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to Tell Tales Jim Stacey
My
family dates back on the river Thames as Lightermen for several hundred years.
You could only be a Lighterman if your father or uncle were, it had to be
within the family. Boys were apprenticed at 14, for 7 years until 21. They
were bound apprenticed to their fathers.
When
I left school at 16 my father was determined that I should not become a lighterman
- it was a hard tough job, and he thought I should get a job elsewhere - but
I wanted to continue the family tradition. I served a five year apprenticeship,
which meant I didn’t become a freeman until I was 22, I was then bound to
my father and then served two years in the company of a freeman or a qualified
lighterman. You have to be with them at all times to learn of the dangers
of the Thames, the tides the currents.
After two years - you then go before a board of governors, the Waterman’s
board at St Mary’s at Hill, where you are given a verbal test on tide sets,
navigation, the bridges. One of the tests you have to do is row a barge, or
drive a barge as it is called, and that means putting a barge into the currents
of the Thames which will take it up or down and through the bridges. And you
don’t really row, you guide it so the tide carries it in the current that
takes you up the canals.
After you pass your first year you then need to pass a two year test,
and then you go on to complete your apprenticeship gaining the experience
and knowledge of navigation, barges, sound and light signals.
This trains you to navigate barges in the tidal waters of the Thames right
down to the Moor and the Medway, the canals the tributaries, and where ever
there was water, you took a barge. Before you could go up the canal, the lockkeeper
would dip the barge, which meant a piece of wood at a right angle which would
go down the side and under your barge and up to the water line to see how
deep the barge was in the water - because the Grand Union canal is quite shallow
and to stop the barge hitting the ground and getting stuck on a mud bank which
would do all sorts of damage. Once that was done, it was in the lock, wind
up the slackers. And you would rise up and open the gate manually and then
down would come the horse with the driver and put his line out and the horse
would be way up the towpath with the driver. You’d be on the tiller and you
would steer the barge up to the various locks that you were going through,
and particularly on the Grand Union canal because it is very steep river and
you go through many locks and in certain places, like Camden Town for instance
as you come out of one lock you virtually travel about two -three barge lengths
and you come to another lock .
Every
sort of cargo imaginable came into London’s docks - from fresh food, meat,
butter, cheese - to old iron, and old timber, grain, wheat, all carried in
various forms and ways, and so much of it went over the side, as we called
it. If it went up to the warehouses and on to the barges it was called quayside,
and it went to the other side - on to the barges and it was called going overside.
Then it would be taken from the docks or from the ships on the Thames which
would lay by a buoy or anchor and the dockers would unload it over the side
onto the barges. You would then take the cargo on the barge to the factory.
Heinz Beans was a company I worked for. We used to unload the ships in Victoria dock, haricot beans and take the beans to the factory and they turned them into tins of baked beans. Then we would re-load the barge with cases of Heinz Baked beans which we would then take them to the docks and export them to Africa, Australia, Far East.