LOGBOOK GLEANINGS

Evening Star, Issue 23527, 16 March 1940, Page 14

LOGBOOK GLEANINGS

THAMES TIDEWAY SPECIALISTS

“ DOCKERS " IN THE FORT OF LONDON VANISHING CARGO AND RIVER POLICE The waterside controversy that has occupied a place of some magnitude in the news of late makes the. following description •of waterfront labourers in England—“ dockers ” —taken , from the ‘ P.L.A. Monthly,’ quite interesting:— “The description ‘docker’ covers a multitude of jobs. There are a certain number of permanent labourers in the Port of London, but the majority of the men are casual labour, being called on as ships arrive. Up to a few years ago they often found their legitimate employment taken from them by crooks, down-and-outs, and, in fact, by almost anyone who had failed in his own trade. But a system of registration of port workers has done away with this unfair competition and has to some extent mitigated the evils of the casual nature of the work.

“ The docker may be a ‘ toe-rag ’ — i.e.. a man who works in the holds of grain ships and who wraps rags round his feet to keep the grains out of his hoots. He may be a 1 chamber hand,’ working in a refrigerated meat chamber. The almost Biblical title of * slinger ’ means that he receives goods from a truckman and makes up sets for the crane slings.

“ There are literally scores of other classifications into which dockers fall, for like most workers on London River they are essentially specialists. They, too, are renowned for their spontaneous wit. During the pre-war national crisis a passer-by was foolish enough to ask a docker why he shovelled sand from a lorry on to the quay beside a liner; Without pausing in his labour, he replied, ‘ ’S going aboard the ship; she’s taking out tho camel corps.’ " * * * * SURPRISING! One of the most interesting units on the lliver Thames is the river police. They are not members of a separate force like the P.L.A. constables in the docks, but belong to the Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police. Their headquarters are at Wapping, and they patrol the tideway in fast launches, many of them equipped- with radio.. Their main duty is to prevent and detect petty pilfering from the barge loads of valuable cargo moored in the river. Thanks to their efficiency, the Thames is to-day one of London's most law-abiding areas, despite those writers who see a. dope smuggler in every Chinese steward. But this state of affairs belongs only to modern times. A century or more ago Thames cargoes were plundered to’ the tune of many thousands of pounds every year. Even in the closing years of the last century extensive robbery from ships and barges went on. At that time a certain colony at the mouth of Bow Creek was reputed to be the home of a skilled and infamous Thameside robber, and the river police of those days are said to have cpmplained that no good eyercame out of the Creek.

In reply, the civic-proud inhabitants pointed: out that several fiqe ■ ships had beeh launched from . the Thames Iron Works at the mopth of the Creek. The police retorted by expressing ' astonishment that they ever reached the water without being stolen 1