Tales of London's Docklands (12 page)

‘Could you move over a bit?' I said to him. ‘I can't see my top hand.'

‘Your insolence will be reported, my man,' he said.

‘I'm not your man,' I replied, ‘so sod off and take that crowd of gawpers with you. You're causing me to lose my concentration. Just go and see the ship worker. Tell him Henry told you to get stuffed, and don't forget to tell him I asked you to take that flagpole down.'

He did talk to the ship worker (but didn't tell him that I had asked him to take the flagpole down). Charlie told me he had had to laugh. As Charlie pointed out, with regard to running the ship, ‘He doesn't even have to steer the bloody thing. They've got helmsmen to do that for them. By the way, the Governor isn't too pleased with you. That flagpole is going to cost £130 to replace. The old man has already informed the shipping company manager that he will be held responsible for what happened. At least the Governor appears to be in a forgiving mood on that score.'

The Governor may have forgiven me; the ship, she never did. Each time she came back into Tilbury Docks something untoward and unpleasant always happened to me. It had become a jinx, a bad omen. She was berthed in Tilbury Docks when I very nearly came to permanent grief, but that's another tale. Yes, the SS
Himalaya
really was the ship that never loved me.

11

A
RTHUR AND THE
S
TEAM
T
RAIN
I
NCIDENT

A
rthur was a big man; he wasn't very tall, but he was big. He stood about 5 feet 9 inches in height, but he had big muscles all over his body. His biceps and triceps bulged inside his coat and made it look as though the sleeves were trying to strangle his arms. When he walked, the muscles of his calves and thighs gave the impression that his trouser legs were filled with potatoes. His posterior sagged down at the back, over the tops of his legs, and his stomach bulged and hung down at the front. His jowls drooped prominently, similar to those of a bulldog. This gave him a permanent hangdog expression. He had black hair that was, or had been at odd times, combed back. He had blackish, brownish eyes set like two dates in his jelly-moulded face. His teeth were the same colour. He always had what appeared to be an obligatory three days' growth of beard. His two younger brothers resembled him in looks and manner, the poor sods.

Arthur was as strong as an ox, tough as any human being could possibly be (both physically and mentally) and as violent as an electric storm when he was upset. By nature, however, he was a gentle person. (He had an aviary in his garden where he bred canaries.) But anyone reading this tale can see that it didn't pay to rile him, not Arthur – especially if one was privy to the fact that during the Second World War he had been a physical training instructor (PTI) and an unarmed combat instructor (UCI) to British Commando units training in Scotland.

Now, I have to explain that Arthur was a loner, not a mixer. He had never worked with a regular ship's gang. This made him vulnerable to the out-of-sector allocation system used by the Dock Labour Board to supplement labour shortages in other docks within the Port of London or even in other ports, if the Board's sector manager was required to do so. It was on a very hot day in June that Arthur found himself issued with a railway warrant to take him to the King George V Dock in the upriver docks complex of the Port of London.

When he had received his orders to report to the King George V, he made his lonely way to Tilbury Town railway station on foot from the Dock Labour Board compound. There he met several other dockers who had been allocated to the same ship as him. They all got into the same compartment of an antiquated railway carriage that was to be pulled by an equally antiquated steam engine. Arthur sat in one corner while the rest of the men who managed to get a seat sat at the far end away from him. Oh, I forgot to mention that Arthur always had a sweaty smell, which wafted from him in the same way that scent exudes from flowers – it just didn't have quite the same pleasant aroma. I would say the smell emitted by our hero's torso represented more Polecat No. 5 than it did Chanel No. 5. No one who knew Arthur ever had the nerve to tell him about his aromatic condition. Well, be honest! Would you?

I have to say, it was always a very interesting exercise, travelling with one's fellow dock workers on public transport, even if it was only to observe the antics, sneers and general facial expressions of other passengers. From the time the train left Tilbury Town station till it arrived in Barking, at every stop would-be fellow-travellers looked in through the carriage window, or even managed to open the carriage door, saw that it contained what appeared to be several escaped convicts or pirates and beat a hasty retreat to another compartment. If there were passengers already in the carriage when dockers got in, several of them would get out and go to another carriage. The dockers never took umbrage at this slight because they happily sat down on the vacant seats. Those other passengers who decided to stay in the compartment when the dockers boarded generally stayed silent for the rest of the journey.

On reaching Barking station the lads changed trains. They caught another service, which took them on to Plaistow station, from where they caught a bus to the Wicket Gate outside the King George V Dock. The ship we Tilbury Dockers had been assigned to was a Blue Funnel Line vessel loaded to the gunwales with imports from India and Sri Lanka. I, for one, always thought it was bad news to be allocated to Far Eastern trading ships because of the diversity of dirty cargoes they carried. My intuition, instinct and experience were proved right when orders were received from the ship worker on our arrival.

He told us, ‘The good news, lads, is that there are only 150 tons of Sri Lankan plumbago in 140-pound bags stowed in the wings of number 5 hold's upper 'tween deck. That's to be delivered to road transport. The second lot of good news is that I'm giving you a seven o'clock job and finish. It's half past ten now, so you should be finished by about five o'clock. That's the bad news: you should be on your way home in the rush hour. Right! Chop, chop! Get on with it then!' Other names for plumbago are black lead, graphite and carbon black. It is used in the manufacture of pencils or mixed with clay to make crucibles, or for polishing fireplaces, or as a lubricant and for a number of other purposes. It is a very dirty cargo. After delivering his news, the ship worker disappeared and was not seen again till we had finished discharging the plumbago. That was when he reappeared and handed our attendance books back to us, held at arm's length, the cheeky sod.

After we had been given our orders, the men separated into the various constituent groups necessary for the discharging operation to begin. Fortunately, in one respect, the ship was a stevedores' job. That means it was ‘non-continuity' to us dockers and we could be paid off that night and returned to our own sector in Tilbury Docks for reallocation on the following morning's call. Or, we could be picked up for work in our own Dock Labour Board compound. It also meant there would be only one day's work. The ‘job and finish' ensured the work would be completed on that day.

The top hand and the down-holders made their way onto the ship. I climbed up three tiers of vertical ladders into the crane cabin. Two of the gang remained on the quay as pitch hands, whose job it was to help the lorry drivers load their vehicles. There was a long queue of lorries on the quay ready for the direct delivery work operation. They had been waiting there since 7 a.m. and were getting rather agitated. When the dockers turned up, a few words of foul language were exchanged, and then Arthur took off his jacket and walked towards them. One couldn't be sure whether it was the Polecat No. 5 or the quivering muscles on his body that quelled any further rebellious comments, but a silence, totally devoid of even human breath or the sound of a pin falling, descended over the quay. Then Arthur, who was facing the irate drivers, waved his right thumb over his ear and ordered, in an authoritative voice reminiscent of his Sergeant PTI and UCI days in the Commandos, ‘Right! Let's be having the first one of yer! Get yer lorry under 'ere.' He pointed to a spot on the quay between the railway lines close to the ship. ‘Come on, now. Don't be shy. Let's be having one of yer, on the double.'

One of the drivers quickly obliged – it was obvious Arthur was not a man to be disobeyed.

In the meantime, and during the quayside altercation, the ship's gang had stripped the tarpaulins off the hatches and removed them. I had removed the ship's beams and then slewed the crane ashore to pick up a set of hooks and sisal ropes, which was the gear to be used for discharging the cargo. The first lorry was driven ‘under plumb' to receive bags of plumbago.

The ship's gang received 2
s
11½
d
per ton for discharging the plumbago under the quay receiving piecework pay rates. That equated to 3
d
per ton per man. The plumbago was brought out of the ship's number 5 upper 'tween deck in ropes. It was made up in sets of twelve bags and was landed on the backs of lorries. It was an absolutely filthy job, and as it was a hot June day and the dockers were sweating profusely, the plumbago stuck to their clothes and skins. They were absolutely covered from head to foot in a thick black coating, except for those areas of their bodies where the sweat, running down in rivulets, showed long streaks of white flesh. Coal miners coming up from the deep pits look clean by comparison. When the Port of London mobile tea van arrived on the scene to sell refreshments, the tea lady, as the tea-van girls were known, looked at the lads and burst out laughing.

Then she said, ‘I knew there was a shortage of stevedores on this berth, but I didn't know they allowed coal miners to come and do stevedores' jobs.' She quickly stopped laughing, though, when twelve pairs of eyes simultaneously turned to glare menacingly at her, before the dockers all saw the funny side of her quip and burst out laughing at themselves.

Then one of the dockers broke the ice by saying, in a put-on, sort of Oxford accent, ‘Can't you see it's 'cause we are putting on our make-up to be ready for the Notting Hill Carnival.' Then, reverting to his natural voice, he said, ‘What about me and the lads taking you up to the West End on a binge tonight?'

‘I don't know about you lot taking me out on a binge, and what's that horrible smell? Have some of you been working on wet skins? It's more like I should get you to a public baths for a good scrub in disinfectant.' A mobile tea lady always managed to have the last word as the gangs went back to work. On this occasion she was staring directly at Arthur and puckering her nose.

‘What's she staring at me for?' he said.

Bob, his workmate on the quay, rolled his eyes and said, ‘She probably fancies you, Arthur! Or something.'

The gang, as the ship worker had predicted, completed the discharging operation at five o'clock in the evening. We were given our attendance books, stamped till seven o'clock as promised, and made our way home by the route we had come. There were no provisions in the docks for us to wash or clean our clothes. As we retraced our way to the Wicket Gate, the dock policeman was the first to make a comment.

‘Are you lot part of the cast in the
Black and White Minstrel Show
, or are you nicking plumbago? You could all do with jumping in the dock and cleaning yourselves up, and it may get rid of that awful bloody smell, too. Ha ha ha!'

Arthur turned round menacingly and began to walk towards the policeman. ‘I'll bloody ha ha ha! you in a minute,' he threatened.

The gang foreman grabbed his arm. ‘Leave it, Arthur,' he said. ‘We've got another 30 miles of these comments to put up with before we get back to Tilbury.' And of course he was right.

When we boarded a bus outside the dock the conductor was polite but firm. ‘Don't sit on the seats, please, lads,' he said. ‘If you stand in the centre aisle it will be OK for me to take you to the railway station. Otherwise I'll have to ask you all to get off the bus.'

None of the dockers argued with this request. After all, he could have asked them to leave the bus (yes, them, not me: I was the crane driver) as he had not yet issued tickets. Other passengers took no notice of us. They were obviously used to seeing dockers and stevedores plastered in all sorts of obnoxious filth that could not be removed within dock premises, simply because there were no provisions installed by the Port of London Authority for workers to do so.

After a short bus journey, we arrived at Plaistow railway station. The ticket collector was a genial black man with a great sense of humour.

‘Hello, my brothers,' he said. ‘Am you all from Jamaica, Trinidad or Tobago or is you one of dem black foreigners all de way from Africa? An' what brings you'm to dis godforsaken country? Am you'm all looking for de job on dis railway? Or am you a wantin' de job in the NHS? I can put de good word in for you at de Gospel Hall.'

‘So what would happen when we've had a bath?' one of the gang said.

‘Golly, man,' replied the ticket collector, feigning surprise. ‘If you'm come out white, we'll toss you'em out. By de way, when you get in de carriage, please don't sit on de seats. It's de rush hour. All de city workers in de gents' best suits and ladies' posh dresses will be on de train.'

‘Yes, all right,' replied the down-hold foreman.

As he spoke those last few words, an ancient steam train came trundling its way slowly into the station, followed somewhat reluctantly by several equally ancient carriages, a positive celebration of the genius of the great Victorian engineers.

We climbed into a compartment and the gang stood, crammed together in a line along the aisle. I, being the crane driver and the only one still without a blemish of dirt on me, sat down. One so-called city gent looked along the line of dirty, sweat-stained, tired dockers.