Tales of London's Docklands Read Online Free Page B

the bridge, crew’s accommodation and engine room at the stern. This gave the crane driver good vision both of the quay and of the ship’s hold. Two pairs of winches and derricks were close to midships so they could service both hatches. A mast, with a wireless aerial attached, poked up high above the bridge from between the winches.
    The loading operation had gone well. The ship had finished taking on general cargo. The beams, hatches and hatch covers had been put in place and secured ready for sea. It remained only for a consignment of Scottish oakwood smoked kippers to be loaded for stowage into a cool chamber. Then the ship could cast off and sail out into the river into a golden sunset. Well, that was the theory.
    The kippers had been brought down from Scotland by road. A lorry was standing on the quay. The quay gang loaded the boxes of fish onto a loading board and covered them with a cargo safety net. As most people know, boxes of kippers are quite small (about 18 inches long, 10 inches wide and 4 inches deep). There were, therefore, several hundred boxes on the set as Bill Dyke lifted it and began to slew the crane round the stern of the ship. His intention was to land the set on top of the hatches close by the cool chamber. However, fate played its hand. A ship entered the locks and the hydraulic power went off just as Bill slewed the set over the top of the funnel. As the crane lost power the set of kippers came slowly to rest on the edge of the funnel. Two of the hooks holding the cargo board came out. The boxes of kippers began to slide off the cargo board and plummet down the funnel into the engine room. The air was quickly filled with blasphemies, oaths and threats in a language that no parson within earshot would admit to understanding, let alone a bishop – well, at least not in a public place, that is.
    It seemed a bit unreal at first, but everyone was soon brought back down to earth when the chief engineer, the second engineer, the donkey-man and the firemen came out of the engine room carrying boxes of kippers.
    â€˜You’re supposed to put these bloody things in the cool chamber,’ shouted the chief engineer to the crane driver, ‘not down the engine room. What the bloody hell are we supposed to do with these?’
    Bill shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Anybody hurt down there?’ he asked.
    â€˜No! Lucky for you there wasn’t,’ the chief replied.
    Bill shrugged his shoulders again and said, ‘Keep a box of those kippers for the captain’s tea. Tell him you’ve had a box or two on you, and so the crane driver said it’s only fair the skipper should have a kipper or two on him.’

3
    T HE T EABOY ’ S
A PPRENTICE
    O n a cold morning in April I found myself in Tilbury Docks Labour Board compound on the look-out for a single day’s work. I got picked up by a Scrutton’s Stevedoring Company Limited quay foreman to work as the crane driver to a delivery gang. The gang had been allocated to load barges with chests of tea that were to be sent to the tea auction rooms at Butlers Wharf Warehouse on the South Bank of the Thames, close by London’s waterfront, just below Tower Bridge.
    The tea we were to deliver had been brought to Tilbury Docks from Calcutta in India and Colombo in Sri Lanka via the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel and the River Thames. It had come aboard the SS Ma’hout , a really old, worn-out vessel of the Brocklebank Line that was soon to be sent to a breakers yard to be cut up for scrap.

    A port health motor launch making towards a deep sea ocean trading ship as it is about to enter the River Thames, 1950s. (Author’s collection)
    The trade route the SS Ma’hout had followed had fascinated me since I was a very small boy, and not simply because of the large number of ships that sailed along that major seaway. My father, who had been a docker since his release from