A Royal Mail ship of the Orient Steam Ship Company entering the New Lock Entrance to Tilbury Docks, 1950s. (Author’s collection)
It was now the turn of the shore gang slingers to attach pre-prepared wires to the crane’s hook so I could raise the gangway and slew it into the forward saloon door, where it was made fast by the ship’s crew, specifically for first-class-passenger priority disembarkation. The ship’s gang began the task of discharging the passengers’ cabin baggage, which had been brought into the forward foyer by the cabin stewards.
Once the gangway was placed in the foyer door, the hatch cover was raised and my job was concluded till the ship’s gang began to uncover the deck hatches and to discharge cargo. I descended from the cabin, down the ladders to the quay and stood by a safety barrier, close to the gangway. I was talking to an Orient Line security watchman when the first passenger came out through the saloon door and began her walk down the gangway. Well, it wasn’t just an ordinary walk. It was more like that of a highly trained model, exhibiting those fancy, totally useless frocks (the rag trade prefer to call them dresses because it sounds posh) to be sold at exorbitant prices to women with more money than they know what to do with.
She came out of the starboard saloon door of the ship, this beautiful creature, and slowly traipsed her way down the gangway. She was swinging her slim hips from side to side as though she was traversing a catwalk, tilting her head slightly upwards as though trying to avert her gaze from the common herd, but being well aware every eye within sight of her was watching. The men of the baggage gangs stood, leaning on the shafts of their wheelbarrows, staring; taxi drivers standing by the safety barriers were staring; second- and third-class passengers, waiting on the after decks to disembark, were staring. She was a sight to behold.
She descended the gangway with one hand on the safety rail, holding the other hand at shoulder height in a swan-neck position. She was tall and slim and had the facial features of the Venus de Milo. She was wearing a red summer dress, with a flower design in bright colours, which finished just below her knees. She had white silk stockings, the old-fashioned style with broad seams that ran down the back of her long legs. Her peep-toe shoes were red. Her wide-brimmed summer hat was white. It enhanced the colour of her dress, giving it a 3D effect while at the same time highlighting her facial features, which in turn were further enhanced by the elbow-length white gloves she wore. She had a white leather handbag that hung down from her shoulder to slightly above her right hip. She was wearing very little make-up, only a smattering of lipstick, the same red as her dress. Her perfume had a mildly exotic smell and it wafted after her like a misty shadow. She was, and knew she was, a beautiful woman.
As she came level with me on the quay she asked in a rasping voice, ‘Where’s the khars spark’d, cobber?’
‘The what?’ I said, absolutely dumbfounded by a voice that could not possibly have come from this beautiful woman.
‘Are you deaf or just bloody stupid, blue?’ she said with an obvious, deep Australian drawl.
I was just about to ask her if she could speak in English, but instead I decided to humour her so I simply replied, ‘A bit of both, I think?’
She stepped towards me menacingly, then she smiled through a set of teeth that shone like pearls, put her lips close to my ear and shouted, ‘I’m sorry, mate, I wasn’t aware of your affliction.’ Then, as loud as she could, she yelled into my ear, ‘Where’s the bloody khars spark’d?’
I put my finger in my ear to clear it and shook my head. ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know what a bloody khars spark’d is!’
‘It’s a spark where they keep khars.’
‘Oh, you mean a car park?’
‘Christ Almighty,’ she said in a lower tone of voice that I wasn’t meant to hear, ‘don’t tell me they’ve got another Pommie bloody Professor Higgins-type Eliza Doolittle elocution teacher here?’
Not wishing to pursue the khars spark’d debate any further (the illusion of this vision already having destroyed itself before my eyes), I pointed between the two transit sheds.
‘That’s where the car park is,’ I said. ‘But before you go to the car park, you will have to clear HM Customs first. That means let them examine what’s in your baggage.’
I led her to the transit shed door and pointed to the long lines of suitcases, travelling trunks and other packages, and the low-level benches, behind which stood the customs officers. I explained to her that she had to get a porter, ask him to find her cases and take them to be seen by one of the customs officers. She bent down and kissed my cheek, patted me on the head as if I were her small son being sent off to school, gave me an Australian sixpence from her purse and yelled in my ear again.
‘I’m sorry about your affliction. It must be a big ’andicap to you, blue,’ and she just seemed to drift away slowly into the transit shed. Then she was gone.
‘Well, well, well!’ said the Orient Line security watchman. ‘She must be one of the most beautiful women in the world.’
‘Yes!’ I replied. ‘It’s a great pity she has to open her mouth.’
9
A CHEAP LUNCH
There had been very little work about for some weeks and we had been dabbing on at the Dock Labour Board office. ‘Dabbing on’ was the term used by dockers and stevedores to denote that a green stamp had been used to prove their attendance on the free call on any particular day. Another term used was ‘bomping on’. There is no such word in the dictionary, but it all came down to the same thing – there was no work available within any of the docks in the Port of London or an adjacent port, and the surplus labour had been sent home on the fall-back guarantee of one ‘turn’. (It would be one of the eleven turns that made up a working week – two for each day from Monday to Friday and a single one for Saturday.)
Now, the lads I worked with, when we could get a job, were all young men in their early twenties. They had not long completed their period of national service (giving up two or three years of their young lives for king or queen and the protection of the realm on shirt-button wages). Some of us were trying to earn and save some money to get married. That wasn’t possible without stringent economies. Eric (Bonar Calleano’s double) and I devised a simple scheme of our own – a ‘pure-theory’ economic approach to retaining earned income, you understand, that was based on saving by reducing our financial outlay.
We had managed, Eric and I, to get into a regular ship’s gang, loading stores for the British Army of the Rhine on General Steam Navigation short sea traders, which were a subsidiary part of the P&O Line. They operated from number 5 transit shed, Tilbury Docks. It was a regular run for the boats that arrived on Tuesday afternoon with a part-cargo of returned military stores. These were quickly discharged so that the boats could be made ready for loading first thing on Wednesday morning.
Being short sea traders, they took only two days to load, but army stores were mostly paid for by the measurement ton for piecework purposes. Therefore, the ship’s loading gangs could earn well for their two and a half days of employment, and working Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday meant that we had covered five of the eleven compulsory dabbing turns in a week and had six dabbing periods to sign on at the Dock Labour Board office to qualify for the dabbing concessions – that is full back money, payable for the non-employed periods when we had reported for work. It was, therefore, essential to us that we minimize our outlay and maximize the value of our wages by cutting back on any non-essential item and finding an alternative outlet to which we could transfer costs.
Now, as this tale is about food, it has to be stressed here that the Port of London Authority provided subsidized meals in a large canteen. The building that now housed the canteen had been built to accommodate black-leg labour, that is non-union men who had been smuggled into the docks in covered barges to break the strikes of 1911 and 1912. The Port Authority, at the time of this tale, charged 2s 6d for a dinner, sweet and a mug
of tea.
Eric and I, however, thought we could do better than that on price. Our plan was to filch some tins of food from the ship’s cargo and smuggle them into the Port Authority gear and store shed. We would then proceed to the fish and chip shop outside the dock, and buy a fourpenny bag of chips each before making a hasty return to the gear and store shed (before the chips got cold) where the storekeeper subsidized his wages at lunchtime by selling tea at 2d a mug. By buying chips at fourpence and a mug of tea at twopence, we would be saving 2s a day. Nobody could argue with the theory from a basic economics point of view. However, the application in practice was a bit iffy as it turned out.
We carried out the first part of our plan in good order when our ship’s gang stopped work to go for lunch. We then purloined and smuggled some tins of food off the ship and into the Port Authority gear and store shed. We hadn’t had time to read what the contents of the tins were, but as they were tins of food, processed by a well-known manufacturer and destined for the British Army, we simply took it as read that it was a quality product. In fact it turned out to be apple purée with custard, specially produced for babies.
‘Never mind,’ said Eric, ‘it’s sure to be wholesome. Let’s get the chips, and sod the cost, get a twopenny crusty roll each as well.’
We dashed out to the fish and chip shop, past the police gate where the Port Authority police constable eyed us with deep suspicion. We purchased our chips and got some free crackling, too. Then we slipped into the baker’s and bought two crusty bread rolls before making our way quickly back to the gear and store shed.
We each pierced our tins of apple purée and custard and put them on top of the combustion stove to heat up. We quickly devoured our chips and roll. We borrowed a spoon each from the gearer and storekeeper, who sat fascinated at our antics. We scoffed down the purée and custard. We sat licking our lips, totally satisfied with our efforts. After all, we had saved 1s 10d each. Not bad, we thought.
The storekeeper said, ‘You two are obviously not married? You’ve got no children, have you?’ We both shook our heads.
‘Pretty athletic are you?’ We both nodded and said yes.
‘You had better be,’ he said. ‘They don’t issue nappies with those tins of baby food,’ and he laughed and laughed – so did his mates.
Eric and I got up to make our way back to work. The gearer, storekeeper and their mates were still roaring with laughter as we left.
‘Do you think they were trying to tell us something?’ I asked Eric.
‘No! It was a bit of jealousy on their part. After all, they only had sandwiches. Did you notice how they toasted them on that combustion stove? They must have tasted bloody awful, what with those coke fumes getting into the bread. Now, my old mate, we, on the other hand, had chips and crackling with a crusty bread roll, followed by apple purée and custard, washed down with a pint mug of tea. Not bad for the price at 8d each, I say.’
‘No,’ I agreed.
We got back to the ship and were down the hold, about to start work on the first set of cargo, when Eric made a dash for the ladder. I know he had been in the Royal Navy, but he took off up that ladder faster than a fireman can descend his pole when called out to attend to a blaze. He dashed off down the gangway and was soon out of sight. The top hand called down, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ just as I rushed past like a bat out of hell in the general direction that Eric had taken.
I caught up with Eric just as he got to the communal toilet, some 400 yards from the ship. No words were spoken as we dashed in as fast as we could to relieve ourselves. ‘Bloody hell,’ he called over the separating partition. ‘That was close to an embarrassing catastrophe. What do you think caused it?’
‘Try thinking about what the gearer and storekeeper said: “they don’t issue nappies with those tins of baby food”. He didn’t even mention soggy chips and crackling with vinegar. Him and his mates could have warned us, but they chose to have a good old laugh at our expense. Don’t worry, I know where there are some bales of senna pods. We will have the last laugh, and it will be on them. Just you wait and see. We’ll see just how athletic they are.’
We did, and they couldn’t run anywhere near as fast as us. They became known as the baggy-trousered, geriatric, cross-quays runners.
10
THE SHIP THAT
NEVER LOVED ME
She was a beautiful ship, the P&O liner SS Himalaya. She had the silhouette of a sea goddess, if the construction of ships could be placed in such a category. She was, as a matter of fact, one of the Pacific & Orient Shipping Company’s ‘Queens of the Oceans’, for it had several ships similar to her. Yes, she was beautiful, and what is more, yes, I am sure she was aware of her beauty, just as I am aware of the beauty of the marble statue, the Venus de Milo, and of the late Hollywood film actresses Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner.
The SS Himalaya wasn’t a big ship by the standards of her day. She had a gross displacement of some 28,000 tons or thereabouts. But unfortunately for me, she was the ship that never loved me. I do suppose she had a good reason to dislike me, and I’m sure she really did bear me a grudge.
She had fine, elegant lines, with her buff-cream funnel and white-painted hull. As a queen, she expected to be paid homage, not to be disfigured, which was the crime I committed against her. This happened when she came into Tilbury Docks to discharge her cargo before going into dry dock to have her keel scrubbed and repainted, her boiler tubes replaced, her cabins, ballroom and dining saloons revamped, revarnished and recarpeted, and maintenance work carried out on her engines. She was to be titivated, like a woman about to go out on a special date, before she was ready to return to her royal domain, the Seven Seas.
She had recently returned to the Port of London from a Far East voyage, and had at first berthed at Tilbury Riverside landing stage, where she disgorged her passengers and their personal effects before entering the enclosed docks proper. The ship’s discharging gangs had been picked up in the Dock Labour Board compound, and were then told off to their places of work on the ship. The down-holders made their way to the various hatches, the top hands and winch drivers went up to the open deck, and the crane drivers climbed up into the crane cabins. Then the task of discharging the ship’s cargo began in earnest.
I had been detailed by Charlie S., the ship worker, to drive the crane at number 5 hatch. It was an 80-foot jibbed, 3-ton lifting capacity, electric Stothert & Pitt quay crane. Number 5 hatch was at the stern and the hatch cover was a large steel lid that was raised on hinges and bolted against a bulkhead behind the cargo working space and the ship’s electric winches. Protruding over the ship’s side were davits that each held two lifeboats, a small one inside a larger one. Above and towards the stern was a 30-foot flagpole that flew the commodore’s flag when he was aboard. It also had an electric riding light attached to the top.
Although I was operating an 80-foot crane, the cabin only came just above the ship’s safety rail, and the davits holding the ship’s lifeboats were above the cabin roof. A hoisted set of cargo only just cleared the ship’s upper housing by a few feet. But, as the vessel rose out of the water with the discharge of her cargo, those feet became inches. The only way to take cargo ashore by crane was to hoist the set up to the crane’s upper limit above the ship’s hatch, luff the jib in towards the crane cabin, while, at the same time, swinging the set aft between the davits and the flagpole. Then it was necessary to swing the crane’s jib aft and luff it, bringing the set behind the flagpole before slewing it round the ship’s stern, clear of the lifeboats, and out over the transit shed. Then I had to luff in to bring the set onto the pitch between the crane tracks, where the quay gang was waiting to move it into the transit shed.
Now I’m sure I don’t have to remind the reader that dockers and stevedores were pieceworkers, and every second counted in our endeavours to maximize our wages. The crux of the problem, in this particular case, was the flagpole. I knew that if it was taken down, I would be able to lift sets ou
t of the hold, slew them round the ship’s stern behind the davits, out over the transit shed, luff in on the jib, and land them on the pitch in one simple operation. I sent a message to the ship’s mate requesting him to take the obstruction down and make my job a lot easier and a lot safer for those people working under the crane. After an interminable time he condescended to come up on deck, give a cursory inspection and make a determination relating to the problem.
Of course, being a P&O company officer, he had to do this with great ceremony and panache. The mate turned up with an entourage befitting the queen of England, let alone a queen of the oceans, to survey the area and decide the best way he thought the problem could be dealt with, if at all. He finally ruled that it was not a feasible proposition to get the ship’s electrician to unplug the electric socket at the base of the flagpole and the Lascar crew to lift the flagpole out of its holding brackets. He stood by with his underlings, watching me juggling with the crane to get a few sets ashore. Then, while I was landing a set of cargo on the quay and out of his sight, he and his consorts disappeared.
Now, it so happened that we were discharging cases of tinned fruit and corned beef, and although the crane I was using was supposed to have only a 3-ton lifting capacity, the ship’s gang were putting nearer to 5 tons on the discharging board. In fact, 3-ton Stothert & Pitt cranes were tested to lift 7 or 8 tons on the hoisting cables, so it was the electric motors in the crane that determined the lifting capacity. Most cranes were geared back so they could only lift 3 tons; this one was obviously not. A crane driver had no control over what was put onto the loading boards because the discharging gang was hundreds of feet away from him and out of his sight. The top hand was in control of the crane’s movements when the crane driver was unsighted, so whatever came out of the hold, provided the crane could lift it, was what the driver had to deal with.
Tales of London's Docklands Page 7