Tales of London's Docklands

by Henry T Bradford

  ‘Yes, David,’ Alf replied. ‘I was only joking, but I was a yeoman of signals.’

  Big Dave breathed out a long, exaggerated sigh and said, ‘That would be “retired”, of course, and now it could lead to your becoming the late Alfred J.’

  He was about to let go of the miscreant when one of the gang shouted out, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dave, don’t drop him. There’s a barge down there under the bow.’

  Dave hauled Alf back onboard. ‘Some people have all the luck, don’t they!’ he said. Then he promptly turned Alf over and smacked his bottom as one would a naughty small boy. ‘That’ll teach you not to poke fun at David, you little sod,’ he said.

  Of course the rest of the gang stood and roared with laughter. Well, wouldn’t you have done?

  6

  BIG DAVE AND THE

  TUG-OF-WAR TEAM

  You have to believe me when I tell you that in the docks in their working clothes, wearing their tattered and torn ex-service uniforms, covered from head to foot in cement or asbestos dust, lamp black or charcoal dust, they were as fearsome looking as they had been when serving their king and country during the battles of the Second World War and the Korean War. Although, had you, reader, seen them in the flesh, you might have mistaken them for a drunken troupe of Black and White Minstrels.

  They were, however, eight tall, broad-shouldered men, plus one giant. The eight were all over 6 feet and each weighed not less than 14 stone. There was no surplus fat on any of them: they were all bone and muscle. The ninth, Big Dave, was different, for he was 6 feet 6 inches tall and tipped the scales at 25 stone. He would often joke that when he weighed himself on a set of talking scales they would say to him, ‘Don’t play about. One of you get off, or one at the time please.’

  These men were the dockers tug-of-war team – seven men plus one reserve and Big Dave, who was the team’s anchor man.

  The Tilbury Dockers’ Social Club always entered teams in sporting events on Regatta Day at Gravesend promenade. The tug-of-war team practised anywhere on anything that was considered immovable, pulling with their combined weight and strength in order to achieve unity of purpose, both physically and mentally.

  There were also dockers’ rowing crews who trained on the river off Gravesend in whalers. Whalers, for the benefit of the uninitiated, are large, heavy, clinker-built rowing boats of the type that were once used for whale hunting in the southern oceans. Whale hunters worked in similar open boats equipped only with oars and rowlocks, harpoons, boat hooks and long lengths of coiled rope that were used in pursuit of harpooned whales.

  Although it may be difficult for any reader of this tale to believe, or for that matter to accept, dockers’ teams didn’t treat training for entry into sporting events in the Gravesend Regatta as a boozing spree. They operated under a strict code of discipline, both the men in the tug-of-war team and the boat crews. They went all out to win once they arrived on the battlefield (or, as sportsmen prefer to call it, ‘the sporting arena’), and, as has already been explained, they trained hard.

  When the tug-of-war team were in the docks training for Regatta Day, they could often be seen attempting to pull the cast-iron quayside bollards out of the concrete and granite dockside walls. Such training performances would most certainly have engendered in any intrepid stranger the thought that they were watching a party of escaped lunatics, especially as there may have been a ship tied onto the other end of what was, after all, nothing more than a mooring rope or spring.

  Another of the implements the tug-of-war team used in training was an old railway shunting engine that rested on a track behind the Port Authority rolling stock repair sheds; the engine was being slowly dismantled by the authority’s own railway engineers, who were cannibalizing the parts to repair other engines of the docks’ antiquated, clapped-out rolling stock. The tug-of-war team could actually pull that engine along on its track, against its own dead weight, and over the virgin rust that had encrusted the unused railway lines. Believe me, that really did take a combination of weight, great physical strength, brute force and, above all, will-power, qualities the team did not lack. But, as one of their number was heard to remark after a strenuous session under their redoubtable trainer, Eddy L., ‘It’s a good job they’ve not taken the steel tyres off that engine yet, isn’t it?’

  To which another of the team was heard to reply, ‘Haven’t they? I thought they bloody well had!’

  Unfortunately, there seemed to be no other tug-of-war team who trained near the docks against whom they could pit themselves. If there was such a team, they kept firmly to themselves (some people are far more intelligent than one gives them credit for).

  Of course, who other than the redoubtable Eddy L. could have been the self-appointed talent-spotter, selector, trainer and manager of such a team. However much anyone might have wished to criticize Eddy’s motives or methods, it reluctantly had to be admitted (I have to emphasize the ‘reluctantly’ bit because the team’s success did appear to increase Eddy’s head size) he was the best man for the job for three reasons: first, no one else ever offered their services; second, it is doubtful if anyone else in the docks could have done the job; third, and more importantly, he enthused a passion into his men for the skill, the comradeship and the teamwork essential to win matches.

  Eddy was always ready to tell ‘his’ team (and anyone else who would listen) how he had advised Colonel What, What! during his wartime army service that Big Dave was the soldier best suited to take on the wrestling champion of India, and how he had ‘guided’ and ‘trained’ Big Dave into becoming the Unofficial Heavyweight Wrestling Champion of the Indian Sub-Continent. But he told them this, he would hasten to explain, in order to get them to understand that, if he could do that with a talentless, oversized lout such as Big Dave, ‘who had a brain that could easily be fitted into the eye of a needle’, he was sure that, with such obvious athletic material as their goodselves displayed in training, it would beggar him no problem to turn them into tug-of-war champions. Big (good-humoured) Dave usually put a damper on Eddy’s denigrating statements with follow-up comments such as, ‘That maligning midget carried a bucket of water and a sponge. He didn’t even have to use them. If I’d listened to that moronic, pathetic excuse for a human being to “get stuck into it”, that “mobile Buddha” they’d put me into the ring to fight would have killed me. It’s no thanks to him I’m still alive.’

  The King of the Belgians public house, East Street, Gravesend, c. 1950. (Author’s collection)

  ‘Bodywise you may be, but you’re brain dead just the same. It’s a pity I didn’t let it polish you off,’ Eddy would mumble under his breath.

  ‘I heard that!’ Big Dave would say, and the team would all laugh.

  That was how Eddy had moulded them into a force to be reckoned with. So it is of little wonder, therefore, no one denied Eddy’s commitment to the team. However, the methods he used to instil enthusiasm and discipline were those he had learned as a physical training instructor during his service in the army, with a few notable refinements, of course, for he knew from experience how far he could push men, and, more importantly, how far they would be pushed before they began to push back. He also knew that humour played a major role in all training procedures, so he not only joked with the tug-of-war team, but by also making references to their stance, he drilled them into a concerted movement of body, limb and, what he knew was more important, mind. The result of his training endeavours was that the team in action had the appearance of being a single machine. They had been mentally and physically welded into a fighting machine with one simple objective – victory. Eddy had taken every possible known factor into account during the training schedules – except one.

  Come Regatta Day, Gravesend promenade was packed with local people and visitors who had come to watch the various events, which were always entertaining. There were, first and foremost, the rowing races into which publicans from throughout the town entered teams with dubious rowing skills but who
were more than capable of holding their own when it came to sinking a pint or two. It should come as no surprise to the reader to learn that the public house teams were invariably less than sober when they arrived on the promenade, and it was quite normal for some of them to fall into the river off the causeway as they tried to scramble into the boats before their race had even got started. After the race many of them were thrown into the river anyway. The winners, when they left the Regatta, hardly ever made it back to the pub they represented, let alone home. Publicans really knew how to look after their rowing crews, although it was a poor oarsman who remembered anything about the events on the following day or even the day after (except for his headache, that is).

  The Clarendon Royal Hotel, East Street, Gravesend, facing the River Thames. (Author’s collection)

  The dockers’ and stevedores’ crews were always competitive. Usually Tilbury dockers rowed against the pulpies (dockers and stevedores who specialized in discharging ships that bought wood pulp from the Scandinavian countries and Canada) or powder monkeys (dockers or stevedores who loaded or discharged ammunition and explosives aboard ships in the lower Thames Estuary). (The downriver anchorages were a precaution in case a ship should explode, the theory being that only the ship, the powder monkeys and the ship’s crew would be lost, a minor loss compared with what could be a major catastrophe if a ship’s cargo were to explode further upriver nearer an oil installation or a town.)

  The dockers and stevedores raced for the coveted King Cup. Their event was always a battle from the start to the finish, especially when the crews got behind the hospital boat that lay just off the causeway that runs into the river off Gravesend promenade and that hid the rowers from the spectators on the river’s shore. Then oars would be used like lances to fend off and batter the opposing teams till they turned round the buoy down the river below the hospital boat and were on the home straight. The crews would then sedately swing their craft into the home stretch of water and pull like hell for the finishing line. Butter? Well, it wouldn’t melt in their mouths now, would it?

  To enhance the sporting events there was always a funfair that played its own music. The music was never so loud that it drowned one’s speech or impaired one’s hearing. Nor did it overwhelm the cries, cheers and jeers of the crowds as they egged on competitors in the various events that were taking place along the whole length of the promenade. There was a greasy pole, for instance. It was about 20 feet high from the ground to the top, greased along the whole of its length. It was great fun watching all sorts of characters, some drunk and others sober, trying all sorts of tricks to climb that slimy, wretched pole, but it was not a stunt to try oneself. There were also the egg and spoon race, the sack race, the over-60s race, the under-10s race, the ladies’ race (although no one would call a few of them ladies if their language was anything to go by). You give a name to a race and there are always competitors available to take part in it. It was all good, harmless fun, till someone accused someone else of cheating, then a glorious punch-up would ensue, enjoyed by all the spectators.

  Regatta days are still always great fun for the locals and their children, but it is also true to say they are financially lucrative for the soft drinks, hot dogs and ice-cream vendors. They make a packet of money, as does the licensed publican who is lucky enough to get the sole rights to sell beer and spirits all day and up till midnight in a large marquee set aside specially for the purpose. The marquee is provided and installed by the brewery company whose publican has obtained the licence for the particular event.

  The publican chosen to run a bar at the town regatta that is the setting for this tale was none other than Little Fred, Big Dave’s friend and bosom pal of yesteryear, that little prankster, who always managed to get Big Dave into some form of trouble with his off-beat antics. Oddly enough – and this fact cannot be emphasized too strongly, especially to exponents of the game – the beer marquee had been erected very close to the bunting-draped, roped-off tug-of-war arena. One of the main guy ropes of the marquee was attached to a heavy steel peg that had been driven into the ground some 20 feet away from the tent’s open end. Little Fred was serving at his bar, collecting empty glasses and refereeing at some of the events. This meant he could go walk-about to collect empty glasses when the bar was running short (and get up to mischief, as was his forte).

  As the day wore on and the evening began to draw in, the twilight caused the setting sun to turn into a bright-red ball of fire as it prepared itself for bed, and the lights of the fairground area began to come on, causing ripples to reflect from the water of the river’s surface. Music from the funfair began to get louder. The stage was set for the tug-of-war teams to get down to business, which they did.

  The riverside entrance to the Old Falcon Hotel, East Street, Gravesend, 1920s. It was the haunt of Bawley Bay shrimp fishermen, Thames barge skippers, watermen and lightermen, and merchant seamen returning home after a long voyage. (Author’s collection)

  There were four trained tug-of-war teams and four made up of half-drunk hobbledehoys, wretched, pimply-faced youths who had been coerced by fellows of their own ilk to ‘go forward and try your luck’ against teams, one of which, they were told, was made up of County Police officers. This was a challenge they just could not resist. The preliminary matches were soon dispensed with as the County Police pulled the pimply-faced hobbledehoys into a pile, and dockers’ teams quickly put an end to any thoughts other Jack the Lads had of getting further than the first round. Of course those matches were a laugh in themselves, as the lads, with arms and legs sticking out in all directions, pulled, snatched and yanked at the rope but could not budge the trained teams one inch. When it was obvious the lads were on the point of collapse from their pathetic exertions, the trained opposing team’s coach gave the order, ‘Pull-one, pull-two, pull-three!’

  Then the white rope marker, together with the inebriated social misfits, some on their feet, others on their backs, came over the line as easily as a cork being extracted from a wine bottle by a professional waiter. Some little time was allowed to elapse for the cheers, jeers, tears and general mayhem to die down. Then came the main event, the final between the County Police and the dockers.

  Now I have to admit I may have misled the reader with regard to the constituents of the dockers’ team, for I omitted to say that in the preliminary rounds it consisted of seven of the full team and the reserve – and this does have a bearing on the tale.

  The referee for the tug-of-war final was to be none other than Little Fred.

  ‘I’m tossing a coin,’ he said. ‘The winner takes the marquee end, the loser takes the canal end. Is that understood?’ He asked the police team captain to call.

  ‘Heads,’ he said.

  Then without showing either of the team captains the coin, Little Fred simply said, ‘Heads it is. Police to the marquee end; dockers to the canal end.’

  The two teams began to line up, with one exception; the dockers’ reserve team member walked away into the beer tent – and Big Dave strode out. He walked to the end of the line, took turns of the rope over his shoulder and round his waist, and stood there like the Colossus of Rhodes. Not a sound came from the crowd: they were too numbed with surprise. The police team, too, stood with folded arms, looking at this giant. They were all County Police officers and equal in size and weight to the other members of the dockers’ team, but the dockers’ secret weapon was a bit more than they had expected.

  Big Dave stood his ground, the normal deadpan expression on his face. Little Fred gave the order to take the strain. Both teams laid back, testing the weight and strength of their opponents, neither gaining an inch on the other. Big Dave stood holding the rope with one hand and scratching his head with the other. Then the police team made its move.

  The back entrance from the River Thames to the New Falcon, West Street, Gravesend, 1950s. (Author’s collection)

  The Beehive public house in West Street, Gravesend. All the public houses in this area of Gra
vesend were frequented by merchant seamen, barge skippers, watermen and lightermen, dockers and stevedores. (Author’s collection)

  ‘Pull-one,’ their coach called.

  Nothing happened. Half a minute passed as slowly as half an hour.

  The police coach tried again. ‘Pull-one,’ he repeated.

  Again nothing happened, the police laid back on the rope to wait for the order for another try, but Eddy didn’t give them a chance.

  ‘Pull-one,’ he ordered. The dockers stamped their left feet into the soft turf in unison, moving backwards as if they were one man with a long shadow. The marquee behind the police team began to shake.

  ‘Pull-one-two,’ Eddy called again. The marquee shook again, but the police held their ground, although they were close to going over the line.

  ‘Again!’ roared Eddy. ‘Pull-one-two-three-four-five-six-seven.’ As the dockers moved back, with Big Dave straining the rope with all his great strength, the police team came forward, bracing themselves with every sinew, their feet skimming over the evening-dew-covered grass . . . and the marquee behind them began to follow, collapsing in a heap. Yells and screams emanated from within, mostly from customers who were spilling their beer. The police and dockers ran to help those who were trapped. Unbelievably, no one was hurt – this was probably because most of them were too drunk to care. Then questions began to be asked as to why the marquee had collapsed. Big Dave became suspicious; he walked to the police end of the marquee and looked down at the steel peg holding up the main guy line. Little Fred was standing beside him with a blank, but not surprised, expression on his face. Big Dave grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.