Tales of London's Docklands (11 page)

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 2
s
6
d
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 2
d
a mug. By buying chips at fourpence and a mug of tea at twopence, we would be saving 2
s
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 1
s
10
d
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 8
d
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

T
HE
S
HIP THAT
N
EVER
L
OVED
M
E

S
he 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 out 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.

It happened that one set of cargo came up quite a bit heavier than the previous ones and, as I luffed it towards the crane cabin, it obviously came towards me much more slowly than the others had. I slewed the set aft and because of the extra weight, it took longer to go out when I luffed the jib aft. Consequently, the set struck the flagpole with a loud thud. There was the sound of splintering as the pole disassembled itself into matchwood on the deck. Then there was absolute silence as I strove to control the cargo over the ship's stern before taking it ashore. When I brought the crane back over the ship, I saw the flagpole had been cut off level with the stern superstructure, as cleanly as if it had been sawn off. The ship's mate and his entourage had reappeared from nowhere, as if by magic. As the crane cabin was no more than 6 feet from the ship's deck rail and almost level with the upper deck, the mate could almost confront me face to face.

He began. ‘You did that deliberately,' he said. I didn't reply.

‘That was criminal damage,' he said. I didn't reply.

‘I'm going to report you to your company,' he said. (He was totally ignorant about the way men were employed in the docks. That is, they were only employed on a ship-by-ship basis and were not permanent staff. In fact, dockers and stevedores were picked up and paid off in the same ways as seamen – that is, they were employed only as long as they were required.)