Tales of London's Docklands (21 page)

However, the pay rates for Goanese seamen were well below those for British seamen. The quoted reason for this was that the wage rates were comparable with what Goanese seamen would have received for work ashore in Goa. But, of course, the real reason was that shipping companies could employ four such foreign seamen for the cost of employing a single British one. It followed, therefore, as a matter of economic necessity that when they were in a country with a high cost of living relative to their low income, the Goanese seamen set up petty fiddles that brought them in extra money. They were not too proud to take pennies, sixpences or shillings. They used the extra cash to buy useful second-hand tools, clothes and sewing machines. They were especially keen to purchase Singer, Frister & Rossmann and Jones sewing machines, which they could buy relatively cheaply to take back home as presents for their wives.

Among the many petty rackets the crew indulged in were selling egg and bacon sandwiches (they filched these from the ship's galleys to order for sixpence each). In addition, duty-free cigarettes they had bought at 2
s
for twenty on board were sold on for 2
s
6
d
a packet. Cigars, too, that had been purchased abroad were stashed away in hidey-holes around the ships. Such items were kept hidden until zealous customs officers had cleared the ship. Then the contraband would be fetched from out of its hideaways. Furtive little dark figures dressed in their national costume, carrying didi tins that now contained contraband, made their way about the ship or ashore as if they were going to the specially built Lascar toilet blocks situated at various sites on the quay. In reality they were seeking clients to whom they could sell their wares.

One could also purchase ‘genuine copies' of Rolex watches for an English pound. They had been bought by the Goanese sailors from the bumboat traders that infested the Port of Suez. Many and varied were the items and trinkets Goanese crews could hide aboard the ship to avoid paying customs duty. I once purchased a pair of hand-carved wooden elephants for 5
s
. I still have them. They reside in a prominent position on our windowsill, a grim reminder to me of those days long ago when working-class men of any colour or creed scratched and scrounged a living from whatever source they could.

Finally, it has to be pointed out that these nomadic vendors of cut-price dutiable goods generally operated in pairs. One of them, who carried no merchandise, would approach a possible client and obtain a firm order for some article or other while his partner stayed hidden. Then, when an agreed trade had taken place, the two would swap places and the second Lascar would pass over the goods and collect the money. This was their technique for trying to outwit any customs officer who might try to intervene in their business arrangements. Customs officers must have known what was going on, but the trade was so minute as not to be worth the waste of Revenue resources in containing it. (Perhaps Customs & Excise were unaware such rackets were going on under their very noses, but I would not be rash enough to take a wager on that as a fact.)

Now, you may be wondering what petty illegal trading by Goanese Lascar seamen has got to do with the German paratroopers in the title of this tale. Well, it's called diverting one's attention, and such a diversion of attention almost cost me my life. It happened on board the P&O liner
Arcadia
, which was being prepared to go cruising (that is, to take pre-booked passengers on a sea voyage and sightseeing holiday, visiting a number of ports, as opposed to travelling from one port to another).

Cruise ships always took aboard several hundred tons of ballast when they were being prepared for deep-sea duties. The ballast, once loaded, was then over-stowed with dry stores, which were intended to last for the whole period of the cruise. The ballast was generally loaded into numbers 2 and 4 holds. That meant, instead of five gangs being employed on loading freight, only two ship's gangs and a ship's storing gang were employed. A ship's gang loading ballast comprised one crane driver, one top hand (hatchway man), four bargehands and six down-holders. In the case of P&O liners, two pro-rata men were employed to work a bull-winch, bringing the complement up to fourteen men.

A bull-winch is a single steel cable set to run direct from a winch's drum, down into the hold, through a running block attached to a cleat against a bulkhead or stanchion, and on into a heel block shackled to the far end of the hold. By this means, heavy cargo can be directed to wherever it is required to be stowed in the hold. On the occasion of this tale, the bull-winch was to be used to draw full baskets of ballast to the far end of the hold (and of course into other places the quay crane couldn't reach) so the ballast could be spread evenly over the whole surface of the hold ready to be over-stowed with dry stores. Now, the interesting thing about operating a bull-winch is that instead of having just a top hand on deck to direct the crane driver, there are three men on deck: a top hand, who directs the quay crane driver's movements aboard ship when cargo is being loaded into or discharged from a ship's hold, a winch driver, whose job it is to operate the bull-winch, and a second top hand to direct the bull-winch driver.

When ballast was being loaded into a ship, four men from the ship's gang would take turns with the other down-holders between working in a barge loading ore baskets with ballast and servicing the bull-winch in the hold. This meant eight men were working in pairs, filling ore baskets, while two of the gang remained in the ship's hold to unhook the full baskets from the crane. It was the job of the two men in the hold to attach the rings on the ore baskets to the bull-winch hook that would draw the full set of ballast across the hold to its designated stowage. They then hooked the empty basket onto the crane hooks so it could be whisked away skywards and back into the barge for the process to be repeated again and again. Each ore basket was said to hold 12 hundredweight of ballast when full. The average time given to load a basket was six minutes. This work operation continued until a barge bay was emptied. Then all the men working in the barge would go aboard the ship and back down the hold to level the ballast. This operation was known as
trimming.

As large luxury liners were mostly constructed from steel, they were always deep in the water. Centreboards, fore and aft of the ship's hold, were not necessary to stop the ballast shifting when these big ships were at sea. It followed, therefore, that the bull-winch was not restricted in terms of the directions in which it could be operated. When we removed ourselves from the barge and climbed up onto the ship and down into the hold, we were greeted by a sight that at first made us angry – that was until we saw the funny side of the situation. The two men who had been left in the hold to service the bull-winch were both old soldiers who had served in the Essex Regiment in the North African desert with the British Eighth Army. They had decided to use the bull-winch to make sand dunes. They had made a hut out of ship's dunnage, on which they had written ‘Rommel's Headquarters'. They had made several graveyards in the sand with small crosses constructed from pieces of rush matting. They had used pallet-boards to indicate the positions of enemy tanks and left holes in the ballast as shell and bomb holes. Far be it for me to say the whole place was a shambles. The other men in the gang who had been involved in the desert war, after calling them every blaspheming name they could think of, soon broke down into peals of laughter. That's when the incident occurred that could have cost me my life, and they thought that was hilarious too.

While the rest of the gang were swearing and cursing each other over the mocked-up battlefield, I had taken it into my head to change the hooks on the ore baskets. As I coupled the crane hooks onto the rope tail of a basket it shot skywards at high speed, taking me with it. Then it suddenly stopped. Before I realized it, I was three-quarters of the way up the ship's trunkway, about 30 feet above the level of the ballast in the lower hold. The crane had stopped its hoist and the basket was swinging from one side of the trunkway to the other like a clanger in a bell. I had two options: I could let myself be smashed against the side of the trunkway, or I could release myself from the ropes on the basket in which I had become entrapped. I chose the latter option and let myself drop down the trunkway onto the ballast below. Fortunately I landed in a pile of soft sand. It was then that one of the jesters in the gang piped up, ‘It's just like those bloody Jerries. Here come their paratroopers.' Of course, the down-holders thought this incident was funnier than the mocked-up desert battlefield, Rommel's Headquarters, the tank positions, the graveyards and all. I didn't.

When I looked up the trunkway the ore basket was still swinging slowly by its tail in the position I had left it when I evacuated myself from it. I got onto the steel ladder that led from the ship's hold to the deck some 60 feet above and scrambled up it as fast as I possibly could. (As a quay crane driver I was used to this ordeal, having to climb ladders several times each day.) When I pulled myself over the steel lip of the hatch I could see both of the top hands and the bull-winch driver haggling over the price of several watches that a Goanese Lascar had strapped to his arm. They were on the verge of making a purchase when I got up close to them.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you're doing? Didn't you see me trapped in the ore basket? I was halfway up the trunkway when you stopped the crane. Or did you think it was Tarzan of the bloody apes swinging about down there?'

‘We didn't see you,' said the top hand, who was supposed to be the crane driver's eyes. ‘We were doing a bit of business with this geezer here.'

‘Sod him! You should be keeping an eye on your job. You idiots could have got me killed just now,' I raved.

‘Oh, for Christ's sake stop moaning,' the top hand said. ‘Do you want one of these watches or don't you? If you buy one he'll let us have three watches for 15
s
each!'

‘Yes, OK. I'll have that one.' I gave the Lascar 15
s
, put the watch in my pocket and scrambled back down the ladder of the trunkway onto the ballast in the lower hold.

The only comment I received when I arrived back in the hold was from the down-hold foreman. ‘Are you going to give us a hand to level out Rommel's desert battlefield those two former desert prats over there have created? If you're not, then sod off home,' he said.

That was the end of that episode. Such idiotic pranks and dangers were inherent in docking. Nothing more was ever said about the incident.

By the way, the Tilbury dockers did win the A.W. King cup at that year's Gravesend Regatta (1959). It was my last boat race before my luck ran out, but that will have to wait for another tale. That watch never did work and it cost me almost a whole day's pay.

A Tilbury dockers' rowing team being presented with the A.W. King Stevedores and Dockers rowing cup in 1958 by the Mayor, Mr J. MacKenzie, and Captain MacKeller. The author is on the far left of the photograph.
(Author's collection
)

G
LOSSARY

‘A' listed dockers and stevedores
men called on for employment by a Port Authority labour master; these men were from all categories, i.e. ‘A', ‘B' and ‘C' registered dock workers

‘A' men
registered dock workers categorized as being physically fit to undertake all forms of work associated with dock work but excluding crane driving

attendance book
book issued annually to registered dock workers that, when stamped by an employer or the Dock Labour Board, registered the number of attendances for wage payment purposes.

‘B' man
a registered dock worker over the age of 65

backers
members of a ship's or quay gang who carried sacks, timber or other cargo to or from working areas

‘C' men
registered dock workers categorized as medically fit for light duties only.

call stand
a raised platform in Dock Labour Board compounds from which ship workers or quay foremen selected their workforce

change-over men
pro-rata men employed on ships' decks, cargo jetties or quays to transfer roped or cargo boarded freight from one purchase to another

dabbing on
a term denoting an attendance book being stamped by a Dock Labour Board clerk

dabbing concession
an excuse stamp given for reasons of sickness or for another acceptable reason for absence from work

day-work money
the basic wage payment for those not on piecework

dockers and stevedores
registered port workers who belonged to different trade unions; dockers were members of the Transport and General Workers Union (the Whites); and the stevedores were members of the Stevedores and Dockers Union; (the Blues)

dolly-brook
a large tent that could be raised hastily over a ship's hatch to protect cargo from inclement weather.