fleet became known as ‘His Majesty’s Drifters’.

  Firefighters at work on the River Hull. (Hull Remembers)

  During the war, many of the barges were commandeered by the military and were fitted with a barrage balloon and moored in the middle of the River Humber to stop enemy aircraft bombing the docks.

  ‘One day my mate Freddie Holdgate arrived in Hull with his barge Selby Sirius empty. Some military types came over to have a word. They said they needed his barge for military service and they were going to take it right away. Freddie didn’t have any choice in the matter. Just a few minutes to get all his belongings together and clear out. Three other of our barges were taken like that to use as mooring posts for barrage balloons.

  Barrage balloon over Hull Docks. (Hull Remembers)

  ‘One barge was moored outside Alexandra Dock waiting for the morning tide and during the night enemy planes came over and dropped some motion mines in the river. Next morning when the mate started the engine up, everything was blown to pieces. Another coaster coming upriver from Hull forgot to wind in his balloon and fouled power cables at Whitgift, meaning that the balloon caught the cables and burst into flames.

  The crew of the LBE 18: the landing craft that Laurie was on in the D Day landings at Arromanches. Laurie is 4th from the right on the bottom row. LBE stood for Landing Barge: Emergency repair. Amongst other duties, LBE 18 delivered a workshop lorry onto Gold Beach. All the crew survived after the craft beached during the gales of 19/22 June. (Laurie Dews)

  ‘Many of the bargemen like myself volunteered to join the forces. Some manned landing craft and others were on Rescue Tugs. I was on the landing craft when I went into the Special Combined Operations in 1942 and took part in the D-Day landings.’

  When barge crews had been called up, a bargeman’s wife might have to crew a trip. As bargees didn’t want to let on, rather than admit to having the wife as crew, there might be a coy reference to having a new ‘long-haired mate’.

  ‘After I’d joined up, my mother went with Dad on the repaired Taurus, going up and down the river and helping to load the cargo. She told the tale of when they were loaded up with peanuts in King George Dock, and Dad had gone ashore for a couple of pints. Mother was sat in the cabin, knitting, when she heard a loud bump. Looking out of the hatchway, she saw a tug had come alongside and the crew were busy filling a bag with peanuts. Mother responded by telling the tug men, “You can have as many nuts as you like if you put plenty of your coal onto my cabin deck!”

  ‘Dad came back refreshed and when he saw the coal he thought he might have had too much, as he didn’t know where all the coal – best Yorkshire Hards, mind you – had come from. Mother told him, and Sam thought it was a good deal.

  In wartime, coal was hard to come by, and the company didn’t provide any. The captain had to buy it out of his wages, or, as money was short, obtain fuel without paying. The full bunkers of the sea-going steam tugs were a great temptation, especially as the cob boats were so nippy.

  ‘I remember back in the winter of 1940, I was moored up in Hull Docks with my dad on Taurus and all the barges were frozen together. We were getting low on coal so Johnny Roddam and another friend, Fred Shipley, got in the cob boat and moored it alongside one of the sea-going tugs whose bunkers were full. We put loads into our boat and sculled back to our barges. By, it was grand to see a nice big fire blasting out in our cab
in.’

  Postcard from the front line, a few days after LBE 18 had been beached in June 1944. It’s good to know that Laurie could tell his mam that he was ‘quite well’ after all he must have been through. (Laurie Dews)

  Although the barges weren’t powered, you needed coal to keep the fire going for warmth and for cooking.

  As for Laurie’s actual D-Day experiences and wartime service – well there are some things that perhaps are best not recalled. Having completed service in the forces, Laurie returned home in 1946 to resume his career on the Ouse.

  Chapter 8

  NEW PARTNERS AT HOME AND AT WORK

  The world on Civvy Street that Laurie returned to after the war was very different to the one he had left behind in 1942. There had been physical damage inflicted upon Hull and the Docks, and several of the barges had been badly damaged. When experienced skippers returned from the war, those that had remained behind to be in temporary charge of the vessels had to relinquish their control and return to more junior roles.

  ‘When I returned after the war in 1946, I went skipper of the Selby Castor. This was quite a step up – being in charge of my own barge at the age of twenty-four.’

  The Castor was another dumb barge but, unlike the Vega, was capable of carrying both liquid and solid cargoes. Laurie was also involved in a more personal change of role.